Leong's Legends

Following on from favourable reviews over on Around Britain with a Paunch and Tamarind and Thyme Leong's Legends was added to the to do list of restaurants.  Normally places remain on this almost endless list for quite some time but my little brother (he's 15) came up to stay with me this weekend and as he loves dim sum I decided to take him here.  We had a show to get to at 2.30pm (Traces at Peacock Theatre, well worth a visit) so headed to Chinatown early, something that probably helped us out as an empty restaurant left us with great service, something that other reviewers have questioned.  The maitre'd seemed very interested in my picture taking of all the food too and was most helpful after I said I had a food blog, I even got a hand shake on the way out.

The dim sum menu at Leong's Legend is a lot shorter than most Chinatown dim sum menus but even its reduced list threw up quite a few dishes I'd not seen before, most of which ended up on our order.  The waiter said we'd probably ordered too much, advised us to drop a dish or two and said we'd still need to move to one of the bigger tables as our order wasn't going to fit on the two person table we had.  This necessitated a move to a four seater in the window, which had the added bonus of fantastic natural light for the photographs.  Leong's Legend's interior is highly stylised by Chinatown standards.  Whilst I love the functional nature of the cafe style melamine interiors it is nice to go a bit upmarket sometimes too and the wooden furniture and mood lighting here (and in Baozi Inn) make a refreshing change.

For food I tried to order things I'd not really had before, the menu isn't the most descriptive though and so we ended up with some har gau (down as prawn dumplings, I should've figured really) which wasn't a bad thing as they were good har gau.  A glutinous wrapper with distinct prawn and crunchy water chestnut filling. 

I'm a big fan of turnip cake but the menu had a crispy fried turnip dish on, which I'd never heard of before, and so we got our turnip fix for the day there instead.  This consisted of a gloopy grated turnip filling surrounded by a buttery, flaky pastry outside.  Quite delectable.  A cheung fun of pork and preserved vegetable was also new to me but not quite as detectable.  I was hoping for pungent, salty vegetable but whilst it added some crunch I found it was a bit bland.

I couldn't let the Taiwan Kebab Roll pass me by and I'm glad I didn't, a sheet of char siu bao style dough was wrapped around a melt in the mouth slice of braised pork belly, salted vegetable provided both texture and piquancy to cut through the rich meat.

Sui Long Bao (soup filled dumplings) only came in a portion of eight, so large by dim sum standards, but there was no danger of them not being finished.  The pastry was delicate and the ginger vinegar added a welcome sharpness to the savoury broth as they burst into your mouth.

It wouldn't normally be something I ate with dim sum but my brother loves fried rice and so we ordered a portion.  There was none of his favourite egg fried rice and so we went with chicken fried rice instead, a dish that gave me my first ever encounter with pine nuts in Chinese food.  I'm not sure if they're a traditional ingredient or a bit of fusion cooking on their part but they were a welcome addition, adding both texture and a lovely toasted nutty element where they'd browned against the wok.

The mushroom and ham roll was a dish I'd never heard of before.  It turned out to be leathery beancurd skin rolls wrapped around a filling of shredded wood ear fungus.  I couldn't find any ham although its meatiness was discernible in the taste.  A corn starch thick sauce and enoki mushrooms finished what was a very nice dish.

Won ton in spicy oil were in an egg-free wrapper and filled with pork.  The spicy oil had a good kick to it, too much for my brother but perfect for me.  The final dish was char sui bao, a common favourite and another request of the brother.  They were pretty decent char sui bao, not out of this world bu good eating nonetheless.

We both really enjoyed our meal there, even if it was a bit of a struggle to get so much food down our throats - so much food that after a midday meal we didn't feel the need to eat again till gone 8.30pm.  I think the fact that we did is testament to the quality of the dishes.  Well worth a visit if you want a change from the usual Chinatown dim sum.

Leong’s Legends

4 Macclesfield St
London
W1D 6AX

Comments

[anne]

Looks like you had a great meal!

[Jonathan]

Sounds like you had a super time. Very glad to see the Taiwanese sandwich made an appearance.

[Pinkmacaroon]

Now there's a strange thing, I was reading Yan Kit So's Chinese Cooking the other night and I was surprised that there was a reference to pine nuts in a recipe - for the life of me I cannot remember which one. It seems that Chinese pine nuts have a slightly different flavour though. I have just done a quick Google and pine nuts appear in a number of recipes. I wonder what Sunflower has to say on the subject?

[Joshua Armstrong]

What a coincidence. I did ask her on the forum and she came back with them being used quite a bit, although like you say they're slightly different. Larger and almost like mini-pine cones to look at, nowhere near the size (obviously) but with the little ridges.