Good Earth Express

I have been ordering from the Good Earth for around 8 years now.

I first ordered when I was living in West Hampstead, and now do place an order now and then through the hungry house website.

What to expect: good quality chinese take away / delivery. The food tends to be a bit less oily than your usual chinese take aways, and they do take care with the preparation and packaging. The order is usually delivered sealed.

I can recommend the crispy shredded beef and egg fried rice. I usually pair this up with a veg dish containing some sauce as the beef is served dry.

Always on time, I am holding back on 4 stars as it is a tad on the expensive side.

We order takeaways from here and have never been disappointed .. The service is friendly and the food is always delivered hot and on time ..

Just reviewing this place from takeaway perspective... after having 2 takaways from here I thought a review was in order... it delivers Chinese style food, although this is where all similarities with other Chinese takeaways ends.

The food clearly is very fresh, top notch organic ingredients are used and it feels very healthy. Also chopsticks napkins etc are packaged by disabled people (honestly- a charity thing) and all packaging is recycled/carbon neutral... even the guy who delivered it was polite and friendly and looked like a catalogue model.

For some, good earth will be the best Chinese TA ever and they will not ever think about alternatives again.

However in my view good earth is a bit of an oxymoron. To start with I like my Chinese takeaways to be called something like happy wing tsun or sung fung etc, good earth is a bit too try hard non descript. Also there is the price, it is really expensive for what it is, for two main dishes, rice noodles and a couple of spring roles it was 30 odd quid. Portions are also on the smallish side too. Next is the fact that it is too healthy, I think takeaways should be a bit of a treat, treat because you know you can't eat such salty, fatty but tasty food everyday. However good earth is so well balanced, fresh and salt/msg free that GPs probably refer patients recovering from heart bypasses and obese diabetics. For example the sezchuan chicken was made using real chicken breast, this would have been fine if it was served at the David Lloyd cafe but in a takeaway I think obscure little rectangles of meat are best. I didn't have them but I'd imagine the pork balls are probably made from filo pastry or dusted with semolina. lastly i'd rather them knock off a few quid and ship in their chopsticks from China allowing me to get my charity feel good glow from my monthly direct debit to oxfam that I may or may not have.

So to summarise, good earth is tastey, healthy and ethical, however unless you are the sort of person who gets excited about Logan berries, reads the guardian, has shares in WWW.howtobecarbonneutral.com and regularly worries about whether you're on the latest celebrity diet... I would not bother with good earth, you may as well get Ocado to deliver a waitrose Chinese meal, it'll probably be as good and save you a few quid for a bottle of wine.

I' ve ordering for a few years but tonight will certainly be the last time; food was dissapointing; i ordered the lemon grass chicken and the spicy prawns. The chicken dish was plain and not much flavour going on; the prawn dish was not fresh at all judging by the smell.

Great Take out- a cut above sloppy chinese or a cardboard pizza. Quick delivery and restaurant quality food. Extensive menu and reasonably priced- ythe thai steamed prawns are a definate favorite of mine as is the lemon chicken and the chilli beef. Perfect night in.

No stars I'm afraid. We've been using The Good Earth for years and they have been consistently good. However, something has gone horribly wrong in the last week or two as every take out we've ordered has been awful. The quality has dropped unbelievably. New chefs? New owners? Rubbish. Don't use them.

Disappointing; i ordered the lemon grass chicken and the spicy prawns; lemon grass chicken recipe is not as it used to beno traces of lemon grass in any case; the prawn dish was not freshit looks as if it was microwaved; will not order again!

havent tried the food yet....will try it later. but i stopped by while checking out the neighborhood to c if they delivered to hotel right around the corner, NO. shame.