by Rebecca Hawkins

Created on: May 13, 2010

Ilaichi is a new all you can eat buffet restaurant that is based in Hatfield in the Galleria shopping centre.

The restaurant has a "world" theme and serves foods ranging from Chinese and Indian to Italian and Mexican.

The restaurant it's self is located at the rear car park entrance to the Galleria and has a lovely big glass wall that faces the car park, so you can watch the world go by. The entrance to the actual restaurant is just inside the double doors.

When you enter the restaurant you are seated and given a drinks menu. From here you are informed of how the buffet works and told to get stuck in.

The staff are always attentive and drinks are brought over quite promptly, this can be affected by how busy it is and the number of other customers, but generally it is only a few minutes. The drink prices are slightly steep, but being a buffet, this is the only way they are going to make a real profit as a business. A large (pint) Diet Pepsi from the draught taps will set you back about £3. They do serve a whole host of wines, beers and alcoholic drinks as well as various soft and fizzy drinks.

The table layout of the restaurant is slightly annoying. It has large booths at the back for bigger groups wishing to dine then an assortment of 2, 4 and 5 seater tables dotted all over the place. This is fine but they are laid out really quite randomly and due to the difference in shape between the round 5 seaters and the square 2 and 4 seaters, it leaves the whole place looking very cluttered and could probably do with a little less seating. Being a help yourself buffet, it makes the whole experience slightly more challenging when you have to manoeuvre through a maze of tables and squeeze past people who are eating.

The food itself is topped up very frequently, with the chefs visibly working away behind the main serving area. They get requests from people who are ordering off menu rather than having the buffet and they are constantly cooking to refill the dishes on offer. It works quite well because they are cooking little and often, there is no food left out going cold and the food is fresh and hot and you will never have to wait more than a few minutes if something runs out, before it's refilled.

They have the food laid out in 4 main areas, the first section is largely finger foods; slices of pizza, chicken wings, spare ribs, spring rolls, mini taco's, nachos, onion bhaji's, squid rings and fries are regularly in this section, but they do change

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