Essence Of The Orient

Every time I have been to Essence of the Orient the food and service have been fantastic. There is usually a choice of a set banquet menu or a wide range of dishes to mix and match. The banquet menu is better value as you get a range of dishes for less money. I have been here for a number of family birthdays and my own, and each time the staff were brilliant, bringing out an ice cream with sparklers and playing happy birthday for my sister’s fiancé! If you mention it is your birthday they treat you extra special.
I have always enjoyed the food here very much, and have used the banquet menus to let me try out new dishes. I have heard that they change the menus for christmas, on having a look it seems most of the dishes on the christmas menu are turkey — which i’ve never had from a chinese before! So I’d be dubious about going in christmas season (especially due to Jasmine’s review!).

This was supposed to be the best chinese restraunt in town. Its quite expensive so I didnt rush to it when it first opened.
The christmas before last me and my boyfriend decided to go there as a treat. They changed the normal menu to a set menu (which was a shame but understandable because of being extra busy at christmas).
The service was nice and quick, our waiter couldnt speak or understand much english but was friendly enough.
But the food was disgusting. Considering I had the choice of 4 dishes I couldnt believe there wasnt a single one I enjoyed!
One was too salty, I meansure, season itbut it was as though I just put a table spoon of salt in my mouth — I couldnt taste anyhing BUT salt!
The beef dish tasted nice but the meat was such poor quality, it was all stringy and it took me ages to chew through it enough to swallow. It was rank.
The veggy dish was okay, but how can you screw up on veg?
Luckily my boyfriend wasnt too keen on sweet and sour and that was my favourite — so I decided I’d make up for not eating any of the other dishes by eating all of the sweet & sour chicken. First few mouthfulls were good But then disaster! All the chicken was bite sized and battered, I didnt want to make a scene but the small piece of chicken I’d just put in my mouth turned out not to be chicken at all.
If it just had a bit of a chewy bit or a bit of bone then fine I would have pretended it was fine just so I didnt make a scene but it was basically a battered knuckle!
It made me feel sick, I hated everything about the meal, and to top it off its actually quite an expensive place!
I hated the whole entire meal. The only thing that was actually enjoyable was the tea at the end. But the rest was disgusting.
We did go back once again about a year later with his family. It was ok that time (meaning I didnt have to spit a piece of gristle the size of a knuckle into my rice bowl!) but really, its over priced and nothing at all special. Ive had tastier take aways. If I experienced the same today I would refuse to pay and have a good complain about the quality — unfortunatley I was shy and quiet back then and too scared to complain and ruin what was supposed to be a good night.