YOLO — Restaurant in London

So dissapointed. I live next door and was looking forward to trying them out. The reason of 2 stars and not 1 star is just because it is clean and the ladies working there are polite and lovely. First of all, they take quite high service charge, I believe it has to be earned and should not be compulsory especially in a tiny place like this, especially because you order by scanning a barcode on your phone, so what is the service charge for? Cooking?

Secondly, the food: the pork belly came in a nice big pot and we were warned that it is very hot, the pot/dish was in fact very hot but the pork belly itself was barely warm inside. Nice flavour though. The crispy aubergines had nice garlicky chilly flavour but were barely crispy and so so sooo oily and greasy. After receiving and finishing the pork belly, rice and aubergines, our starter was still not there so I had to ask to cancel it because nobody would be in a mood for starter prawns crackers after a full meal. The egg yolk chicken wings were the last to come and it tasted awful, just awful, and again, soo greasy and oily. No flavour, nothing, just oil infused batter and tasteless chicken. I understand most of the dishes are deep fried but these are classic dishes I have tried many times before and they were not that greasy in other places.

I ate one chicken wing out of a large portion I have ordered and the lady working there seen it and asked if I’d like a box to take away, I said not, because I did not like the dish… Now, for the “restaurant” who charges 12.5 % service charge and not even taking orders themselves I would expect a level of appropriate respect and I would expect them to not charge me for that horrible chicken when they saw I barely touched it and I said I did not like it, but hey, they did not care. Almost £60 for awful tasteless greasy experience ( one adult and one child).

P.S. The portions are large, but I would actually make the portions and the prices lower because even for the big portions the price is very very expensive. But that’s if the food itself would be good...

What a disappointment - we felt ripped off and were baffled by the glowing reviews. Of the dishes we ate, the pictures on the menu didn't match the reality at all. When I did a reverse Google Image search, I found identical images published on unrelated websites (try it yourself with their Uber Eats menu).

"Crispy Tofu with Golden Coating". This should be fried until golden and crisp (as the name suggests). Instead, we got a plate of flabby soft tofu, not fried at all, with the 'golden' look mimicked using what tasted like turmeric powder. £13.80. It essentially felt like a cosmetic imitation, as though someone just tried to recreate the picture with whatever they had in the kitchen.

"Shanghai Scallion Oil Noodles". These should be thin wheat noodles like in the menu photo, with fried aromatic scallion. Instead, we were served Japanese udon topped with dry and raw spring onion. For £11.80. Absolutely shocking - and to anybody with even a passing knowledge of Shanghainese cuisine, obviously inauthentic.

The "Spicy chicken with chilli peppers" and "Fish-flavoured aubergine" were little better. The chicken was bland and unappetising (the worst version of this dish I've experienced), the aubergine tasted like it had been fried in cheap, cloying sweet-and-sour sauce, with nothing fish-flavoured about it.

I expect the restaurant will say these are their 'unique' recipes. But then why are the menu photos identical to images on other websites - and why did the dishes we had not even meet their own descriptions (eg. "crispy")? We paid high prices for food that, in our view, was inauthentic and very poor value. A real shame as we like to support local, but we felt burnt by this...

YOLO is a new, stylish and beautiful looking Chinese restaurant. They’ve made the most of the little space they have with modern decor and designs. I was extremely exited to dine here as this is the second newly opened Chinese restaurant on London Road. Unfortunately, I was rather disappointed by the majority of the dishes. We ordered a plethora of food knowing we’d take some home to enjoy later. It just seemed like each dish from the sides to the mains lacked something - maybe a pop of flavour and spice. The neighbouring Chinese restaurant (Fire Up the BBQ) left me in awe as I ate regional Chinese food that had incredible layers of flavour in every dish including smoked Chives. Yolo was the opposite and felt like your everyday standard Chinese take-away food. A lot of sweet, salty and sour dishes without substance. The best dish by far was the braised pork belly. I finally tasted the beautifully numbing sensation of Szechuan peppercorns in the sauce. This is what I was hoping from so many of the other dishes we ordered. By no means is YOLO a bad restaurant, in fact they are excellent when comparing the local competition and ever growing food scene in Kingston. They’re just proof that flash doesn’t always mean bang especially when they have another Chinese restaurant just a couple feet away delivering the most mouthwatering food.

The service and drinks were phenomenal and fresh ingredients are always positive in my book. Pricing is brilliant and I get the sense that they will grow in popularity as word of...