Obviously I was thoroughly looking forward to seeing my catch up buddies – we meet up every 2 to 3 months for some dinner and have resorted to pulling a place out of a hat as we find it so hard to choose where to go! This time, Banquet was pulled out and I think I was looking forward to the Chinese almost as much as the catch up itself!
I quite honestly could not remember when I had last had a Chinese although I do remember that I was a bit let down by it. I had heard great things about Banquet so was very much looking forward to trying it for myself. I had tried to look at the menu online beforehand, as I always like to do, but it wasn’t that easy to follow so I was hoping for the best when we got there!
The table was booked for 7:15 and we were seated straight away, the restaurant had a really nice feel about it and I was having a good look at everyone else’s food around us – it all looked so good!! After quite some thinking, we decided to have 3 starters to share and then picked 2 dishes each. We all had different tastes when it came to food so thought it best to just have our own when it came to the main meals.
Starters were, Ribs in a lovely sauce (spicy but not too spicy), satay chicken skewers and my favourite vegetable spring rolls. We were not disappointed and all thoroughly enjoyed each dish! I would normally add a photo here but as we ate it as soon as it came out, I forgot to take a pic – must try harder next time!!
As soon as these were finished the old plates were taken away and our main meals arrived – portion sizes were great! My god, the food was good and it was worth waiting this long for a Chinese to have a decent one! I went for the vegetable chow mein (always a must have for me when having Chinese) and beef with cashew nuts. I loved both dishes!! We enjoyed our meals very much, and I shared a little dessert of raspberry and white chocolate cheesecake which was equally as tasty and although it looked rather small when it first came out it was just enough to satisfy our sweet tooth.
I was pleased with the food, the service and the atmosphere of the restaurant but I was very disappointed the place was only open until 9:30 which meant at around 9 pm we felt like we were starting to be rushed. The staff very much wanted us finished, paid up and out by 9:30 which did let the place down for me. We would have quite happily had another drink and stayed catching up for another half an hour or so and to be pretty much asked to pay up and leave it did make me feel quite let down. Its a lesson learnt to either go somewhere else after work if you want a real catch up, or if you really do want a decent Chinese you need to get there earlier!
Foodies 