I am now violet! Ah ha ha! That means I am better than everybody who is only a feeble blue or lower....
I am now violet! Ah ha ha! That means I am better than everybody who is only a feeble blue or lower. Cower before me, minions. Ahem. Shame it's a bit of a girl's colour though.
Member since:15.11.2005
Reviews:49
Members who trust:33
Exactly how much do you have to eat in an ‘all you can eat’ restaurant before it actually becomes free? Before you’ve consumed enough to reduce the food to cost-price, and from there on in you’re effectively eating for nothing? To be honest, I don’t know. But it’s questions like these that mean that I’m never able to fully enjoy a visit to Aroma. Even when I’m starting to sweat sweet ‘n’ sour sauce in thick, orange gobbets, the voice is always at the back of my mind: Why stop eating now? You’ve paid for this already. You can eat FOREVER and it won’t cost you another penny! I don’t CARE if you’re about to throw up a fistful of lychees! EAT! EAT! EEEEAT!!
I’m sure you feel the same. It’s like going to a wedding with a free bar. It becomes physically impossible to stop drinking until you get into such a state that you punch the bride and have to be escorted off the premises by her burly brother-in-law who then kicks your head in behind a skip at the back of the hotel carpark. The
normal budgetary constraints that keep our natural gluttony in check are removed, and we become feral, grasping beasts, unable and unwilling to know when to stop. That’s right: ‘we’. Don’t try to pretend you’re any different. I don’t care if you’re a lovely old gran who likes curtains. You’re a feral, grasping beast. And probably a sexual pervert too, although let’s not get into that here.
So, finally, to Aroma. As you might have guessed, it’s an ‘all you can eat’ affair. For the princely sum of around fifteen quid (for dinner) or around ten quid (for lunch) you can gorge yourself on all manner of oriental delicacies until you choke. Until you bleed internally. Until you go for a wee and it comes out, not as liquid, but as a noodle. Then you can have a little break, drink some wine (not, sadly, included in the free-for-all), and start all over again. Believe me, by the time you stagger out into the street four hours later, you’ll never want to look at another Chinese meal again. Or even a Chinese person. Aroma will have turned you racist.
Then again, all is not what it seems. Okay, the food is pretty nice, and you might be forgiven for thinking the all-you-can-eat is something of a bargain. That is, until you eat a single grain of rice and the intense concentration of MSG explodes in your stomach, swelling the grain into the size of an old man’s head. ‘Oh,’ you’ll think. ‘I’m full now.’ I’m exaggerating a little, of course, but it’s certainly a truism that you can never quite each as much as you think you can. And if you went to a standard Chinese restaurant, I’d wager huge sums of money that the amount you’d eat there would cost pretty much the same as Aroma. Think about it: fifteen quid. That’s about three dishes. Enough for most people, no?
So in a way it’s all a big psychological con-trick. You’re paying roughly the same amount for roughly the same amount of food, except here you have to serve yourself from a big trough like some kind of disgusting orphan. Plus you have to deal with the very real possibility that someone has rubbed their grubby fingers all over the spring rolls. Probably after going to the toilet and not washing their hands. Maybe they’ve even spat on them a bit. You know what people are like.
Add to that the fact that the place has the air of a work canteen – all metal tables and low ceilings, and that the acoustics are such that the conversation of everyone within twenty metres is echoed and amplified and channelled directly into your eardrum at approximately the volume of a pissed-up, lairy Brian Blessed – well, it’s hardly the most relaxing environment I can imagine. And there are always loads of people milling about, so when you get up to get more grub, you’re almost certain to be bundled to the floor by a big fat woman charging back to her table, laden with chicken wings. At least, that’s what happens to me. It’s not always chicken wings, but usually it is.
All in all, then, I really wouldn’t bother. The food, as I said, is nice enough, but the all-you-can-eat aspect isn’t quite the bargain it initially seems, and turns the whole experience into a slightly depressing food-rummage, when all you really want is to sit in a nice comfy chair in a nice restaurant and have your Chinese brought to you by a smiling Chinese man.
On a final note, it’s surprising that Aroma isn’t more full of tramps. If I was a tramp, that’s where I’d go. Once I’d scrimped a tenner from playing the penny whistle outside the Co-op, I’d get myself along to Aroma and stuff myself. What food I couldn’t digest, I’d store in my hump, like a camel, and it would keep me going for the rest of the week. Oddly, though, you don’t seem to come across many of them there. I suppose that’s a point in its favour.
I’m pretty sure tramps do have humps, by the way. I’ve never really seen one. I live in quite a nice area, actually.
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I've always believed that I eat more than I pay for...x
reddragonflame87 19.03.2009 18:01
Very amusing review. -FT
Amazingwoo 09.03.2009 13:16
There's a really nice one in E17 - and it's only about £6 for lunch. Not a massive choice but really fresh and tasty and yes, you do tend to lose all sense and reason of "Hmm, I'm full up now and I should really stop eating"......
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Mar 4th, 2009
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