Cha Cha Moon: a budget extravaganza

Cha Cha Moon: a budget extravaganza

Carnaby St is a pedestrianized shopping street in central London (SOHO area). Wikipedia records 168 fashion boutiques and retailers in its network of 12 streets. London visitors ensure you walk through Carnaby, you will not be disappointed.

Located in the Carnaby area (close to Shakespeare Head – please don’t take this literally and hunt for Shakespeare’s ‘head’, this is a famous pub located in Carnaby St) Cha Cha Moon offers Chinese cuisine. The ambience is good, with modern decor. The waiters are friendly and polite.

I will provide the disclaimers upfront before I proceed further to comment on how good the food was. We were dull in our orders and did not experiment on what the menu offered. You will have to remember we went in after a few hours of shopping (mostly window, trying suits from Ted Baker to Hugo Boss, I actually ran away from the place after noticing the price tag of £499 on a good looking suite) on Regent and Oxford street.

The seating outside was full, which would have been a good spot to eat at as the weather was lovely.

Our gang consisted of the ever-ready Karthik, the recently rechristened Babu Narayan (it actually is quite stylish), the style icon Jagenator, man-on-mission Mohan (you will have to enquire Karthik on this man’s mission that day and yours truly. Being a teetotaller I settled in for a non-alcoholic cocktail of guava and coconut which wasn’t too exciting or palate revealing. Laurel and Hardy, oops jags and mohan settled in for Harbin Beer which apparently has its roots in Hong-Kong, a mild 4.8% lager, which surprisingly had a nice flavour and suited the cuisine to the ‘T’. Karthik settled in for a Lychee Martini which was quite appealing. Babu threw in a googly and ordered 2 pots (not the dope! Dopes) of Jasmine tea; well his reason being: when in China eat Chinese.

We were too hungry to fiddle with starters and jumped on to the main course, ofcourse after finishing all the chilli oil (which was yumm) which had a unique fish flavour to it. Our order was not too daring and was limited to Singapore Noodles and Fried Vermicelli with Chicken Wanton and Dumplings. We religiously ignored the chopstix and decided to go traditional with forks. The food was heavenly and delightful.

If you are in the neighbourhood and in the mood for safe Chinese food this is the place to drop-in.

Now the negatives: A lot of food reviewers have rated this outlet negatively. Their lamb and soups have received torrid reviews. Also to note is that Cha Cha Moon almost doubled their costs, while all items on the menu had a £ value around £3.50, they are almost double that now. And they charge a 10% service charge for groups of size 5 or greater. So if you drop-in as a bigger gang it is better to split-up.

Location and other details:

15-21 Ganton St, Soho, W1F 9BN

Area: Soho

Tel: 020 7297 9800

www.chachamoon.com

Category: Chinese

Travel: Oxford Circus or Piccadilly Circus tube

Times: Open Mon-Thur 12noon-11pm; Fri-Sat 12noon-11.30pm; Sun 12noon-10pm

Price: Meal for two with drinks and service: around £30 (It really won’t cost you this much)

PS: Pictures and other supplementary details have been pulled from the ‘World Wide Web’.