Where:
Just So Chinese Restaurant, 2 Marine Drive, Lawrence Rocks, Margate
Call:
039 312 2165
Open:
Daily, lunch and dinner. Takeaways available.
Many moons ago a visit to Margate saw us at the Just So Chinese Restaurant, hidden in a tiny side street under a mall. It was a small dark space and the decor was a pink and red and green mishmash. But the food was memorable, largely because it was obviously cooked to order and had flavour, even if the dishes were fairly predictable.
Now it’s moved to new and lighter premises on the other side of town, it has a little more relaxed, if Spartan, feel about it. There’s a deck one can sit on in good weather.
However, the cooking hasn’t changed. It has the usual chow mein, chop suey and foo yong with a few sizzling platters, soups and starter spring rolls and was still good and well priced. We ate there twice on our short holiday. On both occasions, the takeaway counter was doing a roaring trade too. Service was efficient and the food came out promptly too.
For lunch, we both tucked into the prawn menu special.
At R169, it was the most expensive item on the menu and featured some good prawn spring rolls and a plate of ginger prawns.
You could have converted this to chilli or sweet and sour sauces. The prawns were plump tasty and delicious – and there were plenty. Next up was a mixed seafood chow mein with calamari fish and prawns served with fresh egg-fried rice. Thumbs up.
Dessert, according the menu, was ice cream and a bow tie, but when we grumbled at the idea of a bow tie, we were offered ice cream with their home-made ginger syrup.
This was exceptional. It had my friend trying to replicate the recipe at home.
A few days later we popped in for a light supper.
My simple prawn foo yong (R125) was tasty and enjoyable. My friend enjoyed her hot and sour kingklip fish dish from their spicy speciality menu (R130). And of course we had a second helping of that ginger sauce over ice cream (R30).
We finished up with good pot of jasmine tea (R15), and did have a chuckle at a menu that included both filter coffee
and Ricoffy.
Ratings (out of five)
Food: 3
Service: 3
Ambience: 2