London Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant (Heathrow)

London Hong Kong is a Chinese restaurant which bills itself as selling "authentic Cantonese and Peking Cuisine". It is based at 388 Bath Road, West Drayton, Middlesex UB7 0DH. It is very close to the airport and I've been told that it is frequented by airline staff. I cannot confirm the validity of what I've been told but I can recount to you my first and last experience of dining at this restaurant.

The website address of ...
...fare. We live in West London and the minimum fare around where we live is £6.00 for the shortest of journeys. It seemed everyone was out to rip us off this evening!

When I came home I worked out how much the bill should have been - they had basically overcharged us by £7 as well as the service charge.

I've double checked the prices on the restaurant's website; they're the same prices I saw on the menu. I don't mind ... more

London Hong Kong is a Chinese restaurant which bills itself as selling "authentic Cantonese and Peking Cuisine". It is based at 388 Bath Road, West Drayton, Middlesex UB7 0DH. It is very close to the airport and I've been told that it is frequented by airline staff. I cannot confirm the validity of what I've been told but I can recount to you my first and last experience of dining at this restaurant.

The website address of the restaurant is http://www.london-hk.co.uk and their phone number is 020 8754 7666.

LOOKS/ATMOSPHERE

If I were going to rate this eating venue on looks alone I would give it a strong 8 out of 10. From outside it looks delightful. The brightly lit multi-coloured welcome sign, almost a bit childish but very inviting. The colourful lights make you want to go inside and see what wonders this new restaurant has to offer.

On entering the restaurant you are greeted by a pleasant hostess who asks you how many in your party and then asks for your name so they can address you by it, i.e. Mr Jones, Mr Singh, etc. To the right as you enter the premises is the reception area where the host or hostess waits to greet incoming customers and hold the door open for exiting customers. To the left as you enter is a flashy bar area which on first appearances is also very colourful and welcoming but on further inspection seems quite garish. Behind the bar area is the kitchen and between the kitchen and the restaurant seating area are the toilets. The staff seemed really attentive when we first walked in. This changed very quickly though.

The actual seating area is fairly large. At a guess I'd say you could seat about 150 customers comfortably. The tables were neatly covered with good quality table cloths and the chairs were sturdy and comfortable.

The toilets were nice and clean, can't complain about those at all. The tables were spread out quite spaciously but it didn't help that the staff (and there were a LOT Of them) were charging around with an air of importance which was totally unnecessary with their earpieces in barking orders or whatever they were doing, it really didn't feel as if they were paying attention when you spoke with any of them.

Another thing I noticed was that there was no music playing at all and a chap seated 2 tables away from us was speaking very loudly all evening and seemed to drown out any conversation my husband and I tried to have with each other.

THE MEAL/THE EXPERIENCE

My husband and I were given one drinks menu and one food menu between us. After 5 minutes I had to ask for another menu which was brought over immediately without any fuss. The prices for the starters were seemed very steep but we weren't complaining. We'd come out for an anniversary meal and were expecting the food to be delicious and the service to be first class and the prices to be steep. We were asked if we wanted prawn crackers, so we said yes, I noted on the menu they were £2.00 a serving. They arrived in front of us looking rather overdone - first time I'd seen brown prawn crackers - I thought maybe it was a different type of prawn cracker. But no, we saw the prawn crackers being brought out to the table next to our and they weren't brown. The portion seemed small, we didn't mind. We were trying to see the best of everything (so far).

My husband always has chicken and sweet-corn soup, this was £3.50. My starter of sesame prawn toast was £5.50. They brought out his soup whilst my husband was in the toilet. He seemed to be gone quite a while, then I realised he'd gone to the bar to order a drink as it was proving difficult to get one of the waiting staff's attention (even though there seemed to be dozens of waiting staff around). He ordered a large single malt whiskey with soda and it was £7.50. He had to ask for ice… I had a bitter lemon which was flat and over-loaded with ice - this cost £1.60 in rather a small glass. I was not impressed with this so far. A good ten minutes after they'd bought out the pretty small bowl of soup for my husband and my starter hadn't arrived. After 3 attempts I managed to get a waiter's attention, I said the soup had come out a while ago, where was my prawn toast. He looked at me blankly; then said "you ordered a prawn toast?" which was annoying because we'd got the waitress to read our order back to us as she seemed a bit confused when writing it down. Another 3 or 4 minutes later my prawn toast was delivered. My heart sank. On a small bed of garnish were 4 small triangles of prawn toast (basically 1 slice of bread). It was not what I was expecting for £5.50 and my heart sank even further with my first bite. The toast was drenched in oil. You could even see from the colour of the toast that it was very oily. I was not impressed so far and could only hope that my main course was going to be more substantial and tasty. Hubby said his soup was edible but nowhere near the standard of even the most basic of Chinese restaurants soups he had eaten in the past. I tried the soup, it was bland. We actually had to ask for some more salt to add in the soup to give it some flavour.

The main course had to be better, hadn't it? We'd ordered chicken with peppers in black bean sauce asking them to substitute the green peppers with a few mushrooms (as hubby doesn't like green peppers but likes the black bean sauce). This item was £7.80 on the menu. Egg fried rice for the 2 of us at £2.80 each and I ordered crispy shredded pork with chilli which was listed as £8.80.

Ten minutes after they'd cleared away our starter dishes a waitress came over and plonked down two small bowls and plates on our table without saying a word. No one asked if we'd like another drink. Another 15 minutes later my husband's chicken dish arrived. The portion seemed healthier than we were expecting. We waited, another waitress came along and put the small bowls in front of us and started serving up the rice which they'd put 2 portions into one bowl. We thought this was one portion of rice! She scooped some into both of us bowls quite quickly and dropped a load of rice onto the table and walked away without apologising. How weird. She didn't come back to clear it up. I told my husband to start eating, I didn't want his food getting cold. Over 5 minutes later, a waiter came over and literally dumped a plate in front of us saying "crispy shredded beef" and walked away before I could stop him. I had to get another waiter to come over and explain that I had order crispy pork not beef, could they check what this dish was as the other waiter had said it was beef. He confirmed that it was in fact beef and took the plate away. Hubby in the mean time is eating his food and telling me to have some of his as it could be ages before they sort out my food. It was another 5 minutes and I wasn't impressed by the chicken dish anyway. The rice was almost cold. The crispy shredded pork in chill was in fact crispy strands of some sort of coating in sweet and sour sauce with some chillis sliced up on the plate. I ate less than half of it; it was too oily and fatty and just tasted like sweet and sour batter!

I was getting rather upset now and said to hubby that I didn't want to hang around here for too much longer and that I was not interested in having a dessert but he should have his calypso coffee that he really wanted. This was about £3.00 and was about the only thing they got right for us. We were given a plate with some fruit on which was complimentary, consisting of a couple of small melon balls, a few grapes, 2 small pineapple slices, 2 slices of orange and a slice of strawberry.

Our bill was brought to us before we'd even asked for it and we asked them to call us a cab as we'd walked there from our hotel. It was about 1.5 miles and the walk had taken us over 20 minutes - it was a pretty cold evening, we wanted to just get a cab and get back to our hotel.

The bill seemed somewhat higher than we'd expected and my husband asked me to scribble down how much I thought it should have been. A waitress came over and started scribbling things down on a pad for me, as she said our cab was already here and waiting for us. She explained this that and the other and said our main meat dishes had been £9.80 each (which they weren't) and that there was a 10% service charge added and as other restaurants charged 15% we were free to add more of a tip. She put my husband's credit card in the machine and basically rushed the amount through asking if we wanted to add more of a tip. We declined.

We left the restaurant feeling rather bemused and somewhat ripped off. The cab ride back to our hotel took about 5 minutes and again we were stunned when the cab driver said the charge was £10. We queried the charge - he said it was the minimum fare. We live in West London and the minimum fare around where we live is £6.00 for the shortest of journeys. It seemed everyone was out to rip us off this evening!

When I came home I worked out how much the bill should have been - they had basically overcharged us by £7 as well as the service charge.

I've double checked the prices on the restaurant's website; they're the same prices I saw on the menu. I don't mind paying additional charges when the service is good, their service was much less than average and certainly not worth paying what amounts to a 25% service charge for such bad service. We certainly won't be eating there ever again and we definitely intend to tell all of our friends who we'd told that we were going to be dining there for our anniversary.

I think their biggest mistake with running their business is having so many damn waiting staff. I don't think the same person came back to our table during the evening at any time so of course they were going to mess up the orders. It was weird that more than half of the waiting staff had earpieces in as if they were placing orders with the kitchen or communicating with the other staff. Whatever they were doing, they weren't doing it right.

All in all I'd give them an overall rating as 3 out of 10 (which I feel is quite generous). The service and quality of food was definitely the worst in any Chinese restaurant I've ever been to.

Definitely not recommended unless you want to be ripped off and served sub-standard and oily food.

EXAMPLES OF OTHER ITEMS ON THE MENU

Crispy Seaweed - £4.00
Deep Fried Frogs Legs - £6.80
Deep Fried Oysters (2 pcs) - £5.80
Deep Fried Squid - £8.80
Quick Fried Fresh Scallops - £9.80
Deep Fried Scallops with Yam Paste - £12.80
Sweet and Sour Chicken £7.90
Diced Chicken with Fresh Mushrooms - £7.90
Shredded Pork Szechuan Style - £8.80
Sizzling Lamb with Ginger and Spring Onions - £10.80
Sizzling King Prawns in Soya Sauce - £14.00
Mixed Roast Platter - £9.80
Boiled Rice - £2.00
Special Fried Rice - £5.50
Malaysian Style Flat Noodles - £8.50
Mango Pudding - £3.00
Coffee - £2.00
Chinese Tea - £1.00
There were also selection of set meals for minimum of 2 - 6 people ranging from £16.80 to £28.80 per person.

Overall a very disappointing experience, especially as it was our wedding anniversary meal - my husband thought it would be a nice treat as he'd driven past the place on the way back from work many times and said it looked really nice - as my title suggests "Looks Can Be VERY Deceiving"... Needless to say, we're not going back there again!  

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