RED HOT WORLD BUFFET & BAR ***
3-6 Hills Street, St David’s, Cardiff. 029 2034 2499 / www.redhot-worldbuffet.com
Buffet-style dining has long held a reputation that’s not all that easy to shake off. More often than not, in your typical high street all-you-can-eat restaurant, quality is sacrificed for quantity, and diners are left wondering quite how long each dish has spent on its hotplate. As such, I had my reservations upon arriving at Red Hot World Buffet & Bar which takes on the ambitious challenge of delivering nine cuisines and no fewer than 300 dishes.
Promising freshly prepared dishes at a reasonable price (an all-you-can-eat meal costs from £9.99-£17.99), we endeavoured to sample a little of every section. From the various live a la carte cooking stations (Italian, Chinese, desert), to the nine different tastes of the world – tex-mex, Indian, Mediterranean, Thai, Japanese – The eye-catching buffet section displayed all 300 dishes in bright, colourful and elaborate displays. Striking and fun, the buffet is a sparkling centrepiece. We sampled a Korean salad, asparagus risotto, a la carte stir-fry and Thai green curry among others. The variety was admirable, the quality good, although by no means groundbreaking, and the deserts we tried were annoyingly miniature and a little overly sweet.
Despite the amount of ambitious variety, for a truly authentic taste of Italy, China, Mexico or Japan, seek out a specialist restaurant and you’ll find a better and more authentic flavour than Red Hot is able to provide. But, having said this, although I wasn’t especially impressed by the standard of food on offer, Red Hot offers a social and fun dining experience with an expansive array of options for families to enjoy together. Despite my reservations, from the lack of available seats on the night we attended, it would seem that Red Hot has already gone down well with the diners of Cardiff. GARETH LUDKIN