Joy King Lau, London

No, I'm not talking about a joyful king called Lau; I don't think such a character exists, or at least not that I know of. Instead, Joy King Lau is a Chinese yum cha restaurant in London's Chinatown. Being relatively new to London, we're always on the lookout for places to go and after hearing about this place from a few friends, it made its way to our list of to go places.


Find Joy King Lau was not easy. It's not situated on the main part of London's Chinatown and is amidst a few other Chinese restaurants. Furthermore, it's name was hidden, or at least not obvious to us. As a result, it took us a bit of wandering before we finally found it.


Luckily, the restaurant had a few floors and given we were relatively early, we were given a table straight away.


The restaurant isn't like other Chinese yum cha restaurant. It's decor was pretty bland, like a cheap Chinese noodle shop or something. There was no fancy Chinese paintings or any Chinese styled artefacts of any sort. Even the table and chairs were pretty ordinary.


Unlike Lotus, Joy King Lau had quite an extensive menu. The prices are pretty similar to Lotus and the size of each serving seemed slightly larger too. Taste wise, I believe they had each dish bang on. Pastries were thin and elastic. Many dim sims had prawns and smelt and tasted fresh. None of the dishes were too salty. And, at least to me, the balance of flavours were spot on.


However, that does not mean there's no let downs. Some notable let downs included the cha siu cheung fun (pork rice noodle) was a little thick, the deep fried yam cake was only luke warm, some of the dishes did not have traditional ingredients, especially the chicken wrap, which had braised pork instead of cha siu and lacked mushroom and a piece of deep fried fish belly. The tea, though tasty, was cheap and we did not get the option to choose the type of tea.


Though there were let downs, the overall experience at Joy King Lau was pretty good. It didn't have the typical Chinese yum cha feel but it sure did have the typical Chinese yum cha taste, even if some of the ingredients were not traditional.