Hong Kong Palace

Hong Kong Palace is one of the long-established Chinese takeaways on the central Erith strip of West Street, sitting between the railway station and the Riverside Gardens that lead down to the pier. It's a small phone-and-collect shop rather than a sit-in restaurant — debit-card payment accepted, free local delivery on top of a small minimum spend — and it has been a fixture on this stretch for long enough to have its own online ordering site rather than living only on the aggregators.

The menu runs the British-Cantonese spread that Erith customers expect: sweet and sour chicken or pork in batter, salt-and-pepper squid and chicken wings, chow mein and singapore noodles, foo yung and ho fun, plus the inevitable curry-sauce-and-chips for the late crowd. Set meals for two, three and four anchor the family-order side of the trade, and the kitchen does the lemon chicken and crispy aromatic duck that pull most of the praise in reviews.

The 180 West Street block has seen plenty of churn as central Erith has been redeveloped — the chip shop that previously shared this address closed — but Hong Kong Palace has held its position by leaning on a regular phone-order base. Reviews are typical of a long-running Erith Chinese: praised for consistency and value rather than ambition.