Royal China

Firstly, a few words from our sponsors for this review:

“To celebrate Chinese New Year hungryhouse has dived into the food and the traditions of the festival, to create an interactive guide to help you stage your own Chinese New Year takeaway feast in the comfort of your own living room. The guide includes information on New Year traditions, foods, a special Chinese do-it-yourself cocktail recipe, and it also features step-by-step instructions for people to make their own funky Chinese decorative lanterns to really get into the spirit of Chinese New Year.

To celebrate the launch of the guide, hungryhouse are asking people to make a lantern and then share a photo of it on twitter or instagram with the hashtag #hungrylantern. hungryhouse will then pick their 10 favourite pictures and award each winner a £25 hungryhouse voucher each. The competition is now open with winners being selected on the 19th.

So get your chopsticks out, dive into the guide, and get snapping for your chance to win some free Chinese food.”

And now on with the review…

The folks at Hungry House, for whom Our Beer Woman reviewed the Curry Leaf, a wee while back, dropped us a line to give them a hand with promoting their Chinese New Year campaign. Of the restaurants in my delivery area, they chose the Royal China as the best candidate, which suited me as it’s not one I’d either heard of or tried before.

The Hungry House folks were generous enough to give us a voucher to cover costs, so my mother Anne and I settled in after the Scotland v France rugby match to fill our tummies with delicious treats. Having placed our order at half time, our items were with us just after the final whistle was blown, which was rather good timing.

Of the items on the Hungry House Chinese New Year suggested list, the classic veggie spring rolls were tasty and packed with chunky vegetables and the beef in black bean sauce was outstandingly good, with deliciously tender beef.

There were a lot of other elements to try. The chicken noodle soup was very good. The salt and chilli prawns were very pleasing, as was the equivalent dish with tofu. The noodle and rice dishes were packed with flavour, too. The seafood roll was the only weak dish we tried.

We couldn’t face the sweetness of the banana fritters, but they kept very nicely for a sugary breakfast treat, the following day.

So overall, we were thankful to Hungry House for giving us the opportunity to try a place that probably wouldn’t have otherwise come on to our radar. Royal China served us some very good dishes, particularly the beef in black bean sauce. If you’re looking for somewhere for your Chinese New Year feast, you should give them a shout.