Lychee Oriental, 59 Mitchell Street, Glasgow – November 2012

Lychee only opened up a few months ago and it’s tucked away down the bottom of Mitchell Street but it’s already Glasgow’s 25th ranked restaurant on TripAdvisor. We were lured along in November thanks to a Travelzoo voucher offering £72 worth of food and drinks for £35 (a starter, main, side and Bellini each) …

Lychee in name, lychee in nature when it comes to drinks. Our lychee “Bellini” wasn’t like any Bellini we’d ever had before and was basically Prosecco with a dash of lychee syrup (or was it a liqueur?) and a whole lychee popped in for good measure and that’s no bad thing!

Lychee Bellini and condiment dishes

The same goes for the other cocktails. We also had lychee a Martini and a lychee daiquiri (both £5.90), both of which substituted traditional ingredients with lychee.

cocktails (hic!)

It was very quiet when we visited but time and effort has been spent making Lychee look the part – see the classy décor and cute condiment dishes and now that it’s climbing the charts on TripAdvisor it’s bound to be packed next time we visit…

Lychee restaurant

To start…

salt and pepper squid

Stuffed fresh chillies in black bean sauce

The waiter warned that this was a hot dish but I waved his concerns away, but yeah it burnt – but in a nice way, aside from the heat the chillis had taste and the black bean sauce had the right level of saltiness.

Hor Fun with roast duck and pak choi in oyster sauce

We laughed at the slightly strange name of this dish but I would happily order it again full of taste, beautifully cooked duck and fresh veg and look at the size of the portion! Yum!

Roast duck with ginger and onion sizzler

Again, duck excellent, veg fresh, sauce and seasoning spot on. Lovely!

Broccoli and fresh garlic

This was the weakest element of the meal. Veg was all well cooked but no exciting twists. We also had jasmine rice for the Roast duck with ginger & onion sizzler – reg price £2.50

After eating all that we sadly had no room for dessert (Oh well…just need to go back again…) but I did have room for one last drink so “treated” myself to a Moutai – a strong sorghum-based spirit from China. It is really strong in fact at 50 – 60% and is not for the faint hearted. It’s also expensive at £8.20 per shot!

 

So how did we rate Lychee? If you haven’t already guessed it was excellent in every respect. Food excellent, selection excellent, service excellent and value for money excellent. The staff also seemed to be genuine Chinese (as in born in China!)
Toilets-wise, we were advised to use the disabled toilet, not sure if there was a problem with the real toilets but the disabled toilet certainly was less of a walk.

Also free WIFI! Thumbs up all round!

Lychee Oriental on Urbanspoon

Emma

Emma

Hello!

I am Emma and with my husband Mark write Foodie Explorers, which is a food and travel website.

I am a member of the Guild of Food Writers and British Guild of Travel Writers.

We have a wide range of judging experience covering products, hotels and have judged, for example, for Great Taste Awards and Scottish Baker of the Year.

Along the way Mark gained WSET Level 2 in Wine and I have WSET Level 2 in Spirits as well as picking up an award with The Scotsman Food and Drink Awards.    

Usually I can be found sleeping beside a cat.

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