Randomness Guide to London - Differences between Version 3 and Version 2 of New Laughing Buddha, W1D 5BP
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| New Laughing Buddha was a Chinese restaurant in [[Locale Chinatown|Chinatown]]. It closed some time in 2010. As of July 2010 the site is occupied by a Vietnamese restaurant called something like "Can Phat". |
Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, located on Macclesfield Street just south of Shaftesbury Avenue. It's right next door to [[De Hems, W1D 5BW|De Hems]], and indeed this is probably its main advantage; other than that, it's just a standard Chinatown restaurant which does the job but is certainly nothing special. |
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The information below is retained for people who want to know what it used to be like. <div class="old_info"> Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, located on Macclesfield Street just south of Shaftesbury Avenue. It's right next door to [[De Hems, W1D 5BW|De Hems]], and indeed this is probably its main advantage; other than that, it's just a standard Chinatown restaurant which does the job but is certainly nothing special. |
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<div class="last_verified">Last visited by [[Kake]], [[Bob]], [[Nick]], etc, 14 January 2008.</div></div> |
<div class="last_verified">Last visited by [[Kake]], [[Bob]], [[Nick]], etc, 14 January 2008.</div> |
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category='Now Closed' |
category='All You Can Eat,Chinese Food,Restaurants' |
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latitude='51.511502' locale='Chinatown,Soho,W1' longitude='-0.129575' |
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phone='' postcode='' summary='Now closed; was a not-really-recommended but not awful restaurant in Chinatown, next door to De Hems.' summary='Not-really-recommended but not awful restaurant in Chinatown, next door to De Hems.' |
os_x='529781' os_y='180887' phone='020 7437 5598' summary='Now closed; was a not-really-recommended but not awful restaurant in Chinatown, next door to De Hems.' postcode='W1D 5BP' summary='Not-really-recommended but not awful restaurant in Chinatown, next door to De Hems.' |
Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, located on Macclesfield Street just south of Shaftesbury Avenue. It's right next door to De Hems, and indeed this is probably its main advantage; other than that, it's just a standard Chinatown restaurant which does the job but is certainly nothing special.
Kake, Bob, Nick, Leon, and Richard visited on a Monday evening in January 2008. No trouble getting a table; the place was almost empty. Our waiter seemed rather confused, returning to the table multiple times to check our order.
The menu is very long, covering all the usual dishes; there's also a section of chef's specials which includes some more interesting dishes. We started with mixed hors d'oeuvres (I think this was around £3.50/head); lowlights of this were the rather tough and dry chicken on skewers and the overly sweet sauce on the spare ribs. Main courses were somewhat better; the cuttlefish and jellyfish dish had nice chunks of garlic in, and the frogs' legs were tender with crisp, freshly fried batter. Pork belly and preserved vegetable hotpot had a decent quantity of both pork and preserved vegetable but was let down by its undistinguished and rather gloopy sauce and its lack of resemblance to an actual hotpot. Mussels were a bit chewy.
They also offer an all-you-can-eat menu, which I think is around £13/head; the way it works is that you can order as much as you like, as many times as you like, from a limited menu.
Fairly small seating area downstairs, more tables upstairs. The staircase is quite narrow. Ladies' toilet is upstairs (not sure if there's also one downstairs); gents' is downstairs. The upstairs ladies' is a single cubicle which was not very clean on our visit (thick layers of dust on all horizontal surfaces).
Kake's verdict: Probably won't bother coming back here; there are plenty of other choices in the area.
See also:
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