Restaurants

New Mayflower is a Chinatown stalwart, popular both inside and outside the Chinese community. Its lengthy Anglo-Cantonese menu provides many familiar dishes, plus a few more esoteric concoctions. The decor is slightly rough around the edges, especially in the basement where we ate on a typically crowded night. Waits for tables are frequently long. Bored by the English menu, we asked for advice from the Chinese list. From this, we ate fried eel with honey and pepper sauce (perfectly firm, sweet and spiky), and pork with chinese broccoli and ginger. Crispy duck was OK, with crunchy skin, flavourful meat and generous portions of pancakes, cucumber and spring onion. In contrast, wun tun soup was disappointing, with bland broth and dumplings that relied too much on prawns and tasted fishy. The set meals are reasonably priced, and slightly more balanced than the norm, though a dinner of crispy duck, chicken with black bean and chilli, fried crispy beef with carrot, mangetouts with beansprouts and egg fried rice (£14.50) still contained too much fried food. New Mayflower’s particularly friendly staff set it apart from nearby competitors, and this will keep us returning. The very late hours are a bonus too.

Time Out Eating & Drinking Guide 2008