Randomness Guide to London - Differences between Version 6 and Version 5 of Jasmine Garden, SE1 4AL

Chinese/Thai/Malaysian takeaway place near the top of Old Kent Road. They also do delivery, and you can order online via Hungry House.

Kake and bob ordered a delivery on a Wednesday night in December 2008 (New Year's Eve). Salt and pepper spare ribs (£5) were OK, served with lots of chopped vegetables and red chillies. They were cut into triangular pieces, which made it hard to eat the meat. Prawn dumplings (£5.50) were OK. We also ordered vegetable dumplings (£5.50), but they sent us curried potato samosas instead, which were fine.

The Malaysian chicken satay (£4.70) had some heat to it and was actually quite good, though the crispy shredded beef (£6) was just adequate. The sweet and sour pork balls (£4.75) were very good, not too large and with a nice crispy batter (the sweet and sour sauce wasn't good though). Noodles with bean sprouts (£4) were fine. We also ordered some extra homemade chilli oil, which was terribly burnt. We were supposed to get a free bottle of wine but this didn't materialise, so we think the order was slightly confused.

Kake decided to try their Malaysian dishes on a Saturday evening in September 2009. Nasi goreng (Malaysian fried rice, £6) was OK; there was an enjoyable hint of shrimp paste (belacan) in the flavour, but the prawns were small and slightly overcooked and the chicken was a bit dry and uninteresting (albeit quite abundant).

Beef rendang (£5.75), on the other hand, was nothing like it should have been; it was at least 50% sliced onion, and there was none of the thick, rich sauce that should have been there, just a thin, oily slick of brownish liquid. The beef was also sliced rather than cubed, and had obviously not been cooked for the couple of hours that it usually is in this dish. I'm not quite sure which aspects of rendang they were trying to capture here, but I'd not order it again.

I also had some steamed prawn dumplings (£5.45 for eight), which had overly-bulky wrappers that were nevertheless all torn when they arrived, and some crispy duck spring rolls (£4 for three), which contained spring onions and cucumber as well as duck; an interesting twist which might have worked better had the spring onions been sliced more thinly.

bob's verdict: Adequate but nothing special. There are certainly better places in the area to order Chinese food.

Kake's verdict: I only bothered ordering from here because they had Malaysian items on the menu; I won't bother again.

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