Gourmet Oriental

From Hero to Zero!
Well. Not that I can give a zero star rating here on Unilocal,but you get my point.
So then. How can my very favourite Chinese delivery get it so wrong? Well, it has been a subtle shift over many years.
First of all, the prices. This place has gone from having dishes that ranged in the £5-£6 mark to being more like the £8-£9 mark now. The overall bill for two people has gone from being around £18 to around £25-£30. As you can see, this is quite a jump. With this in mind, you would expect that there has been an improvement in quality, wouldn’t you? Well…
Second of all, the quality. In the past. I absolutely loved the quality of the food. I admit that it probably wasn’t the healthiest and it probably wasn’t always the most choice of ingredients, but it was prepared very well and tasted great. Recently, the quality of the food has decreased to such a degree, it bears almost no resemblance to the dishes that I once ate going back to 2007, 2008 time. With this in mind, you would expect that they are rushing things, but it is being delivered faster, wouldn’t you? Well…
Third, the speed of delivery. I would generally use this place because of the exceptionally fast delivery time that they offered. When you are in a rush and heading home for a quick shower and change of clothes, having hot food ready and waiting for you in a short amount of time is a massive selling point. The delivery time has gone from being approximately 10 to 20 minutes from the time that I placed the phone call to now being over an hour!
2007 — a delicious £18 meal delivered in around 15 minutes.
2015 — a disgusting £28 meal delivered in over 60 minutes.
Incidentally, there was a time when I couldn’t seem to get through to this place on the phone. Anecdotally (and I’m not sure I can verify this) a local friend told me that they had been closed down for a while due to health/​food safety issues. I don’t know whether this is true, but it certainly doesn’t help me to stay as a customer.

Have persevered with this company one too many times. Poor customer service and overpriced. Twice they failed to deliver a complete order and do nothing to compensate for this. Use at your peril.

Food was cold & delivery was 45min after order time. Threw half the food away, soggy dim sum — ate cold pork buns because I was starving. Yet again another missed opportunity. When is someone going to decent take out in London? People are obviously willing to pay for it.

I fall for it every time. Well, at least I used to. Not anymore; I will make a promise to myself. I know you’re not supposed to mention other restaurant names in reviews, so I won’t, but I just want to get this off my chest. For some reason, I’m not sure why, but I always seem to confuse ‘Gourmet Oriental’ with another similarly styled restaurant delivery by the name of coughcough; I used to order from them years ago, and I think one branch broke off from the main chain. Maybe I’m wrong, but it always bugs me that does. Perhaps one day I shall call them up and ask them about it. But anyway, as for the meal I ordered tonight. I’m not going to beat about the bush on this one, so I’m going to come clean, straight-​up, right now. This is pure unadulterated day-​light robbery. Three lousy dishes, and a bill of £29.85. That’s ten pounds per dish. Think about that. ten whole pounds, per dish. The reason the final bill seems a bit over the top is because there’s a surcharge of £3 just for the delivery.
Okay, let me describe to you what the dishes were like. The ‘large’ mixed fried rice: came in the usual plastic container. It had that awful brown appearance to it. The flavour was not exactly mouthwatering, and had a distinctive ‘creamy’ taste to it, similar to that of ‘Cream Soda’ or the likes. I was trying to figure out what this taste was, whilst I was eating it. I came to the conclusion that it was the flavour coming from the little bits of Char Sui (diced BBQ Pork meat) which were scattered copiously about, amongst the rice. I may be wrong, but this is my guess. The meat selection of the rice was plentiful, including all the usual bits of Prawn, Chicken, Pork etc, but that creamy flavour seemed to be the only thing I could taste. Quite unexpectedly, once I had dug a hole in the middle of the rice dish and made my way towards the bottom of the container, the rice seemed to turn bright white, and seemed to have a much more virginal flavour to it, which was more welcome than the version seated at the top of the dish. I’m pretty sure it’s the same rice, but just the rice on the top section is drenched in some brown liquid, which looks like Soy sauce, but certainly doesn’t taste like it. To cut the long story short, I most definitely did not enjoy this rice dish whatsoever, found it extremely tedious, and a chore to eat.
I think these guys have got their batters mixed up, because my remaining two dishes (Sweet N Sour Pork, and Salt N Pepper Chili Squid) seemed to have the batters the wrong way round. I.e. the batter on the Squid would have suited the Pork better and vice versa. The batter on the Salt N Pepper Chili Squid was dark brown, quite tough and seriously cruddy. I don’t think ‘crusty’ is the right adjective, more ‘cruddy’. It reminded me of the overcooked sections of the homemade Apple-​pies we used to get at school, sort of little nodules of hard ‘batter pieces’ encapsulated in an overall lifeless, dull, ‘unleavened’ style coating. The squid pieces were the correct size/​shape and nicely cut; and the flavours mingling with them seemed to be heading in the right direction, with plenty of fiery Chili blossoming with each mouthful, along with the earthy undertones created by the Garlic et al. but all this was just let down by the lugubriousness of the clay-​like batter.
In complete contrast, the batter (or coating) of the Sweet N Sour Pork pieces, was light, fluffy almost, and very very chewy. It was like a caricature of a batter, cartoon-​like in it’s demeanor. I actually quite enjoyed chewing on these pieces, but unfortunately, the sauce it came with was a little on the industrial side of things. Upon opening the lid, you can see the syrupy sauce puddled at the bottom of the container, with the Pork pieces sort of hovering above it mid-​air, un-​coated in any sauce whatsoever. I had to start fiddling around with each Pork piece, trying to dunk it in the shallow pool of sauce, to try and get a good covering of it. The sauce itself was eye-​squintingly sour? Is that the right word? You know, like the same reaction your face makes when you chew on a Lemon? It was unbelievably zingy, far too much so. The base flavour was nice, but just way over the top with the sour notes. Out of all three dishes I had, this one was the most tolerable. I couldn’t help but think though, as I was chewing on each Pork piece, how much better the Squid dish would have been if they had used the same coating on it, as they had done with the Pork.
All in all, ‘Gourmet Oriental’ provided me with a very poor performance of a meal, and rubbed Salt firmly into the wound that had already been created by the £3 delivery fee. I do believe this is referred to as ‘taking the p**s’. Their menu and website are both very professional-​looking, and so is their presentation, with the food arriving in what looks like a builder’s toolbox made using Origami. The word ‘poseur’ springs to mind here when thinking about this restaurant. They’re a little

We tried it last night and the food was just not good. The sauces were not authentic asian and the food seemed pre-​cooked and reheated for delivery.
The food arrived cold and any of the fried items were soggy.
NOT AT ALL worth the price and they charged a 3 quid delivery charge as well.
Be warned…

Ok, so the food here is fairly good but the service is absolutely appalling. My partner and I just got back from a long trip and didn’t feel like walking to China Town for food, so we ordered from here at 19.30, and were told that the food would be here within an hour. At 20.30 we received an email stating that the food would be here at 21.30 (two hours after we ordered!). So we rang them to see if it was a mistake, but we were informed by the surly guy on the phone with a lack of English that «we are busy so we moved back the order…» We cancelled the order!
I have eaten from here before and found that they never really adhere to delivery times.
Although the food here is good (but not spectacular), if you definitely want dinner I suggest you order from somewhere else!
An Update… at 22.11 we got a call from a delivery driver to say he was here with our food despite us cancelling the order, thankfully by this point we had eaten!

Two days later and guess who once again delivered three steaming Thai selections to my flat?
(Hint: it wasn’t «Sexy Fireman Santa,» nor his «little ‘who you callin’ little’ helpers,» as hard as I had my fingers crossed.)
…but it was just as good.
What’s that Chris G was saying about addiction?

This place isn’t cheap, but when I was living in W1 I’d order from here whenever I fancied Chinese.
Everything I’ve had from here has been really fresh and delicious. Not drowned in sugar, or batter, or oil. Delivery is always prompt and professional, and the quality of the meats and veggies is superb.
If I were on death row and I was asked what I would want for my last meal, it’d be the Gourmet Oriental’s Crispy Chili Chicken. I still have dreams about it.
If you want a fancier Chinese takeaway experience, order from here, you won’t be disappointed.

One of my favorite food delivery service in W9 and NW8 area. They deliver fast, really fast, once they arrived in about 15 min. Have an extensive range of foods, both Japanese, Thai and Chinese. And portion is big enough always, that you don’t have to order too much. I love their stir-​fry udon, their rice dishes, and they have good ice creams too (orange sorbet is very good). I order from them once every week!

This is an ok take-​out place. They have an extensive menu, and I’m looking forward to trying some more of their noodle options. THey also have a wide variety from different Asian cuisines. The food was good, but not outstanding, and they are a bit on the expensive side. The won ton soup was quite good, the pan-​fried dumplings were pretty dry. Delivery was quick.