Lunch @ John's

Today's lunch was on MK today courtesy of payday, yay! R & Miss Kitty ran through the rain-filled streets of London to reach Ekachai.

This oriental dining room is tucked away in the Liverpool Street Parade. It is ideal if you are pressed for time, but want to sit down and eat good food in a casual atmoshere. According to the website, ekachai is to the thais like john is to the english, pierre to the french, luigi to the italians.

For starters, curried samosas and sesame prawn fingers. R ordered the crispy duck salad and sparkling water and being the seafood junkie/alcoholic that she is, MK had the garlic and pepper seafood washed down with a tsing-tao.

Now, a few quick criticisms: the sesame prawn fingers were somewhat disappointing. Maybe, R & MK need to experience more sesame prawn toast outside of the usual sphere of Chinese & Japanese cuisine, but this dish contained hardly any prawn and was soggy inside as though it was made of raw, eggy dough? Is this normal?

Then came MK's main dish: prawns, mussels, fishballs & fishcakes in a garlic & pepper sauce on a bed of lettuce,hey but hello where was the squid as specified in the menu? It was the only reason why Miss Kitty ordered this particular dish.
R was also disappointed with his dish (then again, he is extremely hard to impress): crispy duck, sliced and tossed in a plum vinaigrette with julienne of cucumber, tomatoes & spring onions on a bed of salad. However, Miss K totally loved his dish (apart from the red chillies, although a big fan of the spicy stuff, would have preferred if they were in my saucier dish!).

Total: £27.80, bit pricey for the amount of food we received. For the same price we could have feasted at either Tai Wu or Sapparo Ichiban. But, alas, both are south of the river and us being in the city, you kinda have to bend over and take what these city folk give ya.

Was expecting a little more value from a restaurant named after the common man.