Green Cottage London — Restaurant in London

Well done service but pricey

FOOD We ordered 4 main dishes which were sweet and sour chicken, fried beef Ho fun, egg fried rice and crispy prawn. The dishes do not come with any rice at all or plain rice, they are just on their own, except for fried beef Ho fun which came with noodles. The portion of the dishes varies, like the fried beef Ho fun can satisfy one person though can still be shared. The crispy prawn felt like a starter dish because there were about 10 of those prawns, and my sweet and sour definitely is just for one person.

The taste of the sweet and sour chicken was so unique, I know the taste of sweet and sour chicken and their shape is usually round or sphere. I was surprised this shape was longer in size and the taste was almost like crispy shredded beef. This is not a bad thing, it is a good thing, it felt like an authentic sweet and sour chicken, because the emphasis is based on the sauce itself not the actual chicken.

The crispy prawn was very delicious. I wasn't too fond with the fried beef Ho fun, it felt acceptional to me. Also the dishes we ordered came with their own sauce, the waiter asked us if we wanted sweet and sour sauce for the crispy prawn in which we accepted.

For the drinks, we just ordered water. Water was volvic and it was nicely chilled as you can see when poured on the glass.

There were 3 of us and we shared our dishes and I came full up or satisfied.

SERVICE Amazing 5 star service! Waiter who seated us and also served us was very nice and polite. Despite the restaurant being small in size, we were treated like it was a 5 star restaurant! The waiter even came to pour and also top up our glass of water!

Everywhere was so clean, the windows were clean as you cannot see any streak marks. All tables were clean as well as chairs. Chopstick, forks were also clean. Even one guy was seen cleaning one of the window as we dined. I was shocked the menu were clean, usually restaurant's menus overtime are covered with food and sauce stains which sometimes puts me off.

When the waiter came to give us our starter drinks with glasses, I looked at the glass thinking it had a stain, the waiter immediately took it and provided a new one!

Toilet was located downstairs just by restaurant entrance, though I didn't try it to see how it looked or how clean it was. Inside decor was nice, felt very Chinesey and asian which I like.

Price of the food is very poor because they are pricey, this is the downside!

Service is just impeccable!

OVERALL I was very happy with the impeccable service, amazing 5 star service. I wish I knew that waiters name so I commend him.

Food taste were very good and I never tasted sweet and sour chicken this way before. Portion of the good was meh or good and bad. Price of food is very poor.

Our dish order came to almost £50 (around £46-48) including service charge. The picture of the menu I took might be old, I think they changed their prices because of the inflation.

I would recommend this restaurant if you want to try your favourite Chinese dish with more authentic taste, and also if you want a 5 star service experience. But only approach this restaurant if you have money to spend for your usual Chinese dish.

I feel like going back there and trying out their crispy...

After many happy years of eating at our favourite Chinese restaurant in Queensway we were forced to look for a replacement after it shut down years ago. We looked and tried many different places but none could replace the quality and service of our old favourite until we accidentally stumbled across this delightful place on Finchley Road.

I don't usually tend to give 5★ reviews at all as there is almost certainly always room for improvement, but not only did we find the food most agreeable to our fairly picky palate the service we receive during our first visit was the best ever and rest assured I've been to may Chinese restaurant over the years. Seriously the staff at Green Cottage deserve a lot of praise and it is due to their constant attention to detail and pleasant service during our visit (even re-seating us when a better & more appropriate table became available!) that I decided to award Green Cottage my first ever 5★ review. Well done, you deserve it judging from by our first experience. Please keep doing what you did and you will see us coming back for many years to come.

OK now a word about the food. It was all very tasty and very much to our liking. If anything it all had a slightly healthier feel to it compared to other Chinese restaurants, everything seemed lighter and none of the dishes were greasy in any way whatsoever. Perhaps the plum sauce served with the crispy duck & pancakes could have been slightly richer, but then again the way it came was fine and in line with the rest of the restaurants offerings. There was three of us who visited for a birthday celebration (we didn't mention this by the way in case you are wondering) and we all agreed that the food was super tasty and the service second to none.

To top it all the price was very reasonable for what we received and I can recommend this Chinese restaurant highly to anyone looking for one in the North West London area or beyond. For us this Chinese restaurants now sets the benchmark by which we will...

I was expecting really authentic Cantonese taste being from Hong Kong myself, but was left quite disappointed.

Disclaimer: I’ve worked in a takeaway shop in the UK so I can really tell the difference between real Cantonese food & UK adapted Chinese food.

🍲 Food: We ordered the 海蜇雞絲 jelly fish chicken cucumber salad which was supposed to be made with a seasame/ peanuts sauce. (Think tahini!) It came with this weird kimchi/ chilli sauce instead with lots of raw spring onions that made the salad taste like a Thai papaya salad instead. Essentially a complete different dish 🤷‍♀️ upon checking older reviews I could find they used to make this dish the correct way, so not sure what happened there.

The 火腩豆腐飯 pork belly bean curd rice was essentially the same as 腰果雞丁 chicken cashew nuts, just different ingredients with the same sauce (starch, soy/ oyster sauce). It’s also not supposed to have mangetout peas so it was very weird and giving Tesco Asian veggie mix ☹️

The pork belly 燒肉 in the dish above was nicely done, so it wasn’t too bad. I think their roast meats are well done so probably safe to stick with those if you’re a fan.

It’s not horrible, and if you’re not from Hong Kong/ used to British Chinese food you’d probably be fine with it - but it definitely does not taste like home 🤷‍♀️

✏️Service: We were greeted and seated at our table, and after we made our order, three tables next to us received food before us even though we ordered first, so that was a bit frustrating as we were very hungry haha 😮‍💨 the waitress was nice but was kind of hard to get her attention as she was hiding behind the doorframe most of the time. I believe she’s quite young so that’s understandable 🙂 overall servers were very nice and made us feel welcome.

💵 Price: The dishes above were all about £20 each, which was quite pricey considering what they tasted like. The bill totalled...