I owed my friend, Megan, a birthday meal and decided to treat her during her lunch break recently. Without booking a table, your choices for a sit-down restaurant lunch are limited around the Liverpool Street area, but we found a gem.
I’m all about eating my way around the Orient (in London) right now, so Ekachai‘s promise of “authentic flavours from Southeast Asia” just inside the Liverpool Street Arcade was perfect.
Despite being fairly filled with suit-wearing bodies when we arrived at 1pm, we got a table for two immediately. The restaurant was well staffed, with attentive waiters flying mountains of steaming noodles and rice dishes to the tables surrounding us.
After being seated, Megan and I were a little stumped about why some of the items on the menu had red boxes around them, as was our waitress. We got to the bottom of it with another waitress who explained that they were the best selling Ekachai dishes.
After studying the menu intensively (not at all, I was hungry and you can’t go wrong with a bestselling Pad Thai) we both went for a chicken & prawn Pad Thai with Thai BBQ spare ribs and duck spring rolls to share.
It was quite an unconventional BBQ sauce, and much more flavoursome than the BBQ spare ribs at your local Chinese takeaway. The spring rolls are served with hoisin sauce, but I much preferred dipping my rolls in the rib sauce.
The Pad Thai was highlighted as a best seller and rightly so. The angle on the picture doesn’t quite do justice to just how large that portion was. Megan struggled from halfway on and was eventually defeated. I had little difficulty finishing all of mine – no surprises there.
Ekachai clearly understand their customer profile at this time are people on their lunch breaks and get things done fast. A pet peeve of mine is being left waiting ages at an empty table without being brought your bill, or being able to the get the attention of anyone to bring it to you. It’s good to know I don’t have to worry about that here!
Liverpool Street station is a main transport hub for me on most of my journeys around London so I’ll probably be back here in no time. It’s a definite recommendation from me!
Harleigh Reid
I write about food and eat a lot.
Find me on:
