Yesterday evening was my first experience at the Red Hot World Buffet. It's not that this place was absolutely terrible, but I can't imagine I'll be going back any time soon.
First, it's worth noting that this is a review of the newer, bigger Red Hot World Buffet at the Corner House, having moved from much smaller premises in Hockley. And when I say 'bigger', I mean this place is an Airplane Hangar of Buffet. It is so big that twice I actually lost the people I was 'dining' with.
Red Hot (World) Buffet is sold as a 'social dining experience' - you walk in and it's dressed up like an airport where you 'check in' to your table and visit the microcosmic areas of the world, like a much smaller Epcot Center, to get your regional dishes. There's Indian, Chinese, American, Japanese, etc. You are not waited upon - you have to go and fetch the food yourself, which makes sense; this is a buffet after all. However, the handful of people I went with yesterday all have a) very different tastes, and b) very different eating habits. Consequently, the social dining experience wasn't very social at all.
As an example: once we sat down and ordered our drinks, we all got up together to get our food. Now, I cannot emphasise this enough: this place is HUGE. Almost immediately we went off in different directions to find something we all liked. We probably wandered around for five minutes or so, and I came back to our table with a relatively tame selection of prawn toast, pizza and some samosas... but one of my friends had almost finished his plate of food, so barely a minute after I sat down, he was up again to get some more.
And this went on; during the evening, there were usually never more than three people at the table at any one time, meaning I didn't really get to spend the evening with the people I went to dinner with.
This is not entirely Red Hot World Buffet's fault; it is the very nature of their chain that they are a buffet. However, I feel they are pushing a 'social' selling point that doesn't really work out.
As for the food: I would describe it as not entirely awesome. During the course of the evening, I had: crab claws (nice); samosas (fine); pizza (reheated & dry); chips (bleurgh); noodles (nice); cheesecake (warm?! bleurgh!); and chocolate mousse (fine, but also warm).
There are certain stations where you can order a particular dish, and the burger bar is one of those. I ordered what was labelled as a 'Supreme Burger', which was *supposed* to be a beefburger with cheese and bacon. I asked for mine without any garnish or relish. What I received was a single, dry beefburger with onions and brown sauce. It was, I am sorry to say, extraordinarily gross.
At the risk of sounding like a pedant (which I most definitely am), the signs labelling ALL of the food were a) rendered in Comic Sans, black text on a dark red background (i.e. barely readable), and b) almost universally misspelled. Some examples:
- 'Burger with chilly'
- 'Vinilla Flavour'
- 'Sticky Date Pudding: Egg less' (less than what?)
- 'Tiramasu Venician Style'
I don't even know how pronounce that last one.
I know this may sound facetious and flippant, but adding this all together with the food and my experience throughout the evening, the impression I got is one of general laziness and a lack of any kind of quality control, and it reminded me very much of 11 years of lunchtimes at a state school.
As far as I'm concerned, Red Hot World Buffet is a Warehouse of School Dinners. read more