What's happened to the size of my dumplings? (London Hong Kong Restaurant (Heathrow))

Member Name: sakura8

Product:	London Hong Kong Restaurant (Heathrow)
Date:	28/03/09 (146 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: They serve a lot of traditional dim sum dishes

Disadvantages: Drastic dumpling/bun size reduction!

I've been going to London Hong Kong (LHK) with my family for the last few years, as it's my Mum's number one choice for dim sum since she decided the food at Tai Tung in Croydon wasn't up to her standard anymore.

Up until recently we have considered the food at LHK to be very good. We mostly go there to eat dim sum, but we have also had evening meals and attended a wedding banquet.

However, our last visit to LHK was very disappointing. We ordered all of our usual dim sum dishes and we were shocked at how small they were! The dumplings had significantly shrunk in size and the Har Gau (prawn dumplings) hardly had any prawns in them, being mostly bulked up with water chestnuts. The Char Siu Bao (sweet pork bun) were miniscule in size and they had quite an odd flavour.

The words "Credit Crunch" were ringing in our ears, as we suspected that was the reason for the cutbacks, but they must have cutback on a decent chef or two as the quality of the food was terrible. Our py gwut (spare ribs in black bean sauce) were undercooked so we asked the waiter to send them back to the kitchen to be microwaved (I learnt that in Cantonese this is "Ding Doy" which I thought was amusing).

All of the dim sum was so much smaller than what we'd been used to, that we were all still hungry so we ordered some crispy noodles and fried rice. The noodles were swimming in a sludgy, salty gravy so we didn't enjoy them at all. The saving grace was the fried rice, so we were fighting over that!

As for the service of the place, well I have to admit that because we're longstanding loyal customers, they do treat us well, however my Mum does leave them fat tips, which sometimes I don't think they always deserve! If I'm not with my Mum then I do notice I get treated differently. For instance, I went into the restaurant with my fiancé (who's English) and instead of being shown straight to our table (like my Mum does), we had to wait in the waiting area until my parents arrived.

I've never considered the service in any Chinese restaurant to be all that decent, as it seems the norm for the waiters/waitresses to have a brusque demeanour and at LHK it's no different.

I'm not sure how much longer my Mum will continue to choose to dine here if the standard and quantity of food remains on a steady decline. I certainly wouldn't choose to go there if it weren't for my parents' choice of family-gathering venue and I definitely wouldn't recommend it to any of my friends!

Summary: Once a decent place to eat, has now really gone downhill.