Anybody living in South East London (along the lines of Elephant and Castle)? If you do, you may have noticed an Asian store that was being renovated for a few months, and you may have been thinking when will this place be opened. Well, the store opened two days ago (January 21st) underneath a block of student flats that has replaced a gas station which once had a drive-in Burger King. Ah, no more Burger King. (I only went in there once!).
Longdan is a Vietnamese run chain store. From their UK website it looks as if this is one out of four stores running in the South East area of the UK so far. I think this might also be smaller than the other stores, but it’s bigger than some of the other Asian stores around the area.
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| Longdan Express Oriental Supermarket |
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| Opened on 21st Jan 2013 |
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| The Entrance and there’s a cafe called “aobaba” – not set up yet I think… |
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| A look from the outside |
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| The hot food section – doesn’t look ready yet |
Well on the outside it doesn’t look big, but when you go inside, it feels big!!
There are a few long aisles…
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| This is what you see when you go in! |
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| The cookery utensil section at the back of the store |
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| A look from the other end |
A lot of frozen sections…
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| Ready meals and desserts! |
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| Lots of stuff ^^ |
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| More frozen stuff |
There are some chilled sections (I forgot to take pictures of them!). They have some Japanese sushi, Korean kimbap, Korean pancakes and a lot of other stuff! And here’s the drink section…
A Japanese / Korean frozen food section (there’s also a dry food section that sells other stuff like miso paste, sushi rice wine etc, etc)…
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| Japanese and Korean frozen foods |
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| Vegetable section |
Cookery utensils…
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| Wow!! |
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| Awesome cookery stuff ^^ |
Other stuff…
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| Cute sweets! |
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| Vietnamese bread |
And the most important section for me is the BENTO BOX section!! (I think Japan Centre have met their competition here in London!!).
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| Yeeeeah!!! Bento Boxes (lunch boxes)!!! |
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| Ordinary lunch boxes |
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| Loads of Bento Boxes and utensils!!!!!!! |
Here’s my purchases from yesterday. It was £9.35 for everything. The bento box cost £3.90. The pot noodle pho is 70p. The dried shrimp cost £2.45, and the fishballs cost £2.30.
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| My first purchase |
I went in there again today to purchase some more things, and also to have a proper look at their frozen section. They have one of my favourite Japanese foods – takoyaki (fried octopus balls), which I tried out last year! (It was buy one get one free, but I didn’t get the free one because I bought the last bag). They even have Korean dumplings (I have always wanted to try them)!!! Here I spent over £22 (because I bought a couple more lunchboxes for a friend in Canada)!!
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| My second purchase |
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| A closer look of the other bento boxes that I will be sending to Canada! ^_^ (sorry for the flash bit – too lazy to take another pic!) |
Longdan is a little expensive compared to other Asian stores in the area and of course in comparison to London China Town. So I guess you should compare prices before buying. They don’t sell some of the Chinese foods that I like, and they don’t sell Nissin noodles, 😦 (they do now) but I don’t mind the bento box section – as it’s in my price range! ^_^.
So overall, I will still be going to other local Asian stores but I will definitely go to Longdan for some of the frozen foods!
Address: 128-132 Walworth Road, London SE17 1JL
Telephone: 020 7701 2566
Opening times: Monday – Saturday 10am -10pm, and Sunday + Bank Holidays: 11am – 8pm
Other stores are located in: Leyton, Kingston and Shoreditch
Update 25/01/2013
There’s more stuff! More bakery stuff! More chilled foods! And I found beef flavoured mandu!! ^_^
Update 02/02/2013
Well I finally got some more pictures of the chilled section…
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| They sell tofu dessert too!! ^^ |
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| Big selection of chilled foods!! |
And some of the food I bought…
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| Korean “sushi” called maki |
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| Korean savoury pancakes – pajeon |
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| Japanese Takoyaki balls (Octopus balls) |
Update 01/04/2013 (not an April Fools joke!)
The cafe is now open!!! Passed it on Saturday, and they’re already in business!! ^_^
Some other Asian stores you may be interested in which are also in the area…
http://asimplegeekylife.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/little-orient-elephant-and-castle.html
http://asimplegeekylife.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/other-asian-supermarket-stores.html
A Simple Geeky Life 