Royal China

I’m surprised I haven’t rated this place before because it would’ve been 4 stars. This has been a regular dim sum place for me for years since it’s so close to where I live. They used to always have very consistently good food… until the new year.
The owners and the cooks must’ve changed sometime around Christmas. The service was so awful granted the person that was taking our order even told us he normally doesn’t do this. The table next to us, they were grabbing their own tea cups because they were tired of waiting. They didn’t have about half the stuff we wanted to order on the menu… and the things that we did order, tasted the worst ever. Most of it was either 1) overcooked, 2) way too oily or 3) not fresh.
I was really sad about the downfall of this restaurant. Gotta leg it to another place nearby then.

Love the décor in this place: blue lights, lacquer, fish tanks. It has everything I need. Except heating, apparently there was some problem with that. I (jokingly) suggested they could leave the oven door open. Waiter (not so jokingly) said she had already considered it.
I had spring rolls to start, because I am a highly sophisticated consumer of Chinese food. But actually, they were crispy and the filling tasted of fresh vegetables! Chicken satay was also highly acceptable, as anything served with peanut sauce is likely to be.
For the main course we got an aubergine and minced pork in spicy sauce hot pot. It tasted good, very delicate flavours with a nice hint of ginger, but it definitely wasn’t spicy, unless you bit directly into one of the very few bits of chili pepper in the dish (as I did at one point to shake things up a bit). The roasted Cantonese duck was nicely cooked but overall was too salty.
Considering the menu is quite expensive, it could do with being a little more interesting. Seeing the same two ingredients over and over again isn’t very inspiring.
Service was very polite and friendly but slow. Also, they couldn’t take our cards for some reason, it would have been helpful to have been told that at the outset. Seems from other reviews I’ve checked now that they only accept Amex and Diner’s Card.
I would go back for the dim sum, but I don’t think I can handle how much more expensive it will be than in New York.

I had high expectations for this place, upon entering it’s a fairly cosy & dark restaurant with it’s glossy black & gold décor.
Not sure what was going on with the service but it took them 15mins to get us tea & 25mins before they even took our order, I would have expected this is if they were extremely busy during Sundays, but this was Tuesday lunchtime & they only had two other tables in.
We ordered, Vietnamese spring rolls, Beancurd rolls, Char Siu puffs, house special Cheung Fun, Chive & Prawn Dumplings, Pea Shoot Dumplings, Chickens Feet with black bean & chilli, Yam Croquets & Gai Lan (Chinese Veg) with ginger.
The food was freshly made, but average, Cha Siu puffs were soggy, the prawns in the dumplings weren’t as plump & crunchy enough, the Gai Lan was overcooked & portion was tiny for 8.50GBP.
Maybe it was an off day for them but it wasn’t a great experience, service took way too long & food was tasty but distinctly average, especially when the bill came to 50GBP for two. Normally with Dim Sum 15 — 20GBP per head & you will walk away stuffed!
To be fair they only had one waitress serving us at the time & when the other waitress turned up she took time to chat to us & offered a discount for our next visit — Perhaps we’ll have to take her up on the offer another time, but my go to place remains to be Imperial China Teddington for Dim Sum.