Royal China

Staff were really "frosty", seemed really disinterested in me, I suppose I was only a paying customer after all.

Food was OK, but service was really bad, an odd smile, or even any indication that you were any other than a complete inconvenience to the waitress wold have been nice.

Menu was very strange, only ONE vegetarian option listed on a huge menu, but when I asked if the sweet and sour vegetables was vegetarian, I was told it was. Eh? Why not list it as such?

Even stranger, when I tried to pay with my VISA card, I was told they did not take them (Mrs Frosty Waitress was very cross at that!). They only take American Express and cash. Very odd, that'd never happened to me before. I've been told many times, no AMEX and it has to be VISA, but never the other way round. It was just good luck I had an AMEX card on me.

I'm off for Indian tomorrow. There are so many good restaurants in London, why does anyone go here?

Our family love the Royal China in Putney. It's a perfect for lunchtime dim sum and now you can book a table in advance to avoid the queues. Recommend prawn dumplings, pork puffs, crispy squid. If you order the specials though, it can get expensive (big plump scallops, roast quail).

We ordered a takeaway from here because my husband's friends were over from the States, so we thought it would be a treat. We'd had some bad experiences in the past so thought we'd order from a restaurant that also does takeaway and seemed to look fairly upmarket. What a mistake that was, the food tasted old and stale (even though we ordered when they'd just opened for business in the evening!) and in the end we just scraped it into the bin and ordered pizza instead.

We spent a lot of money here and what we got was fatty, soggy and tasteless. The 'mandarin ribs' were literally floating in what seemed like a sweet tomato gravy, with bits of pork fat floating around in it. The rice seemed reheated like it had been kept overnight and the beef was tough and bland. I honestly can't think of a redeeming factor here - the reviews on the web seemed to like it which is why we orderd!