China Buffet King

Belfast’s biggest, and Victoria Square’s only, buffet-​style Chinese restaurant certainly serves up quite the feast. Choose your table, join the queue and fill your plate from a heady selection of Asian (and some Western) dishes. Favourites such as spring rolls, sweet and sour chicken and singapore noodles sit alongside ever-​changing exotic eats like king prawn in chilli garlic, lime and pepper roast pork and mixed veg in oyster sauce.
I have reviewed a number of these places in my reviews and none of them have really come out smelling of roses other than the legendary Foo Kin near the University. This place is pretty standard and you will certainly get a decent enough feed at an ok price. I’m not huge into chinese restaurants and this hasn’t really changed my mind. But that being said, I can’t find anything wrong this place that doesn’t have to do with some sort of snobbery in me.

The concept is quite simple…
Pay your money and eat until you throw up.
Buffets usually can be famed for the fact you are not paying for incredibly delicious meals, but rather for somewhere to stuff your face until you find it hard to move and then complain in the taxi home until you fall asleep on the sofa. To me, this is a waste of time. Why bother eating to the point that you cannot taste anything anymore? Food is supposed to be enjoyed, nor gorged.
For £7.80, you could get a nice lunch meal somewhere else, complete with a glass of wine. Here, you get fat people podging their way up to fill their plates with as much food as possible, before they wedge themselves into some straining little seat and then tip the plate into the abyss that scientists call their face.
The food is not too bad but that is irrelevant. The point of this place is to eat and eat and eat and eat until you think «anymore eating will make me vomit» and then you roll your way home. It’s a disgusting idea and no matter what choice and quality the food is, to open a restaurant whose sole purpose is to be a buffet defeats the point of a restaurant. There is no pleasure and no reason for me to ever return.

I would make it my mission in life if I could, to review any and all Chinese restaurants in the world (and beyond!) — I never ever get sick of this cuisine. I’ve tried China China, so was interested to see, on a day trip out with my students, how this restaurant would fare against it’s opponent. It didn’t disappoint — really moreish. I mean, you can’t really dislike all you can eat buffets to be fair — but I’ve been to some that have had some suspect quality food and China Buffet King doesn’t do that — it’s got excellent quality food, you can tell its been freshly prepared and hasn’t been sitting out and the flavours are excellent. We were totally stuffed. Yum.

This is a really popular spot in Belfast due to the cheap prices, but I have to profess a terrible secret: I hate it.
To me, the food just lacks any real flavour. I am a big Chinese fan so I know my Chinese well enough to know that this stuff is the equivalent of a microwave special from Iceland. Seriously. The noodles are bland and don’t have any real kick, the spicy chicken tastes like petrol and overall you just walk away feeling slightly sick. I know that it’s good at bargain prices, which obviously means it’s not top nosh, but still!
I also find the staff difficult to bear at times. They have rules which are quite off-​putting; for example, the whole table has to pay at the same time and not separately, so if you’re out with 4 friends and you’re all paying by card, you’ve got a problem. And they only accept credit card on orders over £10 from what I remember. It’s just not convenient and is incredibly frustrating.

I’m a shopaholic at heart and when I have worked up an appetite in Victoria Square, my dining spot of choice is the China King Buffet on the third floor.
The concept is an all you can eat buffet, with various prices depending on the time of day and day of the week. Having spent all my money on retail therapy, I love to go to China King to get a great meal without spending too much more!
The choice of food is amazing and more importantly, the quality is equally good, which isn’t always the case in all you can eat places. You can have soup, duck pancakes (yum!) and a huge choice of starters before you have even hit the main course! After a brief break, its time to take your choices from chicken, vegetarian, fish and meat main courses, along with rice, chips, noodles, prawn crackers and bread.
If you haven’t actually exploded, there is still dessert to come. Anyone for chocolate cake, ice cream, banana fritters or (somewhat bizarrely) apple strudel? If you’re really struggling by this stage, you could I suppose opt for some of the fresh fruit on offer but I prefer the ‘in for a penny in for a pound’ approach!
Service is brisk but friendly and if you’re really on a tight budget, the waiters will happily bring you tap water without smirking or glaring at you. Otherwise there is a full bar with very reasonable prices.
China King is always busy but turnover is pretty quick and I have never waited longer than a few minutes for a table. It’s popular with couples, families, students and large groups and parties, so that would be everyone then! And yes, you really can go back up to the buffet as many times as you want!