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 ... Read review
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Reviews of London Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant (Heathrow) »
1-5 of 5 reviews of London Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant (Heathrow)
Looks Can Be Very Deceiving!
Advantages: Looks nice Disadvantages: Poor service, oily food, small portions
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!
anonymili 20.03.2007 (20.03.2007)
Ciao members have rated this review on average:
very helpful
Review of London Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant (Heathrow)
Value for Money
Standard of Menu
Atmosphere
Standard of Service
Cleanliness
Family Friendly
Quick review of London Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant (Heathrow)
I totally disagree. My experience at the London Hong Kong restaurant was great and I will eat there again next time I am at Heathrow in November.
Myself, my husband and my parents had dinner there as we drove from Southampton to drop them at Heathrow. We chose one of the set meals. The welcome was good, the staff were friendly and the food was fantastic. Our starters were so tasty, none of the greasy food mentioned in the other review and the duck pancakes were different to our local Chinese but they were very good. By the time the main course came we were too full to eat much but it was of the same standard as the other courses. They served us with some of the coldest beer we have ever had (coke in my case as the driver!) and as soon as someones bottle/glass was empty the staff were there to offer another drink. My only advice for the manager of this restaurant is not to let your staff eat KFC in the main restaurant! There were a couple of them on their breaks and although we found it funny others might not.
All in all I would highly recommend this restaurant, and its position close to the airport means a great start to a holiday without having to suffer some of the airport 'restaurants'! We are actually staying in an airport hotel the night before our next holiday just so we can have dinner there again. ...
claar 19.05.2007
Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of London Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant (Heathrow)
Advantages: Great food, friendly people, clean restaurant and easy to park. Disadvantages: Pricey but still good value
I'm a great fan of this restaurant. Have been there on a number of occasions and find the food consistently excellent. Personal favourites include Mandarin Spare Ribs and Satay Prawns on a Skewer, Mixed Roast Platter (Cantonese Roast Duck, Crackled Crispy Pork and Char Siu Pork) and a delicious Mango Pudding. Dim Sum at lunchtime is also very good. Regularly see a lot of Chinese people in there and so it is likely to be very "authentic Cantonese ...
Jayarebee 14.08.2008
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of London Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant (Heathrow)
Value for Money
Standard of Menu
Atmosphere
Standard of Service
Quick review of London Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant (Heathrow)
The prices are on the high side but the food is excellent in this Chinese on the Bath Road right by the airport. Service is very good but beware if paying by credit card that 10% is already included but they leave the gratuity open and they DO expect more. The atmosphere is very good, always has a buzzy feel about it even when not that busy. Staff are always waiting by the door to welcome you. ...
petergomola 13.03.2008 (11.03.2008)
Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of London Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant (Heathrow)
Advantages: has lots of tables, looks nice Disadvantages: Service is awful.
I have frequented this place mainly with my family for dim-sum and evening meals. Expect slow and poor service. Once we ordered food and there were about twenty of us, we received enough rice for about 4 and were informed we would have to wait for rice!! The very same meal we ordered wine, the only place it materialised was on the bill. We ordered some chicken and were told an hour later the chicken was off. I enquired to why they had no told us ... ...apparently lost the abilty to understand english and pretended he couldn't understand me. Another occasion we had to wait 20 mins for icecream for the children. I refuse to go eat inthis place anymore. Service is useless at dealing with any complaints. All in all a nice place to look at, but over priced, shocking service and check your bill!! Food quality is as you'd expect for the prices. Portion size is stingy. ...
Tomo34 25.09.2009
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: somewhat helpful Review of London Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant (Heathrow)
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