I was going to comment on the sweetness too. I had hot chocolate from the Paul A Young branch at the Royal Exchange last year, and it was much too sweet for me; I couldn't actually finish it.

Whoops, sorry, yes — I'm being confusing. Adana kebab is minced meat, shish is cubed. Mazi do both yoğurtlu adana and yoğurtlu shish. I prefer their shish, but the one I had this month was actually adana, so I thought I'd best nominate that to stay within the rules!

The chilled hispi cabbage at Dabbous was my second favourite dish of the month; perfectly cooked, and the slight bitterness of the cabbage offset by the tangy mayonnaise.

Yoğurtlu adana kebab from Mazi on London Road in Croydon. Lamb cubes cooked to the bare minimum over a charcoal grill, then mixed with pieces of fluffy Turkish bread and covered with a rich, tangy tomato and yoghurt sauce. I love the way they cook their lamb, but this particular kebab preparation is my new favourite. The knifework on the accompanying salad is good, too; paper-thin slices of onion, red cabbage, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and parsley.

I didn't take a photo, but here's one of their lahmacun from earlier this year: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kake_pug...

Photos from a recent dinner at the West Croydon Chennai Dosa: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kake_pugh/tags/chennaidosacroydon/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/37996583...

I was preoccupied by the company so couldn't pay too much attention to the food, but I do not remember being disappointed.

I had one at the Texas Embassy Cantina a few years back: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kake_pugh/2483194575/ but (a) it was pretty terrible (still raw in the middle) and (b) it doesn't seem to be on their menu any more: http://www.texasembassy.com/foods.html

However it might be worth asking them!

Quick notes from a recent visit:

Tamalito de pollo - chicken seemed a bit overcooked, but good texture and flavour in the corn coating

Cebiche mixto - nice sourness and chilli heat, seafood perhaps cured a bit
more than I'd have liked

Papa a la Huancaína - very good texture to the sauce, glossy and well
emulsified, mild flavour. Boiled egg a tad overdone (black line around the
yolk).

Parihuela - good flavour to the broth but they hadn't removed the membrane from the squid. White fish cooked perfectly. Also liked the fresh
citrus-marinaded onion in this.

Arroz chaufa de mariscos - a Chinese-Peruvian dish, fried rice with seafood. I liked that it wasn't too oily.

Lomo saltado de carne - loved the chips soaked in the sauce, and the accompanying plain white rice went well with the sauce too. Beef could maybe have been trimmed a little better, as there were some overly chewy bits.

Yuca frita - great texture, not greasy.

I ate at Salloos a couple of years ago. The meat (lamb chops and haleem) was good, the veg (chickpeas and okra) competent but nothing special. Overall, I felt it was priced a little above its quality level. My fuller writeup is here: http://london.randomness.org.uk/wiki....

Here are some tasting notes on the 24-year-old Aldi whisky (not by me — I don't like whisky — but by a friend of mine): http://bbblog.org.uk/2011/11/aldi-whi...

I liked Little Seoul on Regent Street: http://www.littleseoul.co.uk/
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kake_pug...

Tetote Factory has now reopened in Ealing: http://dokiltd.co.uk/tetotefactory.html

Is this the place where Super Nova used to be? Next to Tower Tandoori?

Menu photos now here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kake_pugh/sets/72157627415470477/

I didn't find what we had to be too oily, but then we had one stewed dish, two cold dishes, and some boiled dumplings, so they'd have had to mess up quite badly for those to be oily.

There do seem to be a fair few Sichuan dishes on the menu; for example if you look at this page - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kake_pug... - number 81 is 魚香肉絲 (fish-fragrant/sea-spiced shredded pork), number 95 (which might be what you had) is 水煮牛肉 (water-boiled beef), number 99 is kung po/gong bao chicken. Also, I thought number 106 (剁椒蒸魚頭/steamed fish head with chopped chillies) was a Hunan dish (though I could be wrong, but 剁椒 is usually the Hunan chopped salted chillies, isn't it?). It's a bit confusing to see these in a section headed "Manchurian fried dishes".

Worth trying would be the "mixed vegetable and shredded pork with glass noodles" (number 13; 東北大拉皮/Dongbei dalapi) — I've only seen these at one other place in London, Royal Palace in Surrey Quays. Also the "special mixed vegetables" (number 1; 老虎菜/tiger salad) — another not-hugely-common dish in London, though the best rendition I've had here was in Sanxia Renjia on Goodge Street.

Sorry this isn't in time for your visit: but I really enjoyed the red-cooked pork with glass noodles. I think the noodles were made with sweet potato starch, and they had a great texture. The pork was braised really well, too, to the point where the skin was almost as soft as the fat.

Also had shredded kelp, cucumber with pork, and pork and suan cai dumplings, all good.

(Apologies for imprecise dish names, haven't sorted out my menu photos yet as I had to take them on my phone.)

Cẩm Phát has now closed. I was in the area last Wednesday and saw a new poster go up on the hoardings re a forthcoming "Café de Chine/Maison Chinoise": http://www.flickr.com/photos/kake_pug...

Looks Hong Kong ish to me, but I'm not an expert.

Yeah, I really have no idea what that one is, and Googling doesn't help. I'll ask next time I go!

Probably Sarashwathy Bavans: http://www.sarashwathy.com/

They have another branch in Tooting.

The king prawns in bamboo (竹筒蝦) were a little overcooked for my taste by the time I got to trying one, but I think that might have been because they'd been sitting in the herbal broth for a while by then — there were so many other dishes to try!

I didn't photograph the taichi dòu huā, but another of our party did: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robot_st...

I think you're looking at the same page — http://www.flickr.com/photos/kake_pug... — but Limster is reading off the photo and you off my transcription, which has a question mark in place of the 蛏 that I couldn't figure out how to type!

Thank you! I've edited those in to the caption. A couple of questions, if you don't mind me picking your brains...

In the crab dish, does the character 塊 indicate that this is a single whole crab? Or something else?

What's the final character in the name of the Chinese chives dish? I can't find it in my dictionaries.

I'm not sure I've tried enough of the menu to make such a pronouncement. But I did like the sweet potato balls; stuffed with nori and pork, and served in soup.

Here are some photos from a trip to New Aroma with Limster and others earlier this week: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kake_pug...

It was my first experience of Fujian cuisine and I'm already keen to try more.

The photoset also includes photos of the Fujian menu — it's in Chinese only, but I've had a bash at translating in the captions.

Their website is at http://www.chennaidosa.com/

Thank you both for the kind words. Re an iPhone app, I'm aiming more for "I learnt to read menus and you can too!" rather than "here is a thing that will translate menus for you". I'm sure there's already an app you can use to look up individual vocabulary items if you just need to jog your memory. (Or have I misunderstood you and you meant an app to help you learn?)

Haven't been there, but I thought I'd add the information that the place is called Cẩm Phát, and they have a website: http://www.camphat.co.uk/

I hope it's OK to resurrect this rather ancient topic, but I keep finding references to the inu.org site when I'm searching — sadly it is no longer in existence. I'm doing a similar project myself — http://kake.dreamwidth.org/tag/chines... — and was wondering if anyone knows of any still-extant sources that I could look at.

Magdalen reopened a couple of days after the flood: http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view...

I've only just noticed this thread has Manze's in it too. I went there a few weeks ago. Pie was OK; mash was slightly overprocessed, with the beginnings of the gluey texture/taste/feel that you get from doing it in the blender (not that I ever do this — I like lumpy mash). I agree that the liquor really needed some salt; though I don't know if they do it like this because it's traditional — this was my first encounter with London pie and mash. It was all somewhat improved by the addition of malt vinegar from the huge bottles they have on each table. Definitely cheap; it was £2.70 for all this: http://flickr.com/photos/kake_pugh/24...

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M Manze
87 Tower Bridge Rd, Camberwell, Greater London SE1 3, GB

Ah-ha, right, yes, I see what you meant now. I agree that the trollies don't have the best quality food, but they work out quite well for some of the groups I go out with (lots of people arriving and leaving at different times).

At some point I'm going to try out one of these cocktail bar/dim sum place mashups (d.sum, Ping Pong, etc) — I don't hold out great hopes though. I had dim sum at the Drunken Monkey in Shoreditch a few months ago and it was pretty awful.

Thanks for the report! I live near Tower Bridge so have added La Rueda to my "to try" list on your recommendation.

Re trolley dim sum, for future reference — Chuen Cheng Ku on Wardour Street also has trollies, and I think the food is better quality than at the New World.

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Chuen Cheng Ku
Wardour St, London, Greater London W1F 8, GB