Tao Tao Ju — Restaurant in London

I used to visit and also order to my home from the Leicester Square branch with no issues always delicious food. So happy when I moved to Bermondsey to find another Tao Tao Ju under 10 minutes away from my home, and how short lived that happiness was due to numerous food issues with the quality of food being delivered, which i’ll go into in a moment.

Worse still is that a comment by me on their instagram in mid May was ignored as was writing them an email 2 weeks before this review raising the food quality issues in Bermondsey has been ignored and has shown me a total lack of interest and care.

On two recent orders my items and issues were as below: The first had the cheung fun (pork and prawn) and they arrived hot but soggy and stodgy, with the prawns especially falling out of the all stuck together pastry. This wasn’t glossy and separate but a gelatinous mound especially the prawn though the pork only fared a little better. For that order at least the rest of the food (har gau, vietnamese spring rolls, chow mein and duck rolls) was the usual quality. A week later I attempted another order of similar items, omitting the prawn cheung fun as they were so terrible previiusly but ordering the pork cheung fun which was not quite as stuck in full, but still two of the 4 ripped in separating and again it differed from the quality in the Leicester Sq restaurant and from their pictures on instagram. Sadly this order was a let down in other ways this time too; while the duck rolls remained great the usually fantastic egg fried rice has been overcooked and was too soft compared to normal and the spring onions were flavourless and looked to have been left sitting a long time to lose their usual taste, the chow mein this time was bland to the point of throwing it away sadly and most disappointing was the two orders of my favourite vietnamese rolls which were chewy and not crispy at all this time.

I hoped reaching out first to their instagram and then by email to say that while Leicester Square was always wonderful that Bermondsey was not living up to their quality could result in at the very least being acknowledged and an investigation as to why their appetisers and other items when delivered close by are coming as low quality. Instead they chose...

This place has a sentimental value to me. It use to be my dad's restaurant back in the late 80s. Called Fung Shing. Won numerous awards and recommendations from magazine and press for its Cantonese cuisine. Fay Maschler was a regular. You can actually still see the plaque on the external wall. I still have the Evening Standard Eros award for best restaurant in London sitting on my mantle piece. I use to wash dishes in the basement kitchen during my summer break for 10 hours a day. That's the real grind.

Anyways back to the review. It was my friends birthday and we wanted dim sum after a few rounds of beers at the local Imperial pub around the corner at 8pm.

Ground floor decor looks amazing. Gold and brown wood. Felt warm and cozy. (It use to be green back in the 90s) We sat upstairs which unfortunately was not furnished like the ground floor or as nice. Just plain white walls and plastic brown seats. So if you do go ask for a table on the ground floor.

We ordered the classic dim sums and they came out fresh and hot. Har gaus is my test to see if t he place is any good. And it was over average. Good size Prawn and prawn paste inside. Missing the bamboo shoots which is a must. Siu mais were chunky cut pork. Taro mince fried pastries were good. Vietnamese spring rolls and the bean curd wraps were All over average. The tripe in black bean and chilli needed more time to cook. Was still chewy and still had that stale offal smell and taste to it. 4/5. Room for improvement.

Service was efficient. Waitress recommended dishes from menu if needed.

I think it's the only place if you want late night dim sum....

I dined at this restaurant several times before and I love their food. Yesterday my 3 friends and I made a plan to eat at this place. 1 of my friends will meet us at the restaurant so she was not with us upon our arrival at the place. The male personnel at the front desk refused to give us a seat for 4 people and said that we have to wait for our friend to arrive first. We said that we know what to order and would like for the food to be already served before our friend arrived. He was so upset at us and won't let us have our table. There were vacant table and this guy, without explanation gave the people who came minutes after us. He let us seat there and wait for the next 10 to 15minutes until I decided to approach him and ask for proper explanation. He was saying that it was a company policy. How can it be a company's policy to wait when we already know what to order? Although we really want to have our lunch at this place we don't feel comfortable anymore with the male front desk personnel so we just moved to another restaurant called Canton at China Town. The personnel at Canton restaurant are very welcoming and warm. We travelled from Sheffield to London and always considere this restaurant before. This restaurant may have good food and good ambiance but if the people that works there are rude and not understanding we can always explore other restaurants in China TOWN London. We will never dine here again. We felt so discriminated. The guy personnel did not even apologise. I will make sure to tell all my friends about this experience and not to go to this...