Leong's Legends

Have to say was a little worried when read some of the reviews. However, on my brothers recommendation who had been before, we went as a group of 4 with friends for Sunday unch. We had never had Taiwanese in London before so it was a great experience for us. I am also Chinese. (also quite fussy!) Yes the service is not to Western standard, but too be honest its typical Asian/Oriental - just get used to it (service without a smile!). We were a mix of carnivores and one Vegetarian who didnt eat seafood. There was lots of choice for everyone! We had piping hot soya mlik & Iced Bubble Tea. Excellent. The Vegetarian dumplings&wraps got bigh thumbs up. The Braised Belly Pork with rice was melt in the mouth with delicious fragrant rice. Not all steamed rice is of a good quality in Chinatown but this was yum. Taiwanese spicy beef noodle was delicious too! But the star of the show for us was the Whole Crab with whole red dried chillies and garlic. (of which there was a mountain of!) The crab was huge and at £15 it was well worth it! It is perfect for the Oriental Palate-as I said spicy and very garlickly, but my western friend loved it too. Was truly delicious! We were sat by the window which was perfect for us, I noticed if you were sat by the door it would have been very cold. The waitress did forget to take one of our vegetarian orders but it didnt take too long to come after it was rectified. We shall definitely be going back again. My friends thought the lunch was brilliant and a good experience for all of us. I hope our food experience will be just as good next time we go.

food is REALLY GOOD. the place is nice. service is ok.

reading the reviews on here i was worried that this place would have been so bad.

maybe the service is not so good, but first of all we are in chinatown. i still havent found a place in chinatown where the waiters are polite.
also like someone else wrote on here:you're there to eat, not to have a great dining experience. (otherwise go somewhere that is way more expensive).

but now about the food:
it was really good. i was there with a chinese friend and she was impressed at much as i was.
we had 2 soups which were really rich and good. mine was a duck soup with lots of duck mean in it.
then we got the taiwanese pork belly which was super and cheap (like 6 punds WITH rice) , compared to other places in chinatown like Dumpling Legend (which is 8 pounds + rice separately).
we also had pig interiors with crispy skin. i expected it to be 'dry' but it was in a sauce.tasted good and my friend said it was a good quality one, as god as the one you could eat in china.
we also saw other dishes that people around us ordered and they looked good.
i will definitely go back.

the waiter with us wasnt that bad at all, just maybe dont expect them to be smiling and happy....i went there with the idea of having good food and knowing that the service was bad. go with this mindset and u wont get disappointed.

btw the place look really cozy to me, there are wood tables, wood walls and wood ceiling, which it gives a good feeling to the place.

last thing: yes you have to knock the door in order to get in the restaurant... so what s the problem? it s actually pretty cool!

Warning: I am a simple tourist, not a local. Take my experience with a grain of salt.

Small restaurant. Bound to be busy at times. Decor is reminiscent of taverns you see in Guzhuang-styled Chinese drama. Knocking to get in isn't unusual during those times. There were lines in all the times we went, but people cycled through relatively fast.

Not sure what the review about poor service is, as during my short stint in London I went there three times with three different group of people - the food is suitably impressive and is probably around the top 10% of Chinese food served here in China town. Our waitresses were watching the table like a hawk.

For the record, I am also Chinese. The quality of the food, again, is solid. This place would probably do well even if it opened in mainland China or Taiwan. Their southern-styled dishes (the Shuizhu type) fishes are fairly good. Their huge-slab-of-pork-on-rice thing for 6.50 can't be beat anywhere. People have commented on their dim sum, especially the Xiaolongbao. They're not as good as the authentic stuff from say, Shanghai, but they're definitely good enough.

Give it a shot before letting the reviews scare you off.

Just shows the power of the customer review. Pretty consistent with the poor reviews. Our experience was similar to most with the addition of a couple of things...

Having to knock to get in, really? that's not quirky or oddly interesting. The decor too reminded me of a medieval knight show from one Disney World holiday.

We had some dim sum, one of which (can't remember the name) I had to send back as the smell of rotten fish was awful that even the table next to us commented. I'd also ordered a 'chicken casket' I can't believe this is typical food of any country. It's a deep fried bread box (with lid) filled with thick chicken and vegetable soup.

I would also agree with Isabel P regarding their xiao long bao, they're pretty crap. Better to head to Camden to Yum Cha for those.

Firstly, the food quality at Leong's Legend is pretty high. If that's all you care about, then you should have no problem.

However, the service here is very inconsistent. We have, at times, had excellent service, mostly had rather indifferent service, and the last time, the service was so poor that I have now decided to boycott the place.

My wife and I took my parents to this restaurant for a bite to eat after some morning shopping. We arrived just before 1pm, and it was reasonably busy.

When we tried to chase up a couple of our dishes about 50 minutes after we had arrived (and about 10 minutes after we had finished everything else), we had one waitress who successfully chased up and got one our missing dishes, one waitress who explained that our dishes really did take that long, and one waitress (who seemed like a manager) eventually served us some cold lotus leaf rice.

When I pointed out, in English, that the rice was cold and inedible, she started shouting at us in Chinese, asking us what it was that we wanted her to do. Had my parents not been there, I'm sure I would have responded rather loudly with a 'not shout at the customers that you've just served cold food to after an hour's wait', but I was disgusted: this was easily the worst service I have ever received in a restaurant in the UK (and the UK isn't that well known for good service...)

As I say, the food is okay. However, this incident has left me feeling that boycotting the place is the only course of action for me.

Tastiest I've had in a long time. The Thaiwanese omelette was a killer! No problems with service either, quick and friendly.

terrible service, - 3 staff none of them were paying any attention (only two customers)
we found a piece of chipped china in our food. when we told them, they seemed they didn't care. some of the food was good, but most of them tasteless.

food was good for China town standards but terribly slow service when we went.

Went there twice and the food served is good. Interesting the rice bun with pork, nice the pork belly as well as the stiky rice and many other dishes I did try.
Regarding the service I didn't pay any service charge as it's an option. The staff is realy friendly as I have a 2 yrs old daughter that is on her terrible two and the staff always helped and played with her.

Food was pretty tasty. Price was OK. Service was obviously making a good attempt to win the Olympic Gold Medal for Terrible Service. I think the training is going pretty well: they should be on course for the 2012 medal ;-)

Dear Londoners & Tourists, you are definitely deserved a better foods/ services in London area. I just wanted to shout out ' What a disgrace !!! Shame on you Leong’s !'

First of all, I am a chinese and I know how to eat/ rate a good chinese foods.

I felt humiliated and disappointed when a cold rice have been served and a glass of uncooked pearl milk tea (chewing jelly type beverage drink). I requested them to change the cold rice and get me another freshly make pearl milk tea . From their conversation, they were just heat the rice in the microwave. AND the waitress poured the existing drink into a new glass to made it look like a freshly made. I saw it with my own eyes when I walked past their counter so I immediately cancelled it.

Regardless the foods quality, I don’t really deserved these kind of humiliation or any discussion at my back from the waitress with their native languages which I don’t deserved to be talked down.

I am totally unhappy with these kind of services and low quality of foods. On top of that, I still have to pay them a 10% service charged on top of the bill which made me even more angrier and unfair.

PLEASE NOTE : the waitress said the 10% is a compulsory fees and it cannot be taken out. REALLY? I don’t mind to tip them, but not with these services manner and cheap skate foods service. I would rather pay for a beggar at least they are being thankful but not a big rolling eye and talked down.

LEONG'S OWNER - PLEASE REVIEW YOUR RESTAURANT AND TRAIN YOUR SERVANTS PLEASE>>>>>>

Like other reviewers I also wanted to like this place. But the poor quality of the dim sum and the absolutely insulting service calls for a boycott.

I don't know why this place is renowned for its "xiao long bao" (soup dumplings). I'm Taiwanese, so I know what a good soup dumpling should be like. Leong's dumpling skins were tough, thick and uneven -- very crude -- and the filling very mediocre.

Even more crude was the service -- even towards one of their own, me being Chinese and all. Frowns, eye-rolling, gratuitous ARGUING with the customers. I am NOT a demanding customer, so this was quite a shock. I was not allowed to sit down a few minutes before my friends' arrivals; they refused to send back a dessert which did not match the menu description, then when they finally relented they billed me for it anyway!

Grumpy waitstaff who are irate for no reason other than having to do their job, of simply taking menu orders and maybe delivering dishes with a bit more grace than slamming them on the tables, do not deserve to have paying customers. What a disgrace.

Please save your time, money, appetite and dignity: do NOT go to Leong's.

I've been there for several times but still their service was the poorest in town.The servants were rude and poor service manners. We were three and waiting for the fourth to come for our reunion dining. One of the girl were asked in a really offensive way ' Why only three of you, where is the fourth'. Few mins later, she came again' how long you guys got to wait for the fourth'? Look, they added the recommended gratitude 10% on top of the bills and we paid for these arrogant services? Thank you but no I won't revisit for sure, because I deserve a better service and their food wasn']t that tasty to be honest !

time and time again i want to give this place a chance because the food is good. it is. you can't fault the menu and the chefs. unless the chefs are the reason the waitstaff are so rude.

when it opened the service was lukewarm, but one expects that in chinatown. sad, but true. you're there to eat, not to have a great dining experience. everyone jokes about the crap service at wonky (wong kei), but wonky actually has friendlier service than this joint.

don't make the mistake of trying to open the faux oriental door to try and put your name down for a table or ask how long the wait is. you will be firmly marched out and told to wait in the line outside. questions about how long should one expect to wait seem to weigh so heavily on the shoulders of the waitstaff, or offend them as if you'd just declared a taiwanese person to be chinese.

and forget if if you happen to be meeting a friend for a late lunch and turn up slightly early, ready to start ordering food, and eat as you wait. i can understand how annoying this can be for restaurants, but if someone is happy to start purchasing food from your establishment, instead of taking up a table to wait without ordering, you sit them down and feed them.

we went back a few times thinking maybe the person we encountered was having a bad day. within 30 seconds of interaction with their staff we left, feeling like an idiot for even trying again.

which is a shame as the food is good. but not soup nazi good enough to put up with the awful attitude, and pay 12.5% of your bill for the pleasure of infringing on their day.

The food is okay, the prices are okay, the winelist is okay, the service is okay..... Everything is just kind of okay. If you stumble past and want a quick lunch with your friends, then go for it but don't seek this resturant out or go there for a special occassion. There are much better around.

Let's start with the positives.
The most important factor of a dining experience; food, was BRILLIANT. Authentic Taiwanese street cuisine (I say this as I have travelled there before), out of which my favourites was the Sticky Rice with Pork. The ambience and the decor matched equally creating a very oriental feel and it is a very cosy place to have lunch and dinner in the West End.

What DID let the beautiful food and decor down was the TERRIBLE service, for which I payed a service charge that came upto £4. We ordered two rices dishes accompanied with 3 curry dishes. Each curry dish was served seperately with a gap of 3-4 mins. between each and after a good ten minutes came the rich. Needless to say our meal was cold. The staff were young and inexperienced it seemed and were often rude and very inattentive.

Overall, a good dining experience with some exotic and adventorous dishes to try out but I advise not to go there if you are trying to impress someone as the service is appalling.

I love this restaurant! The food is great everytime and the service is not too bad either! Having been there at least 6 times in a short period of time means that this place is definitely worth trying if you happen to be around the area and get sick of the other chinese restaurants which typically serve roast duck, kai lan with oyster sauce and 'ma po to fu'. Do try their Shanghai XIao Long Bao (or pork dumplings with soup), this is probably one of the very few places in London where you can get them! As well as the Taiwanese style bubble tea with tapioca pearls and you always want to try the braised pork with rice and roast pork bun! They're such tasty treats! It gets crowded on weekends at night so you do have to queue occasionally for at least 20 minutes but if you go during odd hours (i.e. 8.30 pm or later) it should be fine. I think they do open for lunch as well. The restaurant has a very authentic 80's feel of China to it with the low rattan light fixtures and the cosy wooden tables in booths. I would recommend this restaurant to anyone looking for a decent meal at a decent price in London!