No football here, just fantastic Chinese! (Crystal Palace (Old Harlow))

Member Name: katykicker

Product:	Crystal Palace (Old Harlow)
Date:	11/08/09 (85 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Delicious food, lovely staff, reasonable prices, lots of choice, hot, fresh and individual.

Disadvantages: None.

We recently had a few things that we wanted to celebrate so my fiancé decided to treat us to a meal out and Crystal Palace was his first choice.

Crystal Palace Chinese is located in Old Harlow and it is in the High Street making it fairly easy to find.

As soon as we entered we were met by a member of staff who checked our reservation and showed us to a table, we were then given the option to change but the one we had initially been offered was suitable for us. The table was an adequate size for two people and the seating was comfortable enough with just enough leg room to stop 6' 2" Tom from booting me in the shins.

The service was prompt and we were asked if we wanted to order drinks straight away, we did, however, I would usually like a few minutes just to see what the prices are and what's on offer.

After we had our drinks order taken we then had a glance at the menu where we saw that our Cokes were £1.40 each, however, there was lots of other drinks available such as beers & lagers from £3.00, bottle water at £4.00 and various soft drinks from around £1.40. There was also white wine, red wine & champagne available at prices that I consider to be pretty standard with house wine selling for around £9-£10. As I don't drink alcohol very often I opted out of this because I dislike nothing more, when in a restaurant, than seeing a bottle of wine at three or four times the price I can purchase it for.

Crystal Palace is a buffer with a difference where you actually order the dishes that you want, from the menu, and it's brought out, hot and fresh, to your table. This helps to alleviate waste & food sitting there all evening which I think is fantastic. There are two different ways of ordering from the menu and the one that we chose is as follows:

Choose 2 Starters each (Peking Ribs, Sesame Prawn Toast, Satay Chicken & Spring Rolls - all delicious and very large portions).
Choose 1 Middle Course each (Peking Duck with pancakes & Chicken Noodle Soup - The duck was lovely and tender with minimal fat and the soup had a delicious spicy broth which I could've drank all night).
Choose any other items from the menu, as many as you want (By this point we were quite full so shared an egg fried rice and had two Chicken dishes which were delicious).

Between each course we had a break of around 15-20 minutes and this was perfect for letting the previous course settle and have a chat or just pour over the menu to decide what we were going to order next (with eyes bigger than our bellies!).

We were glad that we opted to share a portion of rice because the bowls are huge and definitely made for two. We decided not to have anything further as we were quite stuffed but it is possible to just continue ordering food all evening if that's what you want to do, however, it's not possible to take unfinished food home so don't be greedy and just order what you want!

The price for the special banquet is £12.50 - £18.50 per adult, depending on which day of the week it is, and children can take part for half the adult price. Initially I thought this seemed a little expensive for a 'buffet' style meal but when we arrived and I saw just how it worked I would happily pay the £18.50 Saturday night price. It was worth the extra money just to choose our food ourselves and see it brought out fresh and piping hot.

The special banquet for two with soft drinks each came to just under £45.00 and though this is about three or four times the amount I would usually spend on takeaway we had such a lovely evening that it was really worth paying extra.

We thoroughly enjoyed our food and the service that we received was very good. The staff were nice and attentive and even checked if we were ok eating with chopsticks. Also, there was a table full of really rude customers while we were there and the staff just seemed to ignore some of the racist, crude comments and get on with serving them. Even though these customers were rude and arrogant they still got the same great service as everyone else.

I am going to rate Crystal Palace 5/5 as the food was superb, the drinks were reasonably priced and the service was very good. Best of all we had a lovely night in each others company eating one of our favourite foods!

Summary: A fantastic Chinese restaurant in Old Harlow.