China Town is a little restaurant on Marine Drive – the food is tasty, in a sloppy Sri Lankan-Chinese kind of way, and the prices are okay. It’s also one of the handful of ‘Chinese’ places that are halal.
China Town also serves an Indian Spice menu, so you can do a combo and get spicy Chinese with spicy Indian like we did.
The Food
We got regular plates of chop suey noodles (Rs. 940), garlic prawns (Rs. 980), and then from the Indian menu, butter chicken (Rs. 540). The menu is like a lot of other middle-end restaurants with a variety of seafood options, rice, noodles and typical north Indian. If you take a crowd with you it’ll cost you less since the regulars are large sized – good for 3-4 people.
The noodles hidden beneath a massive layer of veggies and meatEverything comes in big, sloppy portions – it’s all obviously quite oily, but spicy and well cooked. So if you’re a fan of greasy, spiced-up food, then you’ll probably like this place. We particularly liked the cuttlefish in the chop suey dish.
Our seafood dish was awesome – plenty of juicy, fried prawns sunk into very thick, spicy garlic sauce. The butter chicken we got was soft and well cooked and similarly came in a super thick sauce – would’ve gone great with some naan.
Service & Ambience
The service was pretty prompt. China Town’s ambience is not the best though. Although it’s A/Ced and clean, it’s dimly lit with red and yellow lanterns so it feels a little shady, though it’s usually families that come here so it can’t be that shady.
There’s a nice outside space too but the inside feels cleaner. There used to be an open bathtub in the washroom (in case you want to take a bath after your meal we guess?) but they’ve closed that bit off with a divider now.
Conclusion
China Town is a decent choice for big portions of spicy, greasy – but tasty – food. The prices are not too bad since the plates are large. If you’re not that finicky about ambience then it’s a reasonable stop to pig out on some good old Sri Lankan-Chinese.
