Oriental City (or Ori tal C ty as I think the sign currently reads) is in Colindale and is basically an Oriental supermarket with the most mental food court ever and a row of Hello Kitty and Oriental Crockery shops on the side. The Segapark is a games arcade which is pretty shit, except there is a mini bowling alley, and the casino is a room of slot machines.
THAT SAID
It is amazing.
The food court is a massive patchwork quilt of lurid photos of different dishes, from China, Japan, Vientnam and Thailand (Korea is shunted around the corner for some reason) and they give you portions so massive and delicious you either feel bad about leaving so much or you throw up on the side of the north circular on the way home (true!)
I doubt there are many other places in London where you can find a whole row of shelves devoted purely to different brands of soy sauce, and there is great fun to be had in pootling around buying random stuff with fun packaging and only working out in the car home what it actually is you are eating (jellies shaped as fruits, slimming tea, fermented soybeans and these little coloured balls made of sweet rice btw)
I was also veh impressed to see a white lanky Postman Pat lookalike barking orders to the shelf stackers in fluent Mandarin.
Anyway, THE MAN (a.k.a Brent Council) want to shut down Oriental City and this would be a terrible shame, not only to all the bratty North London types like I who like Dim Sum and collecting Maneki Neko and other bits of tat, but to the large East Asian Communities that live in the area who see it as a cultural centre and vital resource.
So yes, go sign the petition HERE and stop it being turned into a load of swanky flats. I think they should save it, then petition again to get it done up; not just buy new letters E, N and I for the sign, but actually put more shops in there because frankly there is a lot of wasted space and I was not satisfied with the range of Maneki Neko available.
Make a difference yo...
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