EKACHAI

Unit 205, 1st Floor
Southside Shopping Centre
Wandsworth. SW18 4TE

Ph: 0208 8871 3888

Opening Hours: Sun to Thurs 11am – 10:30pm
Fri and Sat 11am – 11pm

Parking: To get free parking, spend over £10 at Waitrose or see a movie after 7pm.

Website: Ekachai

There’s another branch at Ekachai City
9-10 Arcade
Liverpool street
London EC2M 7PN
Mon-Fri 11-10pm
sat-sun closed



I simply can’t believe where we’re finding good Malaysian/Chinese food nowadays. First it was in Selfridges, and now before we were going to see the movie Transformers in the Southside Shopping Centre, Wandsworth. A fluke really. We had the choice between McDonalds, Nandos, Pizza Hut or this place called Ekachai. We thought what the hell, we’ll give Ekachai a whirl. We wanted something quick, filling and hopefully edible. Ekachai more than delivered.

As soon as you enter you get the Wagamama vibe. Wide tables with benches for seats and an open-plan kitchen. “Oh crap,” I thought “Another try-hard quasi-euroasian chain”. Between us we ordered the char kway teow, Singapore noodles, beef hor-fun Cantonese style and penang laksa.

Our lychee drinks arrived promptly and practically less than 10 minutes after ordering our food arrived simultaneously. Huge portions. Good.

Hard to make us Culinary Hags impressed these days. But impressed we were and chuffed at finding a Malaysian/Chinese joint within driving distance without having to trek all the way to London centre.

The Singapore noodles (£5.50) and char kway teow (£5.50) were pretty close to the real mc coy. Both with generous servings of fresh prawns. My beef hor-fun (£5.50) was always very close to what you can get at say Four Seasons in Bayswater. The beef certainly wasn’t the tenderest I’ve eaten, but I thoroughly enjoyed it just the same.
The penang laksa (£5.90) is more curry-coconut based, not thick, but light and quite flavoursome. In the laksa are fishcakes, prawns, squid, crabsticks and a boiled egg.

You can see the rest of the menu from their website. A hodge-podge of food mainly Malaysian, Cantonese (including some dim sum dishes like siu mai, har kau, glutinous rice in lotus leaf), Thai (Thai beef salad, Tom Yum prawn noodles).
The cooks and staff all seem to be Chinese possibly from Malaysia. We Hags will definitely check out the rest of the menu to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.

HRH