Lau’s Buffet King is unspectacular. It feels like a dining hall rather than a restaurant - with basic wooden tables and chairs, no sense of comfort and their all you can eat, help-yourself buffet at which people queue as though having school dinners.

The service is blunt, with no niceties - you are told on arrival that you will be charged £8.50 if you are seated at the restaurant, regardless of whether you are eating or not. So whilst being cheap, we wouldn’t call Lau’s cheerful.

Making up for lack of ambiance is the wide choice of food, from salad, chicken soup, duck pancakes, prawn crackers and seaweed to start, to main courses including New Zealand Green Mussels in a seafood dish, the usual sweet and sour pork and chicken, lemon chicken, beef and black bean sauce, Chinese curry and a choice of noodles and rice.

Unfortunately the food lets itself down somewhat by being lukewarm when it hits your plate and pretty much cold by the time you return to your table to eat. But it’s swings and roundabouts in Lau’s, as making up for lack of satisfaction with your main course is the choice of desserts to sweeten your palate. Banana fritters, gateaux, jelly and ice cream as well as fruit salad for the health conscious. If you can leave room for a little something extra, it’s a nice way to finish off your meal on a good note.

Time and again we’ve have returned to Lau’s, despite it being a consistent disappointment, but there’s something to say about easy dining. With no frills or fuss you know what you’re getting and you get your money’s worth - no more, no less.

Curry Capital is not just any old Indian restaurant. It’s famous, seemingly world renowned as the home of the hottest curry in the world (according to their “statistics”) and the aptly named Curry Hell Challenge.

If you can eat a bowl of curry made almost entirely from chilli powder and chilli seeds, that will literally disintegrate the roof of your mouth, then you eat for free. But be warned - and we quote from Curry Capital’s own website - “if you find you are experiencing problems with your lover(s) due to consumption, then under no circumstances are you entitled to blame us.”

Curry Capital is cheap and cheerful; unlike many Indian restaurants which overcharge for underwhelming food, it doesn’t try to be anything it isn’t. The menu offers a number of special deals, starting from £3.95 for a one course lunchtime meal deal to the aforementioned Viz special - £10.95 for a four course banquet.

Feeling peckish, we chose the Viz special, which sounded too good to be true. The four courses consist of: an appetiser of a poppadom with all the pickles (lime pickle, mango chutney, raita and onion salad); a choice of starters, from which we chose the onion bhaji and chicken tikka; a choice of main courses in which you select your meat or vegetable then pick your choice of curry sauce from a wide
range. We recommend the Jalfrezi, Balti or Rogan Josh.

With your curry you then have the option of a flavoured pilau rice or chips and a choice of naan
breads (keema, garlic, peshwari, coriander or plain). And if that’s not enough to fill you up, you can choose ice cream for dessert or a liquor coffee. Oh, and to top it all off, you get a free soft drink or glass of wine with your meal. Unbelievable in the age of the credit crunch and a depressing economy.

On the downside, we felt a little conspicuous as we tucked into our meals, with few more than 5 other people in the entire restaurant, so the atmosphere was somewhat lacking. The environment leaves a lot to be desired too; yes there is Bhangra playing in the background, but nothing else speaks of Asia - with garish old carpets from the 70’s, bland walls and bland artworks.

But for £10.95 for all of the above menu, you can create your own atmosphere with sheer glee from the value for money.

Gershwins has been closed down, and according to laminated notices on the front doors dated yesterday, the property has been seized by the RPU Group, landlord of the premises.

In September, the restaurant shut temporarily for “necessary building works” but stated on its website it would re-open in time for Christmas bookings.

In July, the restaurant’s parent company, Boutique Ltd, and two directors pleaded guilty to the charges of unlawful dumping and failing to show duty of care in respect of waste.

While both directors were fined, the parent company avoided penalties because the defense team said finances were in a “fairly parlous state.”

Seems they were; the landlords left a second notice on the door for the attention of the directors, stating that all goods within the premises would be sold from tomorrow.

The Journal reports that the Comfort Food Co in Newcastle’s Pudding Chare has been forced to close due to the current economic climate.

A notice at the popular restaurant states: “With effect from October 4, the Comfort Food Co will be closed. Blame the banks. I would like to thank all the customers for their business over the last four years or so, and wish you all the best for the future.”

According to the paper, owner Tom Sillar blames the increasing price of overheads for his decision, as well as the cost of food rising by up 40%.

Meanwhile, not a million miles away on Collingwood Street, Roma will close at the end of the year. Newcastle’s oldest Italian restaurant has been forced to shut down after the building was earmarked for redevelopment.

Sadly they serve a disappointment in every cup if you’re a coffee connoisseur, as the British seem to have failed to learn the art of making a decent coffee. However freshly ground, Fairtrade or organic your coffee beans are, it makes no difference once they’re in the hands of an amateur.

We’re not suggesting we’re experts, but we know a good cup when we drink one. If you’ve been to Spain, France or Italy, you’ll have experienced the smooth, velvety taste of a coffee brewed to perfection; no matter where it’s served it’s always good.

Not so back in the UK. We were beginning to think that we’d have to arrange our annual leave around getting a pleasurable caffeine fix from the sunnier side of the continent.

But then we discovered Kaffeccinos on Grainger Street. It’s a revelation and we wish we’d found it sooner. Its values are built around giving customers a real
European coffeehouse experience and true to form the coffee is perfect, as many customers will testify.

The café is sophisticatedly decorated, with high tables and bar stools for sitting in the window and people watching, plus a few sofas for lucky punters to snatch up as they become free, in which to loll away an hour or two nursing a brew and one of their delicious muffins or pastries. They even provide a selection of books and tourist information leaflets to peruse while you relax.

The lunch menu is fantastic if you’re after more than a sweet treat, with a selection of jacket potatoes, paninis, sandwiches, salads and organic soup made using local produce.

Take a trip to Kaffeccinos for your coffee fix and whilst you’re there we recommend you treat yourself to one of their double chocolate muffins. With chocolate sponge, white and chocolate chips, and gooey chocolate sauce in the centre, we just keep going back for more.

Photo by Jennie R. F. on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

It’s a bar for the after-work crowd in the evenings, a cafe bar by day and moonlights as a tacky meat market at weekends, where downstairs in the basement you may find topless dancers on a match day, or the grab-a-granny crowd on Friday and Saturday night, bopping away to horrendously cheesy music.

Tackiness aside, during the day the lounge is a perfectly civilised place to go for a bite to eat. Each table has a mini TV at it, so you can catch the latest on Sky Sports (if you’re so inclined), and the music helps to lift your mood if you’re taking a well deserved lunch break from work – as long as you’re open to the offerings of the Now albums and can appreciate small doses of pop chart.

We chose The Lounge because of their new menu promotion called Mix & Mash. It offers a choice of good ol’ British fodder, from doorstep sandwiches, fish pie and steak and ale pie to fish and chips or any two of numerous flavoured sausages; all served with your choice from four types of mashed potatoes and a selection of gravies.

Newcastlecentric popped along with a friend and we both chose the steak and ale pie, for fear of food envy. We were given the option of either mustard mash, cheesy mash, plain mash or mint mash, alongside the choice of onion gravy, mint gravy or good ol’ plain gravy. We went with mustard mash and no gravy with our pie, whilst our friend chose the cheesy mash, so we could compare.

On arrival, the steak and ale pie had the appearance of a giant pork pie. The pastry was thick, short crust pastry, browned to perfection. On slicing it open to see if we’d be disappointed by the lack of filling inside, we were both delighted to find our pies were filled to the brim.

The steak melted in your mouth, the ale gravy inside was rich and tasty and there was a slight twist as the chef had used whole silverskin onions and mushrooms, adding texture and flavour.

Both the cheesy and mustard mash didn’t disappoint either - although they were served with an unnecessarily giant sprig (more like a bush) of rosemary poking out, as though trying to posh up a dish that was supposed to say home cooked like your Gran used to make. We don’t remember our Gran decorating her home cooking with a herbaceous border.

We were left comfortably stuffed - if you need some good old comfort food, The Lounge’s Mix & Mash menu will sort you out for around £6.

Photo by StrudelMonkey on Flickr. Some rights reserved.