Restaurante Chino Pekin — Restaurant in Benalmádena

We gave 3 stars after our first visit, but have been back and now changing to 2.

Often busy, the restaurant has a few 3 course set menus from about €6 to €10 per person. Great if you have many mouths to feed.

Visit 1 - We skipped the set menus and went for: • Singapore fried rice • chicken in hot sauce • salt and pepper ribs • crispy duck • curry sauce • bottle of house white wine. It came to just under €37. Such a bargain. Although not bad, not all the dishes hit the spot for us. We thought Singapore style rice and noodles would have some spice, but the rice was more like yung chow fried rice. The only kick from the chicken in hot sauce seemed to come from the onions! Not hot at all, for us at least. The ribs were tiny! They were really well done a chewy. I like them this way as I hate jellyish ribs, but Luke would have liked them softer. They were more salt than pepper, but we enjoyed the flavour of these. The duck was cooked to perfection with plenty of pancakes and accompanist to fill them. We’d go again for the duck for sure. The curry sauce was a little mild in flavour and on the thin side, but it was alright and helped the rice out as that lacked the flavour we wanted. The house white was perfectly drinkable and went well with the food. I did have to ask for a fresh glass as mine smelt musty, like it had been dried with a dirty damp tea towel. I could smell it as soon as the glass came near my face.

Simply, efficient service and food that’s cheap and average. Not mind blowing, but a good option if you’re towards to end of your holiday and your euros are running low.

Visit 2 - We wanted to eat somewhere else, but a few choices were closed so we figured a second visit would be alright. We asked what were the hottest dishes on the menu and were told what we’d ordered on visit one, which wasn’t spicy. Unfortunate the flavours seemed to be more muted than last time.

We had a spring roll and it was entirely full of Chinese cabbage. Not a bean sprout in sight. Imagine what white tastes like…that.

We ordered a noodle dish and had to ask for it 3 times. By the time it came we had finished our protein/mains and were fuming. Not even an apology or token removal from the bill. Then we tasted them…the noodles were tagliatelle! They were not noodles. No way!

We must have had a good day and some of the best dishes visit 1 as visit 2 was very...

Pretty poor experience. Both ordered set menu and soft drinks. Waitress spilled quite a lot of coca cola on the table, apologised, all good, but rather than changing out the very wet sticky tablecloth and replacing the coca cola, she just put a single paper napkin on the spill and disappeared. Not great. Ok. Ordered the set meals. Food was mostly fine, starters were nice, noodles and chicken curry decent though the ribs (my mains) were very dry and awful. Ordered dessert which never arrived. After about half an hour of waiting, my friend went in to check. Waitress had sat down and forgotten to put the dessert order through. Fine, asked if she could bring the dessert and the bill. Waitress brought the WRONG table's bill, no dessert (though part of the set menu). Told her. She went in and brought the correct bill, still no dessert. We gave up, paid and left but certainly were...

We visited this restaurant and won't be going back. It took ages to be served, despite the fact we were the only people in the restaurant initially. Drinks were warm (in a heatwave!). Service was poor and then the food arrived intermittently. We received the Singapore rice first (nice enough), 15 minutes later our starter of chicken satay arrived, this was a really pale sauce with no peanut flavour. And 10 minutes later we received chicken chop suey (no beansprouts? but reasonably pleasant). I would give this one a miss. If it is like this on a quiet day, I don't hold out much hope for a busy period. There are many nice Chinese restaurants in Benalmadena, so don't...