Dragon Palace Chinese Restaurant

Really disappointed by everything we ordered. Steamed dumplings were terrible, bland. The fried rice was gross. The chicken with Chinese vegetables was awful as well. I don’t understand why everything was poor; additionally, the portions were small. This ranks as possibly the worst Chinese food I’ve ever had.

We had beef noodles along with chicken & rice aside & vegetable spring rolls, the noodles were very greasy & oily & the rice alone was unreasonably priced. We were discouraged to order anything further after trying their two disappointing dishes. Yet their chinese tea was very refreshing. The only fun thing they have is that they gives you fortune cookies at the end when the payment comes LOL i think thats pretty fun. Don’t go to that place unless if that were your last desperate option!

I had dinner there last wednesday and both my friend and I were nauseous and sick for the following day.
We had duck with pineapple. The duck pieces were made ⁴⁄₅ of duck fat and skin.
We also had veggie springrolls but their inside looked suspicious and meaty…
The service was okay but the items are overpriced for what we got served!!!

Went for dim sum… sent one dish back and really wish I sent the rest back too. har gau, xiao lung bao, cheung fun. all doughy, soggy, very little flavour. Pork ribs in Balck bean — sent it back, Spicy beef lettuce wraps… hmm have had better. Duck — fatty, dry.

Great service, hot and spicy dishes seemed tame compared to what I’m used to. Most of the dishes are a little toned down for Londoners and tourist. We sat in the back dining area which hand some pretty cool dim lighting. Service was lightning fast. I will return.

I’d consider my family to be dim sum experts — we go to eat the ‘cart style’ stuff every weekend in NYC’s Chinatown (we live pretty close by) and between my wife, myself and my two boys we can pretty quickly tell the quality of a dim sum house. We have been in London’s West end for a month and have been missing easy access to dim sum, so when we found this place near Earls Court we were very excited.
Luckily, we were not disappointed! The dim sum was super fresh, came out quickly and generously made. Of particular note were the shrimp and scallop dumplings, the chicken congee and the shrimp in rice roll. Our waitress was great (a «Beijing-​ren») and we left promising to come back again.
Great find, great food, great dim sum!

Seriously underwhelming — we ordered custard buns, ha gow (shrimp dumplings), lotus wrapped rice, barbecued pork cheung fun, and the two specials.
The custard buns weren’t the standard nai wong bao that we expected — it was a steamed bun filled with English custard.
The ha gow just wasn’t as good as others I’ve had — the wrapper wasn’t sticky or chewy and the shrimp didn’t have the same succulent bite.
The lotus wrapped rice was undercooked as the rice was still hard in the centre.
Thankfully, the cheung fun wasn’t bad although the specials were definitely something else! Special A was just pureed green vegetables that were deep-​fried — it could have been leftover vegetables they wanted to use up! Special B was a vegetable dumpling with an orange coloured wrapper — not sure why!
Also, the bathrooms had paint cans/​thinner strewed on the floor and the stall didn’t have a door D: I’m giving Dragon Palace a generous two stars because it was still rather edible!

I ordered the Chef Recommended Chili Szechuan Chicken. There was a fair portion of chicken, but the dish was rather small and lacked vegetables (there were only a few pieces of onions and peppers). The sauce used to top off the dish perfectly complimented the dry chillis and szechuan peppercorns; the flavor was complex and the spice of the dish did not overpower it.
In addition to being a small portion, steamed rice was not included in the dish (it was £2 extra which isn’t an atrocious price, but a practice that I am not accustomed to in the States). Despite this, I would definitely return to try another chef specialty.
The Dragon Palace also has a fairly large selection of Dim Sum.

Mind you, our visit to London was 4 years ago… we have spent about 2 weeks in Italy (dying for some REAL Chinese food)…
We stayed at a hotel in the area… made the mistake of going to Wagamama the first night… another story…
OH BOY… the service was great! Oh… right, perhaps also because I am a Cantonese speaker… we LOVED the food and service! We ate there at least twice…2 nights in a row, if my memory serves me right.
Will definitely go back if we are ever in London.

**IN SHORT** Food was good. Ambiance was nice. Service (esp. one woman) was not-​so-​good and/​or spotty. If I have to rate for food, I’ll give it a ⁴⁄₅. Just don’t expect them to be at your beck and call, and you’re fine.
I want to go back to try the other dishes out… a lot of people had dim sum.
*****
SERVICE: [1.5 out of 5] I agree with Adam W. Service was «spotty.» Most of the service was just average or maybe less than average. There was one woman who especially!!! did not provide service — I give her a 0 out of 5. She has short hair, petite, and asian. I asked for my check since I was done eating (as she was clearing my table). She looked at me and nodded and said, «okay.» Then she did about 10 minutes (or it seemed) worth of «other» things — like clearing other peoples’ tables, chatting with other customers at tables, and whatever else. Anything but get my check. 3 other servers came by but were too busy to do anything. Finally, a woman (who seemed like a manager) saw me sitting there with my credit card, …so she finally came over with my bill and my credit card.
SPACE: Not sure if there’s more room in the back, but there are 4 tables that seat 4. And 6 tables that seat 2 people in the front. If you want group seating, they can probably put the 2-​seater tables together for a larger group but advanced notice would probably help.
FOOD: I ordered the Ma Po Tofu since I was wanting something lighter. I also ordered dim sum (that is, beef cheung fun). The food was quite nice. I was surprised… Wasn’t really sure what to expect. A lot of people were ordering dim sum.

This is a nice-​looking place to get yourself a Chinese food fix. I’m no expert on Chinese food, but the authenticity of this place seemed questionable. Although I enjoyed my curry chicken — juicy bits of chicken and a nice level of spice — it doesn’t seem like a very Chinese dish to me.
There are two problems with this place in my opinion:
— The menu doesn’t seem that extensive. It just seems to repeat the same dishes with different kinds of meat for the most part, and they don’t serve some of my favourite Chinese staples like xiaolongbao and congyoubing.
— The service was a bit spotty at times. I asked the waitress for another beer twice and she still didn’t bring it.
That said, the service was friendly and they served the food shortly after we placed our order. One final note is that it seemed quite pricey to me – but I’m American, so I suppose that’s to be expected in London…