Memory of Szechuan — Restaurant in Reading

Memory of Sichuan is a Sichuan Chinese restaurant in Reading town centre, that serves traditional main dishes and hotpot. Their mains are pretty authentic, with a particularly good value weekday lunch menu deal, but this week we went for their hotpot and was blown away by it. It's £22 per person for unlimited buffet (order 8 items at a time, we ordered 3 times).

The main thing I loved about it was the variety of offerings available on their hotpot menu. You start off by choosing your soup base: plain, spicy (3 levels), pickled veg, or lamb bone soup base. You can half/half any of the soup bases except the lamb bone soup base. We went for half plain, half mildly spicy.

In addition to the normal thin meat slices, they had unlimited offal, seafood, vegetables, tofu/vermicelli, and even rice/noodles/dumplings! Their portion sizes are huge, we made the mistake of ordering both beef slices and lamb slices and that was enough meat for the entire meal, we wanted more seafood. The fish, shelled prawns, and squid were all fantastic. And though you don't want to fill up on carbs, the fact that they have udon/noodles/ho fun/fried rice for free is something I've not yet seen before at a hotpot buffet. I have to say that their homemade la mian stretched noodles were fantastic to finish off with, and the dumplings were pretty good too.

Some detractors were that the hotpot burner was not very fast and they fill it up pretty deep, so the pot simmered rather than boiled. Twice they forgot our enoki mushrooms orders (or did they run out but didn't tell us?), and sometimes they run out of sesame paste dip on the side but you can just ask for them to refill it. But all in all it's my favourite hotpot place in the UK now, and I've been to plenty in London. Some other hotpot options in Reading include The Imperial Kitchen at Genting Casino and Kung Fu Kitchen, but I'd be surprised if they can be better. £22 for such a variety of unlimited hotpot offerings is an incredible deal, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone wanting a warm hearty meal...

RAW CHICKEN! BAD ATMOSPHERE! BAD MANNERS!

Went here a couple nights back with some friends, after walking past. The smell coming from the door was delicious so thought we would give it a try.

On booking the table, the person on the other end of the phone needed an attitude adjustment; but at 9PM at night, we let it slide, as she must have been working all day.... But they were just as rude once we arrived the next day! Once seated, we looked through the menu, but three times within the space of five minutes, the waitress came past the table to see if we were ready to order; she walked away huffy when we said we needed a few more minutes.

Once our meals arrived: Deep fried beef in cumin - was stone cold and dripping with oil. Granted this is deep fried and expected to be a little oily, it was still cold. This was not explained to us, but when we complained that it was cold, the waitress was rude in the explaining that is how it is served. We chose to leave this, which didn't go down too well with the waitress nor chef whom poked his head from the kitchen when the waitress took it back and tattled on us....! We ordered Chicken Satay, and when it was brought to us, the waitress stated that it was cooked, with a hint of sarcasm in her voice. But once we started eating.... It was raw in the middle!!!! This time we complained, although the waitress looked very uninterested in our complaint and took the plate away without an apology.

On the plus, the Coke Cola was perfect... But that was it for us; we asked for the cheque!

In total, we paid around £80 for meals that we barely touched or did not eat; bad manners and rudeness gain you nothing. We most definitely will not be back in this restaurant and will be advising friends against a visit...

A group of 4 us went to this restaurant last night for their all you could eat buffet. We where not impressed with the food or service. The food, came out at all different time and we had to remind the waitress sevral times of what we wherw still waiting for.. we were contantly told just to order one thing at a time ( for 4 of us?) and "if we wanted more we could order after" considering you are made to pay for your food prior to being able to order (this included drinks to??) We where made to feel very uncomfortable about anything we ordered. The service was extremely slow and out of the 4 people who shared the "service" to our table only one lady seems to want to be polite I'm guessing it's because they charge you a fee for service charge anyways so no need to be polite to certain customers. Like others have commented previously there seem to be certain tables which where waiting on hand and foot and got everything before others regardless weather you ordered first or not.The food was very greasy and bland and not not nice the only thing that was worth eating was the duck, but for a table of 4 we asked for half a crispy duck and we're told no, best to get a quarter and if you want more ask after.. we got the duck hand a pancake each and had to order another duck which took another 20mins. I would not no go back and not...