COSMO World Buffet – Norwich!

On Posie’s birthday we were treated to a trip around the world, not in 180 days but probably in over 180 different food dishes! COSMO World Buffet has cuisine from around the globe in abundance and we got to try it all – at least we tried to!

We went on a Saturday evening where your one off payment for unlimited trips to the world buffet would set you back £21.99 for adults, £10.99 (for children up to the height of 155cm) and £2.99 for children under the age of five. At other times adult prices are slightly less at either £19.99 or £20.99 but the dishes remain the same and you can eat as much as you like, with as many visits to the various food stations as you can fit in. Drinks cost a little extra but again with soft drinks can be bought on an unlimited basis so all in all it’s pretty easy to know where you are situation in a restaurant which, for a family like mine is welcome. Like an all inclusive holiday leaves me feeling at ease, this gave the same vibe and now that we’ve tried this style of eating out with the family I can see why it works well when you have children, it’s something we want to repeat!

Picky eaters are well catered for at COSMO, which is great as I have three of them. Ironically it’s the babe who will eat most things, and enjoy them, while her brothers are hard work when it comes to food, and, even Florence is pickier than her. So with two boys with very specific food tastes I often feel like it’s a real waste going out to dinner. Raffie, for instance, will only eat chicken dippers, plain pasta, fish fingers or noodles. The thing is, he can eat a LOT of those things, but ONLY those things and doesn’t like them to be contaminated with other food he won’t eat. Jimmy is similar but with other food (of course it can’t be easy and be the same food) choices while Florence is more picky about what exactly her meat looks like, if there’s any onions in the vicinity, that sort of thing. And the great thing we’ve discovered about COSMO, is that they can just get the things they like. Again and again if they want to. With nothing else on the side to make it a meal, 12 fish fingers? Go for it! A bowl of plain noodles, yep, you can have that too! And for Florence, being able to see the food being cooked at the teppanyaki Japanese food station meant she could choose the meat, have nothing else with it and watch it being cooked to perfection. Like a blooming dream all four of my children were food replete!

For me it was the massive choice which proved, not a problem, but challenging in that I wanted to try it all but am just one tiny human and I had to make them… As well as the Teppanyaki COSMO offers World Of Asia, House Of Spice, Continental, Carvery Buffet, Deli, and the Tasting Kitchen (where you get to try lots of food in mini form – this was my area to try as much as possible) to make up food stations to choose from when it comes to their main courses. And each area is home to a wide variety within its name sake. For instance, within the World of Asia you can try food from all over the Orient and then everywhere else we have curries from all the regions in India, pizzas, pastas, charcuterie, salads, even roast dinners. You name it, COSMO almost certainly has it! And we haven’t even moved into dessert yet!

IF you’ve enough room left over at the end of the feasting, and you need to make sure you do actually because the selection of desserts at COSMO is wild, then you can tuck into as many sweet courses as you like as well!

Home made bite sized cakes join a plethora of sweets including fresh fruit (if you have to) and gelato in abundance alongside a chocolate fountain (which is the acceptable way to eat fruit when dining out on a Saturday night in my opinion) and frankly, as full as we were, we enjoyed it all! Well, it was a birthday in the house after all!

We LOVED our COSMO World Buffet experience, and we’d highly recommend it, especially for families as it feels like the perfect way to dine out with children. Everyone gets to choose the things they like and come away happy while the atmosphere is conducive to families enjoying a night out. Sometimes feel, especially with the littler two and picky eater aspect to our party, that dining out can often be hard work. Then it ruins the treat and the fact so much money has been spent feels super annoying. However, at COSMO it just works, it’s the perfect environment for children while the food is actually pretty great. It’s really, very good actually, a massively high standard and I was really surprised about that. The pizzas were being thrown and created before being wood fired in front of us, the teppanyaki was phenomenal. Everything was fresh and tasty and I have no complaints about standards at all. Plates were cleaned away effortlessly and staff worked very hard without being imposing. Impressive!

My one complaint would be that there are signs reminding you not to go over 200 calories per day which is pretty hard to do in a buffet. I guess legally they may have to do this perhaps but I didn’t like it. If I’m out for dinner I’m not counting calories and don’t want to be reminded to do so. It’s also worth noting you are not allowed to light birthday candles, which we did and were told off for. I didn’t think about it in any terms that it would be a problem so didn’t ask and they really didn’t like that so maybe the signs should be about that rather than reminding you not to over do the food. That aside it was faultless and we are 100% going back. In fact, we’re already planning a trip. We worked out dinner for all of us with drinks would have been about the £110 mark which is standard for our large family but the food and standard of it without ever having to say no to something because it’s expensive definitely wins for us. Also it’s pretty informal and that worked for my family in particular. Winning!

Well done COSMO, it feels like you shouldn’t really be able to produce such high quality fodder in such grand scales because, well, how?! But you do it and a most enjoyable evening was had by all!

We dined as guests of the restaurant at Norwich’s branch of COSMO World Buffet, there are 23 restaurants up and down the country as well as in Scotland and Ireland.

Collaboration.