Oriental Express — Restaurant in England

Right from the off - I totally recommend this place. Parking is just up a little hill from the paid car park, so it is free,

I got there at midday on a Sunday, and straight in. Sofas in the bar area to wait. Lots of boxes all over the corners, which is the only reason Atmos is 4 stars, not 5.

Second thing to say, reviews are negative about the bathrooms. They have been redone. I think recently as can sort of smell "fresh tiles". New sinks, all stainless (no pic as someone was in there so felt wrong). But assurance, bathrooms are clean and no wobbly taps!).

When I got to my table, it was just cleaned, all damp and shiny. Got my food - various plates to try things. All a very good temp. One of my plates was mucky, so got a fresh one, and that plus my soup bowl very quickly taken away.

Various things to try.

The Fruit Salad is FRESH fruit - not tinned (that's a big bonus). Plus the ice cream machine was working very well.

Again, would definitely recommend. I will certainly be returning. Some small bits of advice to the owner: Might be better if the napkins were by the Cutlery. As you get your plates from one end. Your Cutlery from the other, and the napkins are at both ends. Just nicer if they were together.

Boxes in the bar area... get rid. Not the best look when you first walk in. And not sure if it's right to charge 50p for a small jug of tap water.

These are all tiny gripes.

Everything you may have heard about mucky floors or the bathrooms etc... for me, ignore them now. Price was £11.50 for the buffet. Good value, considering how many things I tried (could never do that with a takeaway).

The chicken and sweetcorn soup is really good as a starter too. There were children there with families. It does start to get a little noisy, but you soon adjust. Don't let that put you off.

Food is better than I expected. Place is cleaner than I expected (from the reviews...). This was my first time there.

Recommended. Whatever was wrong before, isn't wrong now, so far...

For the price and being a self service establishment, this place offers reasonable selection of Chinese and few Indian recipes along with rice, noodles etc. It also had a couple of pasta dishes. Some dishes could usefully be seasoned more e.g. chicken and cashew nut or indeed have their sauces thickened. There was no evidence of crispy duck pancakes being offered here. There is a small 'Mr Whippy' style icecream or fruit salad dessert servery area. Evidence of a 'salad bar' counter ran parallel to main servery area that contained nothing except lettuce and what appeared to be potato salad. Some buffet server slots were empty when we visited at lunchtime - as price increases per person by £1.00 at night perhaps these empty spots were for evening only dishes?

Decor throughout is simple however the vinyl tablecloths could usefully use a regular wipe down between customers with surface cleaning spray to reduce overall table and chair stickiness. Young staff, although pleasant, did not regularly remove used dishes from tables, waiting instead till customer left. Indeed they rarely moved at all from the area nearest till and bar in the 90 minutes my family were in the restaurant. Custom was flowing throughout our visist with several larger families arriving. No-one appeared to wait long to be seated. Larger groups i.e. 10+ are best to ring ahead and book for seating.

I understand the owners preference for payment up front on arrival for buffet (suggesting some previous issues with non-payment by late evening patrons). Cards are acceptable here. However it would be nice to be welcomed into the restaurant and have their process explained and equally to have time to chose a drink rather than being harried to chose and pay for it before being seated. This is the only 'buffet style' oriental venue we've found between...

Absolutely vile place. Do not waste your money. In fact I wouldn't even eat here again if it was free. I have ended up with chronic food poisoning. I have had to have stool samples taken at the GPS. Also, I was less impressed with the way allergies are dealt with. My 4 year old son has a severe nut allergy which I told staff about on entry, to which they handed me a sheet of paper with a list of foods we should avoid. We get to the rancid food display that looked like it had been there since the weekend before, and hardly anything was labelled. And the odd label that was on display like the "chicken satay" that was on list of contains nuts.. had no label on the actual 'satay' sign to warn of the nut allergy risk. In the end my son ate chips and curry sauce just to avoid a potential anaphylaxis shock. Imagine if I let him just go help himself like kids do? I dread to think. The so called Indian selection was appalling. Cheap Tinned veg with pellet peas and square carrots mixed in a vile sauce that literally looks like my dogs sick. The choice and variety of food is shocking, then the quality of food makes it even more so disgraceful. I only wished I checked the reviews before I come here. I witnessed Freshly cooked food being dumped ontop of old dried out food, rather than taking the old tray away and leaving the fresh out. No wonder so many people have been ill from this dirty contaminated poorly run shambles.

I have reported this good for nothing hovel to the environmental health department. It deserves to be shut down.

If I can just stop one person from eating there and becoming as sick as I have been, then my review has been...