River View Chinese Restaurant

This restaurant situated as the name suggests alongside the river in Cowbridge, has a very pleasant outside courtyard with Chinese lanterns and a pretty water feature, which is very restful (especially on hot summer days). The restaurant has an upstairs eating area, overlooking the river.
I came here recently with a group of friends and we opted for the taste of China menu at £13.50 per head, which allows you to taste as many dishes as you wish. The food was beautifully cooked and freshly prepared.
I noticed that the restaurant has a weekday special available Sunday-​Thursday where for £9.95 per person two courses and a side order are available.
One of the things I really like about this restaurant is that aside from its location and good food, is that it also doubles up as a takeaway and within Cowbridge will do home deliveries; great when you return home from work shattered, to tired to cook but want to stay in!

River view has an interesting take on the Chinese ‘all you can eat’ trend.
Rather than the generic buffet style service instead they’ve opted for ‘order as much as you can eat’ instead.
I can see the positives, the food is cooked fresh and you only really order what you want off a limited menu. There is a whole lot of variety (sort of, we’ll come to that later) and it’s not supposed to really cost any more than £13 a head. There’s a good range of starters and sides. You’ll find your prawn toast, spare ribs and egg fried rice without any problem. The mains are variants of pork, beef and chicken made in every which way possible.
For the veggies, there’s a good selection of vegetable dishes but I have a massive problem with paying an extra £2 for any dish with prawn or squid in it considering there is no fish option on the menu.
It is nice to be served when you’re pushing your stomach to full capacity and I applaud them for not bowing to the traditional buffet format but I don’t really feel like you’re getting the same value for money that you would in a similar place.