Chinatown: Longji

Or Long Ji. The character for the 'long' part I know is 'dragon', but I wasn't so sure about the 'ji' part. I looked it up and apparently it's 'remember' or 'note down', so maybe 'longji' means 'remember dragon'? 'Dragon's memory'? Please tell me if you know.

This is where Vicky and I went before visiting the Golden Gate Dessert House.

Where?

Chinatown, London, 47-49 Charing Cross Road. Nearest station is Leicester Square.

What?

Formerly Cafe de Hong Kong until relatively recently, It's a Hong Kong café that offers various noodle-based and rice-based one plate meals, as well as many fun icy drinks like bubble tea and ice red bean drink (the latter of which I had this time).

What, no bubble tea this time? I've actually mentioned this place before in previous posts, and usually to say that they do the best taro bubble tea (which is, as you may know by now, my favourite flavour for bubble tea). However ice red bean drink happens to be one of my favourite fun iced drinks, so I'll just as often order it instead.

Ice red bean's basic ingredients consist of red beans boiled until tender, then served with a glass with plenty of ice, along with sugar syrup and a milky substance (often evaporated milk- which is what I got here). Plenty of versions have coconut milk and/ or condensed milk instead, though. Sometimes it's mixed with cendol (the actual cendol, not the whole dessert), sweetcorn, other things... but then with a lot of other stuff it becomes ice kacang.

Longji is awesome in terms of portion size verses what you pay (and it's one of the more affordable places to eat in Chinatown). It's not haute cuisine, but don't forget you're in a café rather than a fancy restaurant. In any case, it's a good place to sit down and grab a bite to eat. Back to portion sizes though: usually I order their ho fun noodles, but I knew that having ice red bean drink along with a main would kill me (there are beans in ice red bean drink. Beans are pretty filling, y'know.) So I went with an appetiser.

Sticky steamed glutinous rice parcels with chicken.

Even the portion size of this appetiser was quite substantial! I was quite happy.

I was a bit of a noob and tried to eat the leaf wrapping at first. Don't eat the leaf wrapping.

These tasted amazing, sort of like a chicken baozi but with sticky rice instead of a bread bun. With two of these parcels it was more than enough for me, along with the ice red bean drink. Vicky went for the ho fun, and even without a fun iced drink it nearly defeated her.

Don't be caught offguard by the 10% service charge added onto your bill- I've seen one review where someone's been incensed by it and gotten into a hot disagreement with the staff about paying. Personally I think it is a bit awkward to say it's an optional charge but stick it on anyway (which would instantly make you look like the bad guy if you wanted to opt out): then again, I always tip anyway unless service is actually bad, and I've found the staff of Longji nothing but helpful. Maybe it's also because I used to be a waitress, and I know what I long-houred, messy, exhausting and often thankless job it can be. Also, a lot of places put on an automatic service charge on the end of the bill, so it's not just Longji. I'm not saying it's right, but I'm not saying it's unforgivable.

I recommend this place because the food is decent for a café and not too pricey, there's a great selection of Fun Iced Drinks (which I shall capitalise from now on since I seem to be constantly going on about them), and I've always found the staff to be pleasant. It's probably more of a lunch-y place, but I have no problem with going there for dinner in the evening (as I did this time).

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I'll be doing some Japanese food posts soon, for a change!