New China House — Local services in Isle of Wight

Too expensive! With the prices rising every year, you're now paying dine in rates for a simple takeaway. Ordering a takeaway, even a delivery takeaway, should always be cheaper than sitting in a restaurant and eating, however since covid, New China House no longer offers dine in restaurant services and solely relies on over the phone or walk in takeaways. This of course limits what you can do on a night out as there are now no dine in chinese takeaways in Ventnor, however with new china house being regarded as one of the better Chinese restaurants, they're able to get away with doing a takeaway only service.

However! With prices rising massively every single year, and portion sizes staying the same, quality of food staying the same and the menu staying the same, you're now having to pay £9 for a little box of ribs, you'll usually get about 5 little ribs, compare that to the ready made ribs in tesco that for £5 you get a full rack not just a few tiny ribs, and if you look at the crispy shredded chili beef, you're again spending a similar price for a few bits of chili beef. No starters should be priced at nearly £10 a piece, as what is happening more times that not, everyone with myself included are limited to what we're ordering, and sticking with just the starter menu! Ordering a takeaway for 2 people, sticking with just the starters, getting 2 dishes each as they're not very big, you can expect over £60! And if you want to add a main dish or a side dish each, you're looking at nearly £90, for a basic takeaway! The food is good, the service is nice, but for a takeaway only restaurant, these prices are absolutely extortionate, and although i absolutely respect different cultures and their holidays, if the owners of new china house can take a yearly holiday for an entire month between January and February for Chinese New Year, ontop of the other holidays, they're clearly earning a hell of a lot of money from the place which is great! But then why the high prices for food? They're clearly not struggling! The majority of the other chinese takeaways on the island are cheaper with each dish, so although i can expect suppliers to be the main reason to costs rising, it doesn't seem to be the only reason. Ontop of this, New China House doesn't accept any discount cards, this includes but not limited to, TOTUM Student cards, BLUELIGHT emergency services cards, and DEFENCE DISCOUNT armed forces cards, so even those who would be eligible for a discount, cannot get any.

I have also started to see that food quality has started to drop over the last 2 years, with food arriving nothing like the photos placed onto their own menu, with incorrect portion sizes or food being overcooked and dry. The butterfly kingprawns which show to be massive balls of battered king prawns, now show up as deep fried battered regular sized prawns, the seaweed is often heavily overcooked, and it's not actually seaweed but rather green cabbage, the chips often coming dry and overcooked, crispy beef often arriving chewy and soggy, so on and so forth. With the prices rising every year you'd expect food quality to rise or at least stay consistent alongside the prices, however they've been lacking with increasingly worse quality from their supplier, and quality in their cooking.

Last year, New China House also updated their website to include an ordering online system, however this wasn't done correctly, and now is no longer working, so you're now actually completely unable to see the website, as it won't load with a failed connection, this has been happening since the week the new website was implemented, back towards the end of 2024.

In conclusion, is it a good restaurant? No! Is it a good takeaway? Yes! But it's extortionately too expensive for the portion sizes and quality and rising every year with no positive change to the food or its service. I would reccomend this chinese takeaway if you want okay quality food, however only as a once in a while thing and to limit yourself on...

ORDER DATE: SAT 26/07/2025 ORDER TIME: 19:00

Was staying close by in Bonchurch with family and were decided to order a takeaway on our first night as we were tired from our journey and getting settled in.

We did an Internet search for the nearest Chinese as this is something all of us enjoy and New China House came up. We ordered by phone and then drove to collect.

Food was reasonably priced, the portion sizes were good and everything tasted okay, but it was nothing special and the Singapore Rice Noodles were very much lacking in flavour compared to what I’m used to. I would usually expect to see red chillies in this dish, but there were none and the flavour was so mild that it made me think people on the Isle of Wight don’t like spice! Likewise with the crispy chilli beef.

I wouldn’t say any of the dishes were particularly flavourful… all fairly bland and only tasted okay thanks to the wonders of MSG.

Wouldn’t order...

I can't believe that Chinese food like this still exists.

I do not mean this in the positive sense.

The sweet and sour pork batter was soft and flabby; it tasted like pork encased in bread, whilst the meat was chewy. The sweet and sour sauce was like melted down jelly... It was almost luminescent. Our chicken stir-fry lacked flavour, with a watery sauce... if I hadn't ordered it, I would not have been able to tell you what flavour it was meant to be.

Maybe I've been spoilt by the quality of the Chinese food in Australia, I'm not sure. But this just felt like a throwback to food from the 1980s when we didn't...