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Oriental City
Posted By Stephen
Last night we went to Oriental City in Colindale with friends of ours. We had never been before, and as they are due to close down some time next year for development into something less interesting, we’ve been wanting to go for a while. We went along for an evening of shopping and eating dim sum in the food court. Some pictures from our visit:
A chef making noodles at one of the stalls in the food court.
Thai style steamed squid. Very good, yummy.
Steamed seafood roll. Nice, but I burned my tongue on one when I first tried it.
Rice wrapped in lotus leaf. This contained some rather overcooked chicken in it, which wasn’t what I was expecting. And not just normally overcooked, but the sort of chicken that has been used to make stock and has very little flavour left.
Steamed scallop dumpling. The scallop was a little slice of scallop on top, but inside was mostly prawns. A sprinkling of roe on top too.
Prawn and chive dumpling. Lots of tasty garlic in it with the chives.
Pineapple buns. These were dessert but I was too full by then so just had a small taste.
Fried squid. Really long strips! Tasty but quite oily.
Prawn and chive cheun fung. We unintentionally went a bit overboard with the whole prawn and chive food group in our selections; there was another type of prawn and chive dumpling too which we don’t have a picture of. We also had some greens with oyster sauce and some chicken spring rolls. All in all, very tasty and I was rather stuffed by the time we finished.
After dinner, we did some more shopping and went to the supermarket, where we bought a bamboo steamer and also various ingredients. We also bought some interesting crockery, which will probably make an appearance in pictures on Dinner Diary soon.
It’s an interesting place to visit, so it’s a bit sad that it’s due to disappear soon. It has an air of a place that has limited time too. For example, only one of the sliding doors at the main entrance, and even that only opens half way. The two giant ceramic lions at the entrance don’t seem too worried though.
Nov 18th, 2007
For future reference (in case you order it again), it’s cheung fun (fun means noodle). There are many variations, including a char siu stuffing and a deep fried batter stuffing which is particularly delicious. Beautiful pictures!
Thanks, that’ll teach me not to look up the spelling when being unsure 😉
Hmm the deep fried batter versions sounds interesting, I’ve never had that. Cheung fun are probably my favourite dim sum and although I’ll vary other dishes that I order, I always have some variation of it; usually the scallop ones. I remember being intruiged by the mysterious “XO” cheung fun on menus in Chinatown and ordered it once but don’t remember what it was like.
Do try it next time you’re having dim sum (most chinatown restaurants will have it, though I doubt those Westernised chains like Ping Pong will) do try it.
As yes, XO sauce is a favourite of many Hong Kongese – its a sauce made with dried seafood, usually scallops, dried fish etc cooked with chillis, garlic, onions. Its quite a pricey one in terms of sauces, the XO is used to denote high quality or prestigious products.