I went to Sky Rainbow, now called Royal Garden last night. It has now been renamed but is basicly still the same place.
We went as a party of 10 for a friends birthday, so went with the set buffet menu that they do there, and broke down our group as 2 x tables of 4 and 1 x table of 2.
We sat down and ordered out first courses at around 18:30hrs. The restaurant offers a 3-course meal for £16.80 per head on a 4-table, and £14 per head on smaller tables of 2 or 3. For the larger table we had a choice of 4 starters for the table. The starters are all you would like to eat so once you have cleared your starters they do offer you more if you would like them.
The quality of our food was exceptionally good in my opinion, and was without doubt the best chinese food I have ever tasted. The food was served to us fairly quickly on the first course, adn was extremely hot and very good.
The second course is selected from another part of the menu, and I think we received 2 or 3 second course dishes per table. Again the quality of the food was very good although actually receiving the food did take a while. We ordered our mains and again we had to wait some considerable time before we received them, although again the quality of the food was exceptional. We received 4 main course dishes which you can help yourself to from the centre of the table, and also a large dish of special fried rice and a large plate of Chicken chow mein. As I say, the food was exceptionally good, hot and very fresh, and tasted better than I have come to expect from chinese restaurants in the area.
The service was very friendly, and very polite too and the quality of the waiting staff was very good in my opinion. They pour your wine for you, dress you with your napkin too, so they do things properly really. I was insulted by one of the waitresses, although Im sure this was not on purpose, but a comment made to me at our table was not taken very well at all, and was a little close to the edge in terms of not offending your customers. Other than that though, I have no problems with the restaurant staff at all, and was very happy with that aspect of the restaurant. The atmosphere in the restaurant was also good, and its a lovely looking place and it doesnt feel like you are in Newark at all once you are in there, which is a nice change ;)
My only real complaint is the speed of the evening. We had sat down at 6:20ish, with the idea of being out for 8:00 to 8:30 to go into town. This did not happen, and the evening was dragged out a lot for us, and another party I knew who were there for another event. It took 3 1/2 hours for us to get our meal and the bill and be ready to leave, which I found shocking really. We had finished eating between courses and they did seem to take our orders fairly quickly for the next course, but the food did take a long time to come out. Im not sure why this was, although they were very keen to keep bringing our table wine and drinks from the bar, maybe this was a tactic to get us to spend big at the bar, but this was never our intention as we were heading into town for a birthday. I think 3 1/2 hours for a 3 course meal is way too long really, and Im certain it should only have been around half that time. The restaurant was not really busy either, certainly not full and probably only at just over half capacity, so that cannot be blamed for how slow we got our table turned around and out. Its a shame really, as this is the only thing I feel let it down, other than one rude waitress/floor manager. The food was great, the atmosphere is very nice and I feel that for the price the food cost, it was still worth the money as we still had a good night.
I would reccomend going to Sky Rainbow / Royal Garden as even though it took a while to get us sorted, I still thenk it was good, and good value too. read more
