Just a quick post, I thought I would try and make this more blog-like than wannabe restaurant reviewer!

For lunch when I was arriving back in Euston station at the rightish time, but too late to take advantage of all you can eat curry offers I had amazing pakora and samosas at Ambala Indian sweet shop on Drummond Street, by Euston. This has been touched on previously but is here in a little more detail-

I had hot samosas with a very crispy pastry, there was a delicious simple but spicy vegetarian filling, I'm afraid no more detail but they were definitely good. I had these with a mountain of pakora of a massive range of veg, amazingly these were not soggy despite being kept warm. A truly great and massive lunch for less than £2.

And of course I then had an obligatory piece of carrot halwa which I quite like, though here I found it a little greasy and then as a glutton for punishment, or just as a glutton I had A.N.Other Indian sweet which as usual I find too sweet or texturally too grainy. (Actually, it occurs to me that as i can never remember the name of the ones I don't like, I may just be having the same 2 unpleasant sweets over and over, a la Groundhog day. But somehow I doubt it). Still a great lunch bargain.

Buyoyed by this experience I deliberately set out to have similar Pret/Eat beating lunches and headed to chinatown (not on the same day, come on, I'm not that fat) to try some of the cake shop places I had noticed there.

Golden Gate on Macclesfield Street, just off Gerrard St. is my favourite in the area I think and I ended up going there several times. The pork pastries are delicious, juicy pork tasting as it ought, with a sweet and gooey barbecue sauce. Pastry is flaky and fine, the meat tastes as it ought. The only drawback is they are cold, there may be a microwave but I have not yet summoned the courage to ask the rather scary lady at the till. Still a bargain at 80p each.

They also have good custard pastries, I love the unctuousness of chinese custard, so mouth filling, its like uber-birds, which works for me. I'm not a fan of the red bean paste sweet pastries, but suspect I just don't like the texture rather than them being particularly bad here. A good cheap central lunch with plenty to interest.

Finally at the end of Gerrard Street is Kowloon, a buffet I have never tried but which doesn't tempt, but also with a cake shop. When I went here I had a warm pork puff and thought maybe they kept things warm as policy which would be great. Actually, though I had a cold curry beef puff so I must have just got lucky and had one out of the oven.

Unfortunately, the pork smelt really high or offally, ok in its place but not what I'd expected. There was also very little pork compared to the amount of pastry. The curry beef puff also had a lot more pastry than filling, and the curry was pretty bland. Not bad exactly, and if it was the only option it would make a change, but no point when there are better within 2 minutes walk.

Any other ideas for non-chain but snacky style lunches? More Indian, Chinese or any other ideas welcomed...