Mandalay

Lovely interior and friendly staff.
Food just poor and expensive. Small portions. Not a good value.

The décor and ambience is there. The waiters in uniform is fine. The white table cloth is great. But the food is dissapointing.
I may have higher than normal expectations for Chinese food, so my bar is set rather high. If you must dine here, I would stay away from the curry. I had 2 versions of it and it was weak.

Every time I come to this restaurant I keep singing in my head «Don’t you know the way to San Jose.» but replace the San Jose with Mandalay. I also get some images of the movie Rebecca; «I still remember Mandalay.» The restaurant version is set in quiet surroundings just past Santry Stadium on the way to the Crowne Plaza Hotel. I’ve been here on a good few occasions, the other night we were here for my Mum’s birthday.
The restaurant has a very nice Asian décor (check out the bathrooms!!) with little Buddha’s sitting here and there. The staff are all Asian and very nice, polite, warm and friendly. They offer both Chinese and Thai food on the menu. The menu is huge. You could read it for years, they have so much different dishes on offer I wonder how the kitchen staff cope!
We go for the Peking duck to share for starters. The duck is tasty and plentiful though the pancakes are a little sticky. It comes with a tasty hoisin sauce. We all get 3 pancakes (there are 5 of us at the table.)
For mains I got a little different, I order prawns with a cold Asian salad/​kerabu and noodles. We all order noodles and rice with our mains which proves to be too much, we only need a couple to share. The prawns are big and come wrapped in batter. The food is very good.
The bill for 5 including one bottle of wine comes to € 180. Although nice, there is nothing incredibly special about the food; it’s good, solid and a great choice if your a fan of Asian, but overall a little on the expensive side in comparison to other restaurants. Still a recommendation if you’re ever in the Santry area.

This restaurant is handy for the Crowne Plaza Airport Hotel. I eat here fairly frequently just to get away from hotel food.
The Mandalay has an extensive menu of Chinese and Thai dishes. They do special banquets for Chinese New Year — starve yourself for the day for one of these as they are massive.
The room is paneled in dark wood which gives an intimate atmosphere.
It always seems to be busy so I would book for weekends.