An hour and a half later we left very full and quite happy. I had thought about ordering rice to accompany the hot pot but this was certainly not needed. They kept topping up the broth but we were also free to order as many raw ingredients as we wished as many times as we wished. The dinner was bottomless which makes the £20 price tag a lot easier to take. On the options I was surprised to see a lot of sweetbreads including, unusually for the UK, various livers, kidneys and tripes which I would love to have tried but my date for the evening is not so keen… From the extensive list of very fresh raw ingredients over the next hour we chose prawns, squid, fish balls, broccoli, rice noodles, chicken, pork belly, beef, and cabbage…Though we found the broth was quite bland so the stronger ingredients such as beef worked much better. We were taken over to a small table near the kitchen to chose from various sauces and spices for dipping. The chicken broth was stocked with lots of fresh vegetables including, unusually for Chinese food in my experience, tomatoes. They were not kidding about the “spicy” as it looked quite evil with a lot of hot peppers pieces floating in it and quite red in colour. Our hot pot arrived and it was a large stainless steel bowl divided in the middle with the broths on either side. We went down the middle in terms of spicy/not-spicy with half spicy and half chicken broth (you could also have just one of these or have the “preserved vegetable” stock as well). I have heard about this type of “Sichuan” hot pot and seen it on television but never tried it so now seemed like as good a time as any! The idea is that you pick from various broths that boil in a pot on top of a burner on your table into which you put the raw ingredients which stew in the broth. There was a separate sheet describing their “hot pot” option at £20 per person (minimum two people) for as much as you could eat. The menu is quite interesting with pictures of most dishes and quite a bit different than what you might normally expect from a Chinese take-away so much so that we really couldn't make up our mind. We were made very welcome the moment we arrived and seated in the middle of the restaurant. The interior is fairly cool with wood floors, simply decorated tables and chairs. In the area on Saturday we decided to give this a go. Every time it is busy with Chinese people enjoying the food - A good sign. In fairness, lunch is fine and worth the £7 they ask for, so long as you can resist ordering a soft drink.We keep walking by this Chinese restaurant going to and from Westfield. I will never go back for dinner at Kung Fu buffet for dinner. There are much better buffet restaurant and better quality food. For me, 10 minutes watching someone to cook 2 tiny pieces is more than whole life time experience. I guess this is their tactic to deter customers from either waiting or coming back for a 2nd time. I ended up being amused by watching the chef cooked my 2 tiny pieces, which took a good 10 minutes. The quantity was very tiny, but the chef would spend ages to cook only for one customer (yes, 2 pieces) at any one time. Each customer is supposed to have 2 pieces of tiny something (from 4 choice). c) The Teppanyaki was equally disappointing. That is not a proper Siu Mai, do they want to fool people who don't know about dim sum. b) one of the dim sum menu is 'Siu Mai', but they cheated customer by using much cheaper ingredient and wrap them in 'Won Ton' skin. Obviously they were not too pleased with my request. I had to ask them to replace the very dried one in one occasion. As they get drier, it is less likely diner will take them, so they can end up intact in the steamer for the whole night. 4) Highlight of the dinner menu is supposed to be dim sum and Teppanyaki, but the following are the problems a) they serve very unappetising dim sum, most of them were left in the steamer to get dry. 3) Variety of food at dinner time is 'more or less' similar to those served at lunch, but you are paying nearly double of the price. a glass of coke will cost £2.6, that is nearly 40% of the lunch price. £12.99 for weekdays and £13.99 for weekend, not including drink. My points are as follow: 1) Price is expensive for the type of food you are getting. However my dinner experience with them is far from satisfactory. Kung Fu buffet Kingston lunch time menu is of exceptional value and reasonable quality, when taking into consideration of the price, £6.99 M-F, and £7.99 on Saturday.
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