My Old Place

girlswear

At last, an authentic Chinese in London! 17th August 2009

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One thing I really missed about living in Toronto is its proper ethnic food – especially good authentic Chinese food. After my two years and a half of searching in London, I've found it at last!

Formerly a Thai-Thai, smack centre in The City is the sister restaurant of the infamous Gourmet San (on Bethnal Green Road – my friend thinks the food in this location is better than the Bethnal Green one ) named "My Old Place". My Old Place specialised in Northern/Szechuan Chinese cuisine, therefore, lots of the dishes are very spicy. I'm normally not a big fan of too spicy food, but since My Old Place, I cannot get enough!

I HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend to start your dinner with at least a couple of their BBQ cumin lamb skewers (£1 each). Tender lamb cubes sprinkled with chilli flakes and cumin seeds skewered like a kebab, barbecued perfectly crispy yet tender. Also, their BBQ chicken wings are also prepared the same way, unfortunately size varies, 70p each.

Moving on to the mains, they're quite hearty servings for all around £7-9 each, seafood choices above £10. Vegetarian option friendly. I've tried their Sweet & Sour Chicken, which was okay, batter wasn't crispy enough and it was quite oily. Green onion sautéed beef was great. A dished called "Ants crawling on Trees" (aka very spicy rice vermicelli with minced pork) was worth getting. Spicy Eggplant was equally amazing.

We did one of those ‘Look-at-what-the-others-are-having’ and discovered the BEST dish and it goes to "Water cooked Meat" (I forgot what the dish was called in English) – it basically comes in a big porcelain bowl, with your choice of meat (lamb, beef or pork) and Chinese cabbage poached in broth then covered with Chinese miso (spicy bean paste), fresh chili, chili flakes, peppercorns, garlic and ginger. You'd need to get over your phobia to oily dishes for this one, that's where the little colander comes in handy when you scoop out the meat and veggie whilst draining the oil. Order some plain rice and you're good to go. This £7 dish serves 2 very hungry up to 4 people (if you want to try other dishes). For less oily version, email me and i'll send you my recipe for it. Perfect for the winter time if you want something warm, spicy and brothy.

As a standard good Chinese restaurant, service is crap but expected. Not ideal for romantic dates. There was one time, the chicken wings order came with one wing half the size of the other, we wanted to exchange for another. They refused, finally we compromised that we don't want that dish and they didn't charge for it. We made quite a scene but because the food was too good there, we went back the next day embarrassingly.

The restaurant has two floors. I think you can book a private room for mahjong, as we sorta peeked into one in the basement. Turn over is quick, especially for two people.

Oh... one last thing – cash only!