Imagine our surprise when we rocked up to the Dragon – and found it gone. Replaced by the Chilli Cool. It has been slightly refurbished inside, but the real change was the menu. Out with the sweet and sour pork balls and beef in black bean sauce. Instead, at CC, you are presented with such delicacies as “face meat”, pig’s intestines, pork and beef tripe, and other offally evil (in my opinion) gear.
In its favour, the restaurant was full with Chinese people, so I’ve no doubt to its authenticity. I ordered chilli chicken for starters (served cold, strong, tasty, huge and infested with garlic, and on the chilli scale, it gets about 5/10). Then there was the belly pork with a kind of monosodim-glutematey kind of thin sauce which was pretty nice after the blast-off chill. Very soft, tasty and meaty, as one would hope. One of our party dared to go for the intestines (pictured below). I didn’t have the nerve. Another plus point was their non-aggravating guide dog policy – big thumbs up for this as there were two present – maybe it being so close to RNIB helps.
Overall, I would say this restaurant is for the Chinese community and adventurous westerners. To our waitresses’ credit, she did confirm with us that we were in fact ordering guts. The food I ate was decent and interesting enough – in fact this is one of the reasons I would only go with this those in the know from now on as I don’t think there is enough normal-as-we-know-it Chinese food. TOO interesting, maybe?
A mind- (or stomach) opening and not too expensive addition to the more left-of-centre eating scene in London.
Service: 9/10
Quality: 8/10
Variety/interest: 10/10
Value: 7/10 (£25 per head, 3 courses and 2 beers approx each)
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