Golden River — Restaurant in England

The WORST Chinese restaurant I've ever experienced. Avoid it like the plague. I ordered a vodka and diet coke and it came in a very small wine glass and the coke was flat.. Obviously out of a plastic bottle that was probably open for weeks given the lack of customers. We were the only ones there when we arrived and we had to ask if they were actually open. There was no music and only two staff in sight. A guy near me asked for a beer and they only did bottled beers.. no draught. They obviously didn't want to fork out for the basic infrastructure of a normal restaurant. There were around 4 or 5 starters available. No chicken wings, crispy duck pancakes or the usuals. We ordered the butterfly king prawns and they came in giant balls of batter with just lemon and lettuce.. no sauce, although they brought some sweet chilli sauce after my wife asked them. Just not appetising at all. Much better in breadcrumbs and always bring a sauce / dip. The mains.. Well.. horrendous. The sweet and sour chicken was similar to the prawn starters and gluped in a dark sauce.. No vegetables like you get at pretty much every other Chinese eatery. The chicken was cooked in one big piece and sliced into pieces. The egg fried rice was grey and bland.. Just rice and hardly any egg. My wife had the special chow mein and it was just a pile of inedible gloop. The vertical blinds were filthy. How this place is still open is a mystery. An absolute...

Ok, firstly after waking up this morning and thinking, I’ll just check what people think of this place after last nights joke of a meal. I literally can’t believe that people rate this place highly and say it’s ‘authentic’ and ‘tasty’. It’s laughable. Now, I don’t usually care if I have a bad meal but seriously, It was so bad I have actually made an effort to log into my google account which I haven’t done for years and make this review which I would never do. The ‘food’..... started with butterfly prawns, basically battered slimy prawns which were drowned in oil. I pressed my fork down on the batter and oil was just pouring out of it, gross. Then sweet and sour chicken, Jesus, It was basically two gooey stringy chicken pieces the dreaded batter again which was so thick and pappy you struggled to find the chicken which I was trying to pick out the middle of it. The sauce was disgusting, watery and it was like it was bought in from big tubs, not freshly made and left an irony taste in your mouth. The chicken was weird, like opaque spongy stringy, fatty weird stuff. Had some rice on the side so ate that and quickly stood up, payed the woman behind the bar who stared at us all night and got the hell out of there. Funnily enough we were the only two of four people in the entire restaurant....

Really disappointed this evening. Worked late today, worked hard all weekend too and decided a chinese takeaway would be just the treat. I have decided to review this as it is the third time I have not been happy with my dinner from the Golden River, Benefit of the doubt has now expired. On two occasions iv "sucked it up buttercup" but tonight it was simply too awful to ignore. Although they offered to cook me another dish I'm afraid it was so bad it has put me off ordering from here again. To be fair they have given me a refund, altho in reality I'm left out of pocket having had to visit twice as naturally they insist on the food being returned and of course hungry. It's such a shame when you decide to spend your hard earned money in a local food establishment that they can't meet an acceptable and even beyond standard...