My Old Place

The food in this place is amazing, but unfortunately I cannot place a telephone order with out turning up and paying first, even though I eat there regularly. Come on guys, sort it out!

Upon reading the review of this restaurant in the Guardian I took my wife and 3 year old daughter one weekday lunchtime. It was half full and our first impression was of a frostiness from the staff but having eaten in Soho for years was not put off.
On perusal of the menu and a quick chat with the waitress about suitable food for a 3 year old we plumped for a portion of prawn crackers only to be told that they had run out! How difficult is it to fry a few crackers? So we ordered noodles with vegetables and a tofu dish which our daughter would like which also came with soup. The noodles and veg were passable but not large portions and when my tofu eventually turned up it had more chillies than I had ever seen on a dish.
To cap it all upon nearly finishing the tofu dish I bit into a piece only to discover it was chicken! Also my soup did not turn up. We thought the staff behaved like truculent teenagers who had been up all night i.e. very unhelpful.
It is overpriced, unfriendly and the portions are in no way huge as described in the review.
We live in Hackney and there are at least a half a dozen Vietnamese restaurants on Mare St that blow this Old Place away.

I've been twice - I think it is brilliant
You need to go with a group of people to share dishes
You need to be patient as the staff don't really speak English (order by number from the menu - and point as well!)
The service is not the quickest, possibly not good at lunch time if you have a busy afternoon
The food is fabulous, the portions are huge, and the atmosphere is pleasantly down-beat
The often stunningly beautiful/fashionable/friendly clientele is a bonus

I greatly recommend the fish dishes

If you order one dish per person (and count what you think of as a vegetable side dish as a main dish) you will have a big meal - and you barely need rice, certainly not more than one rice between 2 or 3

Go and enjoy

No ranting whatsoever. I got here with a group of colleagues at 12.30 on 12/02/09. After a very long wait we were finally served drinks. We were not given our starters until 1.15pm approx and even then we weren't given all our starters. In the meantime the room was filling up with smoke due to some problem in the kitchen. In the end we just ended up paying for our drinks and then leaving. Noone came for our main course orders. The starteres that were brought out was just a squid dish which didn't taste very nice at all. I will never come here again. Totally unprofessional.

Superb food, huge portions, and decent prices.

The place is slightly tatty, but this adds to the atmosphere. Also the service is a bit odd as they bring the food out as it's cooked (as far as we ca tell).

A key thing is to note how a few hours later you are neither hungry nor thirsty. The former due to the size of the portions (the lunch time specials are just 'normal' sized) and the latter down to the fact they do not use MSG.

The food is Szechuan not Cantonese, though tbh the hot dishes are not that hot.

As to the person who scored it only 1-star because he had problems placing a telephone order at it's sister place, not sure what planet he's from.

great food, but will never go there again...

I tried to order from their sister restaurant (Gourmet San) as it delivers- after 5 minutes of trying to give my address I gave up and decided to try this one...

1) can't order over the phone as they insist on payment first
2) went there, paid, was told it would be 20 mins so went home to wait
went back, after 30 mins, my soup was ready, after 50 mins my main was ready- at 60 mins my rice wasn't ready, soup was cold, main was tepid and i asked for a refund.

it does taste very good, but is overpriced for a takeaway- the restaurant wasn't busy but the speed was atrocious/combined with not being able to preorder I'd suggest avoiding

This is real szechuan food. Best i have had in london....period. Very good value for such excellent authentic szechuan. Just go.