No Chopsticks Required (Oriental Buffet Restaurant (Burnley))

Member Name: kitschkitty

Product:	Oriental Buffet Restaurant (Burnley)
Date:	28/09/08 (282 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None.

Disadvantages: Awful food, awful service, overpriced drinks.

If you've read my reviews of the Eden Tree and Ashoka in Burnley, you may believe that I heap praise on every restaurant I've ever visited. Just to prove that's not the case, I thought I'd take the chance to write about the Oriental Buffet Restaurant.

The Oriental Buffet Restaurant opened in Burnley a couple of years ago and is located on Bethesda Street, a small road at the side of Marks and Spencer. From the outside, it appears quite inviting with its bright red signage and the buzz of people inside. When you enter, you will be greeted by a waitress and taken to your table. From here, you can order an extortionately priced Coca Cola or, if you're really pushing the boat out, you can take out a second mortgage on your home and opt for an alcoholic beverage. Obviously I am slightly over-exaggerating here, but the drinks are expensive, as is the case in most buffet restaurants.

There is no menu to order from as all the food served here is chosen from the buffet. You pay per head and the prices vary according to the days of the week and the time with Friday and Saturday evenings being the most expensive periods. I don't have a price list to hand but I seem to recall the 'prime' Friday and Saturday evening slots costing about £10 per head with discounts available for children.

Your waitress will then point you in the direction of the buffet where you can grab a plate and sample Chinese delights to your heart's content. The selection of food is quite large with sausages, chips and similar available for those who simply refuse to touch 'foreign muck.' The Oriental selection includes rice, noodles and a variety of curries as well as tempura and prawn toasts etc. Whilst there is a decent range, you probably won't find any new and exciting dishes to sample as they're all quite standard Chinese takeaway fare. On Friday and Saturday nights, the selection is a little more extensive than at quieter times and you may get to 'enjoy' some duck.

So now you've walked around the various troughs of food, nibbling on a prawn cracker to sate your hunger pangs. For any dishes that didn't look quite like you'd expect them to, you can read the little tags to get a better understanding. And now you set about filling up your plate, which is quite easy considering the plates the restaurant supplies you with are only slightly bigger than a side plate. So you sit down and tuck in. But how does it taste? Disappointing is probably the best word to describe the food on offer at the Oriental Buffet Restaurant. It's is greasy and salty and the flavours of all the different dishes seem to merge into one. This also means you'll be gasping for more and more overpriced drinks to accompany your meal. Surprisingly, the only dish that has no fat in it is the duck which is dry and resembles cat food in appearance. It certainly lacks the aromatic flavour I would hope for from crispy duck.

On the off chance that you are enjoying your meal at the Oriental Buffet Restaurant, take care not be distracted from eating for a second. The waitresses are perhaps overly attentive. The last time I ate there every time I stopped to take a sip of drink or to tell one of my ever so interesting stories to the friend I was dining with, a waitress swooped in and ran off with my plate of food. I tried to raise this issue with her but unfortunately her grasp of English was limited to say the least and she just didn't understand. Not that I was surprised after the number of times I had to repeat my request for a glass of coke before she understood.

Despite the poor food and the lack of any real atmosphere, the restaurant does get surprisingly busy with lots of large parties visiting at weekends. If you are unfortunate enough to visit on the same night as three birthday boys and girls, don't be surprised when you are subjected to the most diabolical recording of Happy Birthday a dozen or so times during your stay. But despite all of this, there are many people in Burnley who visit over and over again. In fact, I remember seeing a recent documentary on TV about a young girl from Burnley entering into an American beauty pageant. The documentary showed the family at their 'favourite restaurant' and sure enough, it was the Oriental Buffet Restaurant.

I suppose it's up to you though who you side with. Do you agree with the family who get their twelve-year-old daughters hair bleached and teeth whitened in the hopes that she'll become the next Jordan (AKA Katie Price), or do you side with me who is lucky enough to have eaten good food in my life and can honestly say that this greasy tripe is not worth spending your hard earned cash on? I'll leave it for you to decide.

Summary: Possibly the worst Chinese I've tasted... ever!