COSMO All You Can Eat World Buffet Restaurant | Manchester — Restaurant in Manchester

We visited Cosmo last night as a table of 5, you pay first and after seated which is totally understandable, the front lady was very nice and welcoming. We were seated and made our way after the drinks order to the buffet. For £21 each the buffet was very disappointing. The Indian side was 2 chicken dishes and 2 vegetarian, all broken popadums with no refill, and the pilau rice was so crunchy dried in oil it was left there for ages. Only scraps of the rice left and was so hard. The Chinese section was really a let down. I noticed 4 of the steel pans were just chips, salt and pepper chips which were literally fries with onions, Normal chips, sweet potato chips, hash brown triangles and hash brown balls. All just cheap potato. The Chinese section was salt and pepper pop corn chicken! Frozen deep fried popcorn with peppers and onion?! No salt and pepper chicken chunks, no salt and pepper chicken wings, no salt and pepper king prawns nothing. Just a cheap pop corn chicken tray. One diced beef dish of Mongolian beef, one chicken curry and sweet and sour chicken which is basically chicken nuggets and pour the sweet and sour sauce on yourself. No pineapple or vegetables in the sauce like authentic sweet and sour. Not much chicken and beef options at all just mainly pork. The pancakes were with shredded CHICKEN. No shredded duck. I have never had shredded chicken pancakes before. The sushi counter was just triangles of plain rice, sushi rolls with minimal fish and a few steamed prawns. No tempura prawns or any sushi rolls worth eating if you didn’t want just a lump of wet rice. There’s a hot dog counter if you want a hot dog. The Sunday dinner had no fresh veg, no roast potatoes left and only pork was available as the roast, no beef turkey or even chicken was cooked. The salad bar was the only thing I enjoyed. The deserts were dry squares of cake, the ice cream was only a few left nothing is restocked quick enough for the vast amount of people you are charging to eat. The chocolate fountain was turned off so I guess you were left to just scoop from the bottom. No mini donuts or big Marshmellos strawberries nothing to dip in. Cheap tinned fruit salad and tinned fruits available with full bananas. The puddings were banana and custard which is so cheap. Or apple crumble and custard which was no bowls or anything small all had to be on you’re huge plate. No cold plates available for any cold desserts or ice cream. The selection of food is padded out with cheap fried foods , 4 kinds of chips onion rings nuggets popcorn chicken hashbrowns pizza etc just glorified oven food. the Chinese starters were so poor no crispy chicken no crispy prawns no prawn toast no wontons just frozen spring rolls and pork ribs, crab claws made me feel sick just chewy plastic and squid rings hard. The Indian rice was empty and was left was so hard and dry. Only two chicken dishes no keema no meat dishes no on the bone dishes no lamb or beef dishes. No pakoras no chicken tikka no kebabs nothing. Just frozen tiny samosas and split popadoms. The spaghetti bolognaise was sweet and the Mac cheese was tasted like paste. The seafood is ok if you just want mussels and a piece of fish if they refill it for you and you have a chance to take some. The quality of food was very poor. The refill drinks were dirty. The ice machine was broken and Coke was room temperature. The atmosphere is very noisy and rushed unorganised and chaotic. Waitresses take a long time to clear plates so left with limited space on tables. I rarely have any bad reviews living in Manchester but that was definitely £140 down the drain. I will not...

Cosmo was a surprising experience, in a good way! Let's get into it...

Expectations of buffets are usually low, it's hard to provide top quality taste and food when juggling all different cuisines but Cosmo does it fairly well.

The restaurant has a lift to access the first floor where the seating is located so it is wheelchair friendly. On arrival you'll be seated and asked what drinks you want, then you're good to set off and collect a plate and fill her up.

There are a lot of choices and obviously too much to try it all, but will break down what I had and the photos provided.

Potato curry - excellent authentic taste, has that takeaway warming taste of good flavours.

Korma curry - quite poor, was more like a microwave meal, creamy and runny but no strength in the taste, not at all like your takeaway curry or Indian restaurant. I'd be surprised if it had cashews in the korma paste used. It's enjoyable as food, but it's not a quality korma by any means

Duck pancake - less crispy duck, more shredded and soft, but still enjoyable. Not certain if the hoisin was hoisin, it seemed more like plum sauce to me which isn't a problem especially considering it's a buffet.

Ribs - these were as expected really, similar to most takeaway type of ribs, no complaints here.

Hong Kong chicken - was nice, had a thicker sauce which was heavy and tasteful, I enjoyed it wish I had more!

The Singapore noodles and egg rice were good, enjoyable, not bad quality.

Pizza - is made fresh in front of you, it's fairly basic dough and base, the sauce is okay, the toppings I felt weren't too great, it's not terrible but it's not anything special either. I'd still have another slice.

Teppanyaki - cooked fresh in front of you, a choice of squid rings, scallops, beef, chicken, gyoza. I had the beef, was very nice, would go back and have more of this, scallops were nice, but I was cautious eating them, no sickness though since we went so all good! The chicken gyoza were great, I forgot to get a picture but they were really good

Desert - chocolate ice cream was quite poor, basic and wasn't worth eating. But the soft serve ice cream was fantastic, just the same as a Mr whippy and brought back childhood memories, I had two. The chocolate fountain is nice, we filled the ice cream cone with it and had the chocolate as a drink, but it was a bit acidic when it shouldn't be.

What happens after you eat a lot of food? Nature, Of course. This was the most disappointing part of the whole experience. The toilets were neglected and awful. 2 cubicles, 1 toilet didn't even flush properly and was blocked. The second toilet didn't even have a toilet seat on it. These standards were unacceptable and unusable which really is extremely poor on the restaurant. Technically they should not even be operating without a usable toilet facility as the legislation states if there are over 10 seats (which this restaurant massively exceeds) there must be toilet facilities. Useable ones not blocked, broken flush, missing seat. If the restaurant feels they are usable then this is disgusting and filthy standards to impose on diners. The toilets were also unchecked Sunday, we left at 3pm and photo was taken then.

Overall, we did have a good time, and would come back to try the dishes we missed out on and for the cheap cost. It is very affordable for what is on offer at £21...

My friend asked me where I want to go for my birthday dinner and I said let's go to Cosmo because I like buffet and Cosmo is a big chain, they are in all the big cities in UK but I've never been to any so let's go to our local one. We were sat down by a gentleman who had a serious face, not really a smiley person for a front of house. Later a dark hair lady waiter came and charged us for our bill before we could go to take food which was completely standard but we never saw this dark hair lady again. We were the first table in that section and right after we sat down more people were sat in that section and a blonde hair lady with dark eyebrows started covering that section. she was very friendly to everyone that came in after us, possibly a bit too friendly as she advised the table of 6 next us that instead of paying separately they should all let one of the lady who had NHS discount pay for all, this way all of them could get 10% discount compared to only 1 person getting it. The blonde hair lady waiter also told that table of 6 that for one of the children she should have charged price of adult but she charged price of kid instead (I am not 100% sure as I may have heard this part wrong). the blonde lady was nice to other tables in our section as well checking if everything was okay, clear the plates, ask if they needed any more drinks, etc. the standards you know. But our table just seems invisible to them since we made the payment. Not a single person bothered to check if we needed more drinks, if everything was okay, or clearing any of our plates. At first I thought maybe they didn't want to take the plates away as they weren't sure if we were gonna use it again. but then I stack two plates up and still no one bothered taking them away, because our table is so small we didn't have space to put a new plate down so I put the dirt plates on this shelf over my head behind me. Still no one came to take. Then I decided to stack 3 plates on top of each other on my table and leave for 5 minutes to see if anyone would take them. I was back on my seat 5 minutes later with a plate of dessert and the dirt plates were still there, my partner said no one came while I was gone. I sat there for a few more minutes with plates stacked and the blond lady going around tables next to us, different people bringing drinks to the tables next to us, the gentleman showing seats to new customers in our sections, at least 3 staff walked pass my our table and no one bothered to do anything. throughout the whole meal we were bringing dirty plate to the designated area ourselves which was not a big deal because of the price and it was 3% service charge what can I ask for that? however what upset me is that other tables are getting all the attention and not a single staff member spoke to us after they took our money. at first I was joking with my friend saying maybe because we are both Asians but then I looked around and saw everyone sat in our section were white. However I am sure this was all in my head and it's just me overthinking it.

Food was good for the price but we were 2 people sat in between 2 tables of 6. The spaces left between tables were so narrow that the guys knocked our table twice while trying to get out to get food and spilled our drinks over the table, which we cleaned it up ourselves with tissues as we were invisible...