Xian — Attraction in London

Practically empty on a Saturday night and not surprising given the quality of the food and drink. Firstly, forget about the house wines - the Merlot is barely drinkable: they don't show you the bottle it came from, so you don't know what you're drinking and thry don't ask you if you're happy with it, as is par for the course at other restaurants. It's sour. The house white is not much better. The peking duck costs 19 pounds for a half duck, and is very poor: unlike all other Chinese restaurants I've been to, where they bring you an intact duck and shred it in front of you, this comes shredded because it's clearly bought frozen like that by the restaurant. I could tell that because it was dried out, not fresh. Same with the pancakes, and the oyster sauce was poor too. The crab and sweet corn soup was too thick and not prepared fresh, but microwaved (I could tell this because of the excessive and uneven heat of the soup). As for the main dishes, the rice is also of poor quality, and the chicken used was fried from frozen: in the chicken and prawn dish it was stone cold - I had to ask for it to be heated up, but that did not improve the taste of the chicken, which was very bad due to the fact that it was not cut up and fried from a fresh chicken breast but was wok fried from frozen. The sweet and sour pork was also not prepared fresh. The dishes all lacked fresh sauce - they were dry, and they were also small compared to the excessive price we were paying for them (most around the 10 pound mark, some 13). All in all a very poor show for a London Chinese restaurant, and way overpriced for what you get. I would save your money and go into China Town to have a quality...

Awful customer service. Spoke to an extremely rude woman called Zoe who argued and shouted at us. After calling to complain because we had been waiting for 2hrs even though when we placed the order it was a 30min wait, she argued with my mother for a good 15 minutes and did not apologise or offer any sort of compensation once. Furthermore would not allow us to speak to a manager or give us their name. I got second hand embarrassment for Zoe. During collection there was a queue of people who were all in the same situation as is it was awful. Rude people they need to sort themselves out don’t take as many orders if you can’t...

We are vegetarian and have been ordering from Xian for years. Their tofu dishes are delicious (try the braised tofu dish!). Their sea spicy aubergine is fantastic too. Yesterday we made a mistake and keyed in the wrong address when we did online ordering. It was completely our fault (Apologies! Will be more careful next time!). When we called in, they were very professional and helped us figure out why the food was not delivered. We are always impressed with their friendly service and food quality. We highly recommend Xian if you want to try authentic...