New Mandarin

I visited this restaurant as one of a group of four friends. We decided very quickly to have the «banquet» offered at £16.50 per person (drinks extra).
I have rarely, if ever, enjoyed such great value for money. There was more food than we could eat, and it was cooked and presented to an extremely high standard.
Whilst we waited for our soup, prawn crackers and a dip were brought to the table. After the soup, a wide selection of starter dishes was served, all mouth-​watering in appearance and totally delicious. This was followed by four main course dishes to which we all helped ourselves. Again, these were truly excellent.
Desserts were less exciting, but in truth we had little room left. All four of us ordered small ice creams, and we were asked what coffees we would like, from a rather limited selection.
Sadly, the coffees were served at the same time as the desserts, and this detracted slightly from the enjoyment of the meal. The espressos were like treacle — poor; two of us had «floater» coffees (a name surely badly chosen!) and these were very good.
One other criticism is that we felt that the meal was served too fast, but we acknowledge that we are more used to eating out in France, where the customer prefers to be far less rushed, perhaps because of the two-​hour lunch break and the time regularly taken over evening meals by families. But we felt rather too hurried, and wished for more time between courses just to chat and let our groaning stomachs recover somewhat before the next assault.
Had the timing and coffee/​dessert issues been more to our taste, I would have awarded five stars. I can’t wait to go back, but next time will ask the staff to slow down the delivery of the meal.