Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Royal Dragon, London


Royal Dragon Restaurant & Karaoke
30 Gerrard Street, London W1D 6JS

Luckily, when we visited, on a Saturday lunchtime, the "karaoke" part of the restaurant's title was not in operation.

We had some time to kill in the West End, so we decided to head for Chinatown for lunch.

We picked a restaurant that had some veggie stuff on the menu that also had Chinese people eating in there, as we always find this a reasonable guide to quality. The menu advertised a vegetarian set menu for around twelve pounds, so in the interest of quickness and variety we ordered this.

Starters arrived promptly and consisted of a large plate of asparagus and aubergine tempura, crispy seaweed, some pastry thing and chilli dipping sauce, all of which were very nice, especially the aubergine.

Next up were lettuce rolls with vegetables, crispy noodles and hoisin sauce. Again, very good, although the vegetable filling was a little heavy on the sweetcorn kernels and certainly needed the sauce just to give it that extra kick.

The final course was a selection of vegetables with cashew nuts, vegetables with mushrooms, sezchuan tofu and vegetable fried rice. All really tasty, especially the tofu which was quite spicy.

The restaurant itself is quite modern in appearance, very crisp clean lines and dark colours. The service was good and the waiting staff made sure we had a never-ending pot of Chinese tea. All in all, it was a very enjoyable place to have lunch.

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