Lee Fung House, Hereford Road
Here we go - round 2 of my Chinese food adventure!
Spurred on by a higher than (low) expectations start at Eatwise, I have allowed my laziness to stretch as far as about a mile down the road to Lee Fung House on Hereford Road.
This was quite passionately recommended by a couple of people. Both staunch in their position that this is the Chinese for them. Giving me the feeling that they would go to war for this place. I love this kind of passionate dedication to a restaurant - they must be doing something right!
This place looks like the kind of takeaway I am looking for, its basically a converted house, sat a bit out of town, no just eat, no uber eats, no card payments (becoming a standard).
What it does have is a never ending phone ringing. I got there early; or at least what I thought was early; at 5.45pm. 2 people sat on the sofas waiting and the phone did not stop ringing while I was there. The poor bloke behind the counter was clearly striving for just 10 seconds to do something rather than answer the phone - I must have been his absolute nightmare customer. This was a bit of an impromptu decision to have a takeaway so I was totally unprepared. I approached this poor bloke, with no idea of what I was going to order - I hadn’t even looked at their menu. As someone happy to eat anything and with no direction from my family as to what they wanted to eat, this was a recipe for me to really stress this guy out! You would have genuinely thought I had never been to a takeaway before in my life by the way I was acting. After interrupting him and distracting him from phone calls with ‘um’s, erm’s and ah’s’ I decided to say I would sit down and actually read the menu. Incredibly he remained smiling and happy to help throughout all of this - brilliant stuff!
With orders racking up, I asked how long food was at the moment, he said 10 minutes - as if this was normal busy for them. All adding to my excitement that I might have found a beaut!
Any of you that know me, will know that when it comes to ordering food, I am way better when just given stuff to try - I can never decide what to order and when left to my own devices can easily end up ordering enough to feed a small village and I totally disregard any dietary requirements…….precisely what happened on this occasion!
The Order:
Vegetable Pancake Rolls
Pork Yuk Shung
Vegetable Chow Mein, Curry Sauce & Chips (recommendation)
King Prawns & Cashew Nuts
Chicken Satay
Prawn Crackers (free)
Fortune Cookies (free)
The Price: £45
I got the order in the bag, only to find my wife was going to be late back from work - so I had to hot hold the curry for about 45 minutes after we got in - so we were going to eat maybe an hour after the food had been cooked. Recipe for disaster or ultimate test of quality and freshness?
The chips in this place had been recommended to me with what I would describe as ‘passionate aggression’. They had excited this person so much that they even told me that they would order chips from Lee Fung House to accompany a takeaway from else where!!! I mean, how good can a takeaway chip be to warrant such effort? Chips are chips, right? Or at least they are until they are CHIPS - then the game totally changes. So my expectations for these were high. It even got me wondering whether this was a bizarre situation that a takeaway were making their own chips from scratch? I wanted super crispy, super fluffy, super well seasoned! When I realised we would be awaiting an extra 45 minutes to eat, I had to guzzle a few to give them a fair go - I doubt there is a chip in the world that would survive and hour in that sweaty chip bag? They were very good actually! They weren’t homemade - but that would have been absolutely mental if they were and I would really question the business plan behind this. However, they were really well cooked, super crispy and survived the 15 minute trip back home really well! I thought they were a bit under seasoned for me - no issue, I have salt coming out of every cupboard at home. However, maybe I should have waited, there was a lovely collection of salt in the bottom of the bag which almost turned my face inside out when I got there. Maybe I should have opted for more of a bag shake than a brash fistful of the real white gold!
I was impressed with pretty much everything. The chow mein was really well cooked - lovely texture on the noodles and veg! The vegetable pancake rolls (or spring rolls as anywhere else would have called them) were absolutely packed with veggies and loads of seasoning - they had obviously been made fresh as well. Super crispy and nicely fried - a miracle considering they were keeping warm in the oven for 45 minutes!
The yuk shung was a highlight - light, fresh flavours, well seasoned, crisp lettuce - great stuff! Also the king prawns with the cashew nuts were really great. So plump and juicy - perfectly cooked! As satisfying as the word plump itself!
The satay sauce was a bit thick, claggy and a too sweet for me. It was however, freshly made and didn’t have any tell tale signs of being bought in - so all is forgiven! Similarly, the curry sauce was a bit thick and heavy. It tasted great but this might have been a victim to the 45 minutes in the warm oven! I did however really enjoy it fridge cold spread on a cracker the following day (I know, my snacks are weird - I have learnt to accept that, you should too)
It was a massive hit with me the following day - cold for lunch, straight out the fridge, I absolutely demolished it! Delicious!
This was definitely a step up from Eatwise and another pleasant surprise! I can see why people love this place and how it can easily become your regular, if I wasn’t on the hunt for something really special, this would be my local I think! It does everything you need it to, just maybe not enough to exceed expectations!
Were the chips worthy of the high praise? Yes. Were they worthy of a special trip just for those? Not with my takeaway laziness - for me, takeaways need to have a certain level of convenience, otherwise I might as well just cook!
They had to put up with the disadvantage of the food being kept warm in the oven for 45 minutes after we got home and it still held up against expectations - so it’s exciting to think how it would be if it was all eaten straight away!
Things seem to be getting better and better! Roll on Part 3!
