Chew on this - Lau’s Buffet King, Stowell Street
By Alex Grover • Nov 7th, 2008 • Category: food
Last night, Newcastlecentric decided to take a trip to Newcastle’s Lau’s Buffet King in Stowell Street, part of Newcastle’s small but perfectly formed Chinatown.
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.
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Alex Grover is a freelance copywriter and contributor to newcastlecentric.com. You can visit her blog here.
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It is also absolutely terrible if you want to eat vegetarian food - there’s only a couple of thigns that are edible in the huge array: it would not be hard to include some more.
The beer is dreadful there as well. The whole place is dreadful. Do yourself a favour, stick your hand in your pocket to pull out another £3 and dine out over the road for a tenner with great food (though less of it - probably a good thing?) and good service.
I went there six months ago with a young child (18 month old ) and asked for some water for her Tommy Tippy which they refused, insisting we buy a bottle of water for her. No chance.
Never, ever, ever again.
I’m with Andrew on this one - leave it and all the other buffet places alone, and head some of the the other tremendous Chinese places in Newcaslte - or Little Saigon for Vietnamese food. Whilst the buffet places are ok if you just want to stuff yourself silly, the quality is crappy really, and the only thing they have going for them are the spare ribs. The service is dreadful, far beyond lacking in cheer.
If you click the second one down at sourcearticle.info there’s some more information