Cosmo

Located on the outside of the Trinity shopping centre on Boar Lane, Cosmo’s small entranceway leads down steps to open up into a large basement. It is tastefully decorated with reasonably comfortable furnishings and some rather effective artificial daylight.

It is an all-you-can-eat buffet that claims to offer pan-Asian dining. They have sections for Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Italian, and a small English section, as well as a comprehensive dessert section. Your fizzy drinks are bottomless though they are also unbranded. The logos just say “cola” and “lemonade”.

The Chinese and Japanese offerings are excellent. There is, however, a lack of variety. Most dishes are chicken or pork, with only one beef dish. They are, however, both warm and tasty. They also have a live teppanyaki station at which a chef cooks me steak and prawns in garlic that he chops up right in front of me on the grill.

The other sections are less impressive. I feel the Indian section lacks variety and flavour. Elina finds her naan chewy, and I have a similar experience with my spare rib. We wonder whether with them having just opened, they just did not have the turn over of customers yet. The pizza dough is disappointing, though perhaps I am expecting too much from a buffet.

The dessert station is a redeeming feature, offering a great selection of cake that you can cut yourself, as well as sweets, fruit and a variety of other dishes.

It is not bad value. We paid £9.99 per head on a Saturday lunch time. It does not have the variety that Red Hot has, but the atmosphere is infinitely better. It is an excellent choice if you want Chinese or Japanese, otherwise I would be tempted to look elsewhere.