Lotus Chinese Floating Restaurant, Crossharbour

Lotus Chinese Floating Restaurant, Crossharbour

9 Oakland Quay
Inner Millwall Dock
London E14 9EA

The Victims: Echo, Bill, Echo’s mom, Tong-Tong (so cute!), Ying, Xiang

The Damage: Unknown. Team China paid for me.

The Background: When I first started this blog, I had this idea that it would help me explore London.

While that was certainly true in the early days, lately I’ve found myself suffering from TFL malaise. If it’s not in EC1 or N1 or WC1 or MAYBE W1, I really don’t want to go.

I think about the old days, when I would happily trot over to Notting Hill or up to Belsize Park. Not so much anymore. I’ve become a homebody.

So it was good that Echo prompted me to get on the DLR one Sunday afternoon (the 4th of July no less) and head out to Lotus Crossharbour for some dimsum. The DLR on a sunny Sunday afternoon is really really lovely. I need water to make me feel sane and plodding along on the driverless train through Canary Wharf and into Crossharbour is certainly a peaceful little journey.

Lotus Chinese Floating Restaurant Menu

This is an old image of the menu for Lotus Chinese Floating Restaurant and it’s a little out of focus. You might find the menu online more helpful.

I arrive at Lotus Crossharbour and to our table. The restaurant really is floating!! I’m the only native English-speaker in our group today: Echo has brought her mother who is visiting from China and her adorable daughter Tong-Tong. Three generations. Awesome. I let everyone know that I like taro. And parsnip. I’ll pass on the chicken feet, but sign me up for anything with seafood. There is much consultation and then the parade begins. As always with dim sum, I have no idea what I’m eating. But it’s all pretty fantastic. And the light is perfect so every photo I take comes out gorgeous. (Except for that spot that looks like steam in the middle of each photo, but that was because I needed to clean my lens.)

Good Chinese broccoli. But not enough garlic for my liking.

These are my least favorite dim-sum. Too stodgy. I actually know what these are called…they’re char sui buns.

No idea what these were, but they looked neat, all spherical and such. (Almost like that lamb ball, huh?)

These were fantastic. I gladly would have had more. Anyone want to tell me what they are? I can’t remember what was in them either, except that they were fantastic.

I’m also a huge fan of the lotus leaves, packed with rice and God knows what other sorts of delicious substances. These were well done.

Tripe. Been there, done that. Way too many times. And unless it’s spicy, it’s just not for me. (But I do give myself points for continuously giving tripe a shot.)

Prawn dumplings. Perfect, really.

Taro. This is honestly my absolute favorite.

Can’t for the life of me remember what was in these, but they were good. I’m sorry that this is the least informative blog post ever. But aren’t the pictures lovely?

After the taro, these were my 2nd favorite. No idea what they’re called. I think they’re parsnip cakes? Anybody?

Just like the tripe, with chicken feet, I’ve been there, done that. Not for me.

The Service: The service at Lotus Chinese Floating Restaurant is severe. They really did not want us to order in small batches. Everything had to be ordered at once.

The Atmsophere: Kinda nice sitting there, looking out onto Crossharbour and the water.

The Verdict: I liked Lotus Crossharbour. (Although I totally couldn’t tell we were floating.) I thought all my food was pretty good, but I probably need to eat more dim sum to truly write anything remotely close to informative here. I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you.

The post Lotus Floating Chinese Restaurant, Crossharbour first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.

Date of Last Visit: Wednesday, March 28th

The Victims: Niculie, Emiko, Kunal, Danny

The Damage: £30 per person or thereabouts? But we got our money’s worth. We ate A LOT. A LOT, a lot. (Which, by the way, is two words. This is a pet peeve of mine. I get upset about it…A LOT.)

The Background: We headed over to Canary Wharf to have dinner with Kunal, who was in town from Chicago for a month and had been eating at Royal China practically every night. OK, maybe not every night, but often enough. Often enough that he didn’t need the menu to know what to order.

As someone who tries not to eat in the same places on multiple occasions, I (initially) thought this was a little weird. Wouldn’t you get bored of eating at the same place ALL THE TIME? Imagine…the same restaurant, the same waitstaff, THE SAME MENU.

But then I remembered that I do seem to have an unhealthy fascination with the Thai Green Curry frozen dinner from Sommerfields. I could eat that every night.

So Sommerfields and Royal China had me thinking…maybe there’s something to be said for revisiting a dependable classic again and again. Because the food we enjoyed at Royal China was some of the best I’ve ever had. Ever.

The Food: Well, firstly, they bring you salty peanuts and cucumber while you’re waiting. This is a nice touch. Given Kunal’s familiarity with the menu, we let him order for us. And order he did! The waitress even told him to stop ordering at one point.

When the parade of food began, it became obvious why she had advised halting the ordering procedure. There was no room left on the table! Because we had…

Broccoli type #1
Broccoli type #2 (We couldn’t tell the difference, except by color. One was darker than the other.)
Sizzling beef!
Chicken hot pot (my favo(u)rite)
Steamed fish (sole, I believe)
Another type of fish that escapes me, but it was almost like eating lightly fried calamari. (My second favorite dish of the evening.)

And of course, a big bowl of white rice. Well, actually, it ended up being two big bowls of white rice. I can still hear Kunal saying distantly, through a green Chinese broccoli haze, "Does anyone want more rice?"

I wish I had brought my camera to show you how beautiful the 2nd fish was…it was almost like a Thanksgiving cornucopia. It was served in the skeleton of a fish, which had been deep fried. My guess is that we could have eaten the bones…I did try some and they were very crispy. Not bad for fish bones.

And the chicken hot pot (which Kunal explained was the "special" chicken hot pot, not the regular one) was that perfect amount of hotness and so much more. Just enough to raise your temperature a bit! And super super delicious.

The Service: Brisk and efficient and always on the lookout.

The Verdict: I’ll be back to Royal China soon as humanly possible.

The post Chinese: Royal China first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.