Royal China (Baker Street) — Restaurant in London

My recent experience at Royal China was incredibly disappointing. The prices were outrageous – £17.50 for a simple side of Chinese broccoli is frankly insulting. But the real issue was the food temperature.

When our dishes arrived, everything was lukewarm at best. My father specifically pointed out that the broccoli was barely warm. Instead of apologising or offering to rectify the issue, the server argued with us. He even went so far as to place his hand under the plate and claim it was perfectly warm.

We politely yet firmly explained that the temperature was unacceptable and requested they speak to the chef about reheating it properly. We specifically asked them to replace it not to just microwave it. Unfortunately, the server's attitude was dismissive and borderline rude. He roughly placed the plate back on the table with the broccoli still lukewarm. He then returned and took it away.

After waiting for over 20 minutes, when all mains were completed by us, the broccoli appeared. This time, it was scorching hot – the server couldn't even hold the plate comfortably. This entire ordeal took an unnecessary amount of time and left us feeling frustrated and disrespected and they charged us for everything anyway. I wandered which table this Chinese broccoli was going to to next.

It's incredibly disheartening that the wait staff would try to gaslight us about the food temperature. Customers shouldn't be made to feel like they're imagining things. This kind of behavior is unacceptable, and it certainly won't win back customers.

Needless to say, I won't be returning to Royal China anytime soon. I hope if you the reader are disrespected you will not tolerate this as they are rude to almost everyone.

Continue to disrespect your clients and you will see how fickle success can be. No business is above the need to offer respectful service to clients, especially those with genuine concerns. I am sorry to be so hard, but I have to be as hard as we were treated to get my points...

I have known Royal China for the longest time since I moved here 15 years ago and I finally had a chance to try it and see why it's so popular.

We knew they don't take bookings so we got there just when it opened at 12noon on a Saturday and the queue was already long. We secured a 4-people table and ordered quickly as we were told that it would be a long waiting time given all the tables were ordering at the same time.

We went with plain Cheung fun that came with soy sauce, sweet sauce and sesame sauce, custard buns, siu mai, crab meat soup noodles, some vegetarian dumplings and Chinese mushroom noodles. Food came pretty quickly and everything did look good. My favourite was the custard buns, hot in the middle with the sweet custard and salted egg filling, such a great dim sum menu. I wasn't a big fan of the noodles, bit too bland. The Cheung fun was really good too, such a nostalgic moment for me as I used to eat it a lot growing up in HK back in the days. Perhaps we didn't order the most famous dishes but I personally wasn't mind blown by the food, unlike all my friends' experience. It's a good dim sum restaurant but nothing amazing imo.

Service was alright, classic Cantonese style where staff just didn't care if you were having a good time or not, which is exactly what I expected from Cantonese places so it's a good sign that we were in a authentic place! They were however quick to re-fill hot water whenever our tea ran out.

In total, it came to £18.80 pp which was just amazing considering the food we ordered and how full we were. Very happy with how affordable this place is.

All in all, I liked the food and had a good time catching up with my friends. It's not noisy like Cantonese restaurants usually are so vibe wise it's relaxing. Would be happy to come...

The downward spiral of RC in terms of service and food quality has been phenomenal. My husband and I went there yesterday for a midweek dinner and could not have been more disappointed, especially as I have fond memories of lunches and dinners at RC ( at other branches too) over the last 20 odd years . First as we waited to be seated, we saw a shabby printout at the reception area notifying that they do not serve alcohol and guests can get their own! We were then seated at the table and handed the menus. Whilst I selected from the menu, my husband traipsed to the neaby CoOp to buy a bottle of wine. After waiting for ages, the waiter came over to take our order and was surprised when I asked for certain items. He then informed us that we were given the wrong menus and none of the items were available.His tone was curt , short, almost irritated .The starters arrived without any serving spoons. There was another very long wait before we had to ask someone to take our mains order . This was followed by yet another long wait and a reminder before the order came out. The chicken dish was not fresh and the chicken meat so tough that you probably needed a saw to cut it. The mocktail that I ordered was underwhelming at best.The scant staff were non attentive, there was no eye contact ( all moving around looking at the floors ) and disconnected. We also saw customers walking up to the staff with their payment cards to pay the bill, after having waited for ages. I gave my feedback at the time of payment but the disinterested staff member muttered something about tight immigration rules and difficulty in finding staff and the restaurant staff being students. Overall a really poor experience and we think this was our last...