Big Wok, Nottingham Review

Good Points
No limit as to how much you eat, fairly wide vegetarian selection (if you're not too particular) the price is all inclusive except for drinks. Premises clean and fairly well presented. Waiters were fairly efficient (but then they don't serve food; they only bring drinks and clear the tables).

Bad Points
The food was of poor quality, the receptionist on the door was extremely rude.

General Comments
My partner and I went here for a meal after work, Thursday 7 June 2007. I was not impressed with the food that I had, and I normally love Chinese, Japanese and Thai food. Just last week, I paid my second visit in as many weeks to Sushi Hiroba, near Holborn Tube station in London; perhaps the management of Big Wok could take a lesson or two from them in how to run a restaurant.



I had the following at Big Wok: banana fritters, made from very sweet over-ripe banana (they weren't meant as a desert as they were with the main course buffet); tofu in mango sauce, again, the mango sauce was so sweet they could have served it as a desert; potato tepanyaki, which actually managed to be quite nice; satay sauce, which again wasn't bad; seaweed, not very authentic & too salty, but ok; something called "Burmese Potato", which was so tasteless I left most of it; and as a last resort, I got some sweet chilli sauce, which I usually love, with some prawn crackers, but the chilli sauce was so vile I left that as well. In short, out of 7 main food items and sauces that I had, 4 were so bad that I left most of it on my plate.



OK, I wasn't expecting high cuisine from an oriental buffet restaurant, but for £9.99 per person, excluding drinks (which, again is not very different to what I paid at Sushi Hiroba, for two main courses with very generous helpings, excluding drinks), I was expecting better than I got, especially compared to at least two other oriental buffet restaurants I've eaten at.



I also wasn't very impressed when I was browsing the menu, and came across wording to the effect that the management reserved the right to demand payment up front (but like lots of British towns, Nottingham does have problems on Friday and Saturday nights with young people drinking too much) and a statement that if food was "wasted", the management reserved the right to charge double!!



However, I would have simply dismissed it as a just not desperately great place, except just as we were leaving, the receptionist on the door asked to see our receipt. Now had it been latish on a Friday or Saturday, I might have seen why this might be necessary, but this was a Thursday evening at 7:45, and mostly the customers were well presented, and all sober, well behaved people ranging in age from 30s to 50s. After we produced our receipt, I told the receptionist, "I shan't be coming here again" , to which she replied, "we get plenty of people here, so we don't care!" and when I responded that I'd ensure I wrote an online review of the place, she shut the door in our faces. I was blunt with the woman about her establishment, but I did not use bad language, nor did I make any personal comments or make any threats, other than stating my perfectly legitimate right to complain.