South Croydon Chinese

Since My Old China closed in Purley, we don’t have a local Chinese other than take-aways. Often we go to the Sichuan Cottage in Coulsdon, but one Monday when we fancied Chinese we thought we’d try out the South Croydon “strip” – or “Restaurant Quarter” as the Council would have us call it.

So after a short bus ride, we arrive at the Beijing Cottage. Not surprisingly it was pretty quiet inside, with just one other table of 6 occupied. Despite this it was quite a while before our wine order was taken, and the Sauvingon Blanc arrived. Not the “quick wine” we like!

The menu is very extensive, with many unusual dishes as well as the more traditional ones. After some dithering, we went for the prawn and chicken in lettuce and the soft shell crab to start. The former was a good size portion with plenty of crisp lettuce, and though tender was lacking in “oomph” – rather bland. The crab was tasty but not large, very crisply cooked.

Main courses were impressive. Particularly good was the paper-wrapped beef – succulent wrapped rolls of beef with plenty of ginger; maybe there could have been more, but a definite star.  Our other main course was sizzling king prawns; there were four options for sauce for this, so which we chose the in ginger and spring onion.  It was certainly sizzling loudly when it arrived, and the prawns were full of flavour – and again with lots of ginger.  Singapore noodles in support were spicy, with plenty of chicken and prawns mixed in.

After the slow start, service was fine, if not especially friendly.  £60 for the lot was a fair price, and so we drifted away impressed and well-fed.