By Sean Carey

London’s Chinatown, which lies between Shaftesbury Avenue and Leicester Square, is changing fast. Why? Mainly because the area’s biggest landlord, Shaftesbury, is raising rents exponentially. Unsurprisingly, this increase in fixed costs is squeezing out many long-standing restaurateurs and other small businesses, such as specialist Chinese supermarkets, gift shops, herbalists and acupuncturists.

So if you’re thinking of visiting London’s Chinatown, my advice is to come along soon before the area becomes unrecognizable or disappears altogether.

And if you’re something of a foodie you might want to try a relative newcomer to the Chinatown restaurant scene, Old Town 97 on Wardour Street. Apparently, the restaurant’s name commemorates the year Hong Kong ceased to be a U.K. colony and returned to China as a “Special Administrative Region.”

Compared with some nearby upmarket Chinese restaurants the food in Old Town 97 is very reasonably priced. And there’s a twist: as well as generic (Anglo-) Cantonese dishes such as crispy duck, chicken and cashew nuts, and prawns in black bean sauce you will be able to eat an item that is not listed on the menu – “LSE Fried Rice”. It’s a real bargain at £9.50.

What can you expect? Well, LSE Fried Rice is served on a large, white oblong plate and consists of large portions of egg fried rice and fatty pork, cooked with honey and black pepper, and smothered with an eggy sauce. It’s then topped with a fried egg. I have to confess that having tried the dish it’s not to my taste – too oily, too fatty, too sweet. But then I don’t have a Cantonese or Hong Kong palate. Nevertheless, I can pretty much guarantee that if you do eat LSE Fried Rice in its entirety in the afternoon or evening you won’t experience hunger pangs until well into the following day. Continue reading “LSE fried rice is not for everyone” →