No tea for two (Luxuriance Peking Cuisine)

Member Name: annalindsay

Product:	Luxuriance Peking Cuisine
Date:	04/05/02 (364 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Reasonably priced set menus

Disadvantages: Its food..., and service..., and (lack of) range of teas

Had we arrived there half an hour later, we would have been warned by the absence of Chinese people dining there. Unfortunately, we entered before the crowds.
There were three factors to our attraction:
1. We hadn't dined there before
2. It claimed to offer Peking cuisine
3. It offered good value set menus.
The restaurant is large, with calligraphy on the walls and a slight stale smell of cigarette smoke. There was no separate non-smoking section, but as the restaurant was virtually empty when we entered, we weren't too bothered.

The first warning bells began to clang when we were told that there was only one sort of tea on the menu: "Chinese tea". Given that tea is to China what wine is to France, the answer was neither illuminating nor impressive. Further probing eventually revealed the sort: Jasmine. We should have left then, but didn't. Instead, we looked at the menu. Peking? No. It was almost entirely the usual Cantonese fare. (The further North you travel, the more dumpling dishes and spicy foods and soups you find, as might be expected from the harsher climate). We settled for Menu B, £10.85. Strictly standard fare - but it incorporated the crispy duck which had enticed us in the first place.

Where do I begin? The crispy seaweed, which is supposed to have a light sprinkling of ultra-fine caster sugar, was instead overdosed with coarse granulated sugar. The egg-fried rice literally dripped oil. The duck was not merely oily, but not even particularly crisp. The sweet-and-sour meat appeared to have more than its fair share of fat and gristle. The portions were definitely on the small side. The waiters looked on dourly, and the manageress who marched up to us with the bill, stood stony-faced and arms akimbo, until she could snatch the plate with its credit card.

The Chinese have an expression they use when saying "good bye": Joy Geen (hard "g" as in "go"). L
ike the French expression "Au revoir", it means "See you again."
I took care NOT to say it as we left...

Summary: