May Sum, Nottingham

May Sum is an Asian buffet restaurant in Nottingham. Situated on Upper Parliament Street is in a perfect location for eating out while you are in town. The restaurant is a short walk away from the Victoria Centre and has great links for local buses.

Opening Times and Prices

Lunch:

Mon - Sun: 11.30am - 5.30pm / £6.95

Grand Evening Buffet:

Sun - Thurs: 5.30pm - 11.00pm / £10.95

Grand Evening Buffet:

Fri & Sat: 5.30pm - midnight / £12.50

Quite a few of my friends had previously been to eat here and had told me how good it was compared to another all you can eat restaurant just up the road, Peachy Keens. My flatmate and I hadn’t been out to eat for a long time and we had both been dying to go here so it was an obvious and easy choice for us. We chose to go for the Grand Evening Buffet on a Thursday night as we had been busy during the day and couldn’t make the lunch time serving. Getting there bang on 5:30, the restaurant was pretty full and I guess this is because lunch service finishes at the same time as the evening service. Still, we were seated immediately, asked if we would like any drinks and given a voucher for the Teppanyaki bar. After our drinks were brought over, a large coke (£2.20) and a tap water, we headed over to the food.

At the furthest end of the massive buffet bar are hot plates and cutlery as well as chop sticks if you choose to eat this way. Working our way along the bar, I realised how spoilt for choice I was. If you want starters first, there are a selection of soups, ribs, spring rolls, chicken wings and much more. The main dishes looked amazing. Here, you can choose from a lot of different things but some dishes were sweet and sour chicken, curry, chow mein, all different kinds of meats in sauces etc. Fried rice is available as well as chips and prawn crackers but unfortunately no plain boiled rice. I prefer this to fried rice so I was quite disappointed to see that it wasn’t available.

Two parts of the buffet that I didn’t take advantage of were the sushi and the Teppanyaki bar. You can only go up to the Teppanyaki bar once during your visit and here you can have squid, fish fillets, prawns, lamb or beef cooked while you wait along with fresh noodles and onions, peppers etc. I’m not really a fan of sea food so I decided to skip this and just concentrate on the main buffet. While most of the food there was pretty fresh, some things like the chips and rice weren’t very hot at all which was disappointing, especially as I imagined these things to run out quickly and it was peak time for eating. That aside though, everything that I tried was delicious and I had to stop myself from going back up many times so that I could save room for dessert.

The dessert section was pretty impressive. Along with a massive chocolate fountain are marshmallows and skewers to cover in chocolate. Then there was ice cream and a range of sauces as well as cakes, fresh fruit and jelly. As much as I loved the main food, the dessert section is what made me fall in love with this restaurant. If I hadn’t been so full, I could have stayed there for hours trying everything that was on offer. This section was a bit of a mess though due to the chocolate fountain and children dripping it everywhere and nobody seemed to clean it up once while we were there.

My first trip to May Sum was a huge success and I will happily go again. At £10.95 for the evening sitting, it is great value and there is a lot on offer.