redgeek: Longdan Express Oriental Supermarket

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Longdan Express Oriental Supermarket - London Elephant and Castle

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.

Longdan Express Oriental Supermarket

Opened on 21st Jan 2013

The Entrance and there's a cafe called "aobaba" - not set up yet I think...

A look from the outside

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...

This is what you see when you go in!

The cookery utensil section at the back of the store

A look from the other end

A lot of frozen sections...

Ready meals and desserts!

Lots of stuff ^^

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)...

Japanese and Korean frozen foods

Vegetable section

Cookery utensils...

Wow!!

Awesome cookery stuff ^^

Other stuff...

Cute sweets!

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!!).

Yeeeeah!!! Bento Boxes (lunch boxes)!!!

Ordinary lunch boxes

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.

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)!!

My second purchase

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

Website: www.longdan.co.uk

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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...