Kwok Restaurant — Restaurant in City of Edinburgh

This was a very disappointing experience. Foolishly, I did not follow my 'entry level test' for a Chinese restaurant i.e. are there any Chinese people eating there? There was not, but went ahead based on reviews and the fact that it was in a very convenient location for us. We were given a 2-hour window for our 'dining experience' which is fine as this is common practice. However, it becomes less fine when certain things/starters on the menu take half an hour to prepare, so in effect you cannot have them. I have eaten many, many times in hundreds of restaurants in China and the food in this place bore no resemblance to proper Chinese food. I appreciate that Chinese food here is cooked to the UK palate, but two of the dishes that we had were cooked to 'zero palate'. My partner had the rainbow chicken special. It was thin, pale, tasteless strips of cheap and nasty chicken with some red and yellow peppers (hence the rainbow). It was the most bland and tasteless dish I have ever tasted. No (or at least extremely little) ginger, chili, garlic...anything. She ate about a third of it and gave up. I had the Thai Royal Tom Yam Chicken: "A delicious Thai Dish. The bed of Chicken is marinated slightly, deep fried with the delicious touch of Sweet Chilli Sauce & flavoured with Lemon Grass" It was a fried/deep fried breaded piece of chicken smothers in off the shelf sweet chilli sauce. It had never seen lemon grass and did not include a single Thai ingredient except the chilli dipping sauce that had been poured all over it. It was simply the worst dish I had ever had in any restaurant. Quite rightly, they did not charge us for my dish, and, in fairness the others in our party said their food was OK/good. My daughter had sea bream (I think) and that was really good - good perfectly and with some good flavour. It seems they use their 'specials' to make a killing by serving food that costs nothing to produce and calling it a special 'lures' people in. The restaurant was full and everyone seemed to be enjoying their meals, but then, I wonder how many of the white middle aged customers had eaten much proper Chinese food. So, in short, this restaurnat might be OK for you, but not if you want proper, tasty...

If you enjoy flushing ten pounds down the toilet and being treated like a dog by the manager who had all the demeanor and grace of a pig at a glutinous and exclusive banquet , then you might like it. I had the duck which was advertised and sold on the basis that it was traditional Cantonese , when I opened up the box it was swimming in a bath of brown sickly sweet sauce rubbish cuts of mushrooms and sweet corn thrown into the garbage mix to further compound the levels of rubbish. The sad thing is the cuts of poultry were not too bad (for this type of place ) but they had to ruin it with standard 1980s take away sauce as the main body of the food also the arrogant manager told me that their would be Chinese leaves and that it would be trad , but it was just the worst kind of chinese takeaway( UK high street circa 1987 ) adapted piss you could find no doubt the kind of food that tastes palatable after a skin full of beer. Rice tasted over done. Really unfriendly ambiance too if you don't happen to be white and middle aged so I get where a previous reviewer was coming from on that score. The ridiculous women refused to sell me a beer while I waited for the order despite it being well before ten o clock at night and said it was because I was taking away but I made it clear I wanted to buy one while I was waiting on the premises. if I'd looked full white I think the response would have been different. My response if I ever feel like a local Chinese dinner around here will be to visit farm foods foreign meal section and stock up since the quality is better there for a fraction...

I have used Kwok Brasserie in Ratcliffe Terrace for almost 20 years. They were one of the first Chinese restaurants in Edinburgh to omit Mono-Sodium-Glutamate (MSG - regularly used in Chinese food to give it more flavour, but can make some people very unwell) from their cooking, which was what attracted me to them in the first place. They have a wide variety of dishes which are all freshly prepared - we particularly like the beef and green pepper in black bean sauce and the Kung Po chicken . The restaurant welcomes young children at lunch time and in the early evening and they will even take time to show them how to use chopsticks and expect them to share your food. It is a good place to take young children because they don't have to wait long for their food to arrive, and the food is colourful and very tasty. The same extensive menu is available for take aways and deliveries and it arrives hot, tasty and in...