Because we couldn’t be bothered waiting in line at the food court at Westfield to have lunch we opted instead to take the tube in to Chinatown to check out Leong’s Legends. The specialty of this restaurant are these dumplings called Xiao Long Bao. They are kind of like ordinary dumplings except that encased in the dumpling is a delicious soup which oozes out when you pierce the dumpling. To eat these dumplings you carefully place it on your soup spoon, then pierce the delicate things with your chopstick end allowing the soup to spill out of the dumpling but safely into your spoon and then carefully taking the whole thing into your mouth.

They really are delicious and are best eating straight out of the steamer as soon as its served. Leave it any longer and they get cold quickly – which also increases the chances of the dumplings sticking together and as a result a premature piercing which causes the soup to ooze out of the dumpling before reaching your mouth!

We also tried a few of our usual dim sum dishes and though they were okay I wouldn’t say this is where the strength of Leong’s Legends lays which is a shame. We also tried one of the noodle dishes (which turned out to be a soup like concoction) – supposedly very spicy it was actually surprisingly flavourful too.

Leong’s Legends is a new entrant to the Chinatown scene (under six months at least) and I think it should be here to stay for a bit. The restaurant itself has a very cosy decoration – quite different and cool actually to most of the other Chinese restaurants in the mall with lots of dark bamboo, and wood scattered about the place.

Service was probably not as great as it could have been. Though not necessarily rude – they could have been a bit more responsive in clearing dishes we’d finished with and, when placing new arriving dishes, could have found a way to settle them on our table rather than dumping it on the corner at our elbows and letting us sort out the placement.