Long Chim (“come and try”) opened in Soho in November 2024. It is backed by David Thompson, an Australian chef whose food I first ate in Sydney at the Darley Street Thai. He opened Nahm in the Halkin Hotel in London in 2001, which gained a Michelin star but closed in 2012. After that Mt Thompson opened Nahm in Bangkok, which itself gained a Michelin star in the inaugural Michelin guide to Bangkok. Long Chim is a ground floor dining room with up to a hundred covers and an open kitchen visible from part of the dining room. Tables are small and closely packed, and the hard surfaces of the bare tables mean that noise levels were very high. Naturally, in such an inherently noisy environment, the owners thought it a great plan to play music as well, meaning that you can barely conduct a conversation with your dinner companion seated just inches away from you. The menu was short.
The wine list had 31 labels and ranged in price from £35 to £139, with a median price of £64 and an average markup to retail price of 3.8 times, which is outrageous even by the demanding standards of centra London. Sample references were Domaine de Guillemarine 2023 at £49 for a bottle that you can find in the high street for £13, Caythorpe Malborough Pinot Noir 2021 at £62 compared to its retail price of £12, and Château Grand Pey Lescours 2011 at £120 for a wine that will set you back £40 in the high street. I drank beer (£6 a bottle), which did at least arrive in a nicely chilled glass.
Spicy pork (£12) was minced and served with rice cakes and different leaves in which the pork could be wrapped. This was the best dish of the meal for me, the pork having good flavour and the spicing vibrant, with the leaves providing a nice contrast to the rich pork as well as an alternate texture (14/20). Aubergine satay (£8) was pleasant enough, an unusual take on satay, though the texture of the aubergine was less than ideal (12/20). Grilled kingfish salad (£10) had green mango and chilli sauce, and was reminiscent of a som tam salad, with the same spicy dressing (13/20).
Red chicken curry (£11) was pleasant, the sauce having plenty of spicy kick though it was heavy on vegetables and very light on chicken. It would require some detective work to actually find a piece of chicken in what I was served (12/20). Monkfish curry was quite good, the sauce again full of spicy flavour and the fish cooked fine, though sweet potatoes in the curry were a bit soft (13/20). Rice was fine, and the monkfish curry (£22) came with an attractive side salad dressing with cucumber and a lively level of chilli. Vermicelli noodles with tiger prawns (£18) had decent texture but a rather unusual flavour, with prawns that were served in their shell, and so were quite fiddly to extract from their shell given that they arrived piping hot (12/20). Sugar snap peas (£5) on the side were lightly cooked but, given the generally punchy spicing elsewhere in the meal, were a little bland (13/20).
Service was friendly, and the bill came to £69 per person with just beer and sparkling water to drink, with no dessert course. The restaurant was packed and turning tables all around us, so clearly has the formula right. Given the noise levels, it was not a place for contemplative conversation, but was definitely buzzy and had generally decent food.
Ben Williams
My experience was very similar to yours. I thought the food was fine - for us, the stand out was also the spicy pork, but also a penang curry made with beef rib, where (in contrast to your chicken experience) there was ample meat, and it had been cooked to an unctuous state in a good sauce which had a nice balance of heat, slight sweetness and richness from coconut, with texture from chopped nuts. Like you, I thought the wine pricing outrageous, and I found the only beer offered - Chimay - bland. Service was good, but a mix up with deserts caused a 20 minute delay, with nothing save an apology offered. The desert when it came - sticky rice with banana - was the worst dish of meal, stodgy and yet underflavoured, more burnt than caramelised. Lastly, a warning. What you say about noise levels is literally amplified if, like us, you are sat upstairs in the bar area. We were not consulted about this, and were sat there even though we were with a child. Come 9 pm on a Friday, it was akin to dining in a nightclub. We could not hear eachother or the waiter. A most unpleasant last 30 mins for our meal.
Allen Bracchi
This nonsense of serving Prawns in the shell in hot wet dishes is nothing but laziness by the kitchen , should the diner really be expected to preform the shelling because the cooks can’t be bothered?