NEW SUM YE
On 1 July 2007 we went to New Sum Ye in Chinatown for lunch. It is in the Arcadian Centre, in front of the Chinese supermarket, Day-Inn. A Vietnamese friend of ours once recommended us this place, and we wanted to visit here since.
Here you can have a main dish with rice for around £5, but during the lunch hours, there is also a special set menu available for £4.99 including one main course, drink and a dessert. We tried this set menu; there were about 8 dishes to choose from, and they cover from vegetable to fish and meat.
As drink, you can choose from various can drinks, tea, coffee, or this soy milk. It was a bit too sweet for me, but at least in generous portion.
This is Dim's Chicken and Duck Roast on Rice. The grey mushy stuff on the roast is ginger. There are some leaves of boiled Chinese cabbage.
The meat contained quite a lot of bones, but there was enough meat to eat. As I don't like the smell of Chinese roast, I cannot tell if the meat was good, but Dim was happy.
This is my wanton noodle soup. Not being so hungry, I chose the lightest looking one. The noodles were very thin and nicely firm. Wantons contained pork mince and prawns. They did not smell particularly fresh, just were about ok.
Besides usual soy sauce and salt, this place offers chili oil and vinegar free to use.
All the dishes and plates are plastic, only a bit better than disposable containers used in fast food shops.
These are puddings. You can choose between Sweet tofu and fruits salad. This tofu tasted too bitter. Fruits salad was better.
The total cost for 2 was very good £9.98. If we had sat down and had sandwich and coffee, we would have paid about the same. The quantity looked somehow less than that in other Chinese cafés of the area, but it was quite sufficient as my lunch. I would return.
As I had an occasion to revisit this place in June 2008, I decided to update this page.
Recently the price of lunch deal (main + drink + dessert) increased from £ 4.99 to £ 5.25. It is inevitable considering the rising food prices. However, the Arcadian Café Soya has started sell a similar deal for £ 4.95. Competition is fierce.
As main dish there are about 10 dishes to choose from. This one I had was stir-fried fish and tofu served with rice. The tofu is fluffy deep-fried version and pretty nice. The strips of fish also are battered and deep-fried. They smelled like sweet-water fish, and I wondered what kind of fish it was.
This place offers free use of chili oil, vinegar, soy sauce, pepper etc. I love pouring vinegar on stir-fries and I appreciate this service very much.
It tastes as nice as it looks. I cannot, however, swear objectivity, as I like so much stir-fry with rice. Concerning this dish, if you don't like sweet-water fish smell, you probably don't like it.
When I entered the place at around 3 o'clock, there were only a few people, but while I was eating the place got busier and there were also many take-away customers. I noticed what I had observed the last time: the customers here are very much multi-racial, and there is a nice mixture of Chinese, Asian, white and black patrons.
This is tofu with syrup offered as dessert. As bitter as the last time.
As the customers pay at the counter when they place the order, the service charge is not required. So what I pay was not more or less than £ 5.25. If you are after quick, easy-going meal, it is a good place to go.
