Went to the COSMO “all you can eat” restaurant in Swansea on Thursday 21st April 2011. We had pre-booked a table for 6pm for a party of eight, on arriving we were greeting by a queue waiting to get in and this was a good sign that the place was popular.

Like similar “all you can eat” establishments the price depends on the time of day that you visit, we paid £11.99 for the dinner menu but during the day the price is lower. The price of soft drinks were comparable with other pubs and restaurants – they did not offer a refillable drink.

We went downstairs and I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised at the style and ambiance alas it still felt that they had jammed in as many tables as possible but then again they need to make some money.

“all you can eat” are great ways to try lots of different foods that you may not normally want to risk and they had plenty of choice and most of the dishes were kept constantly refreshed, one of my colleagues did have to go back for some curry as it was empty when she first went up.

One problem I find with these sorts of places is that you actually have too much choice and end up spending most of the time looking at all the various dishes and piling everything possible on to your plate, it seems a good idea at the time but you do need to make sure you are getting your monies worth.

There did not seem to be any sort of order to how the food was set out, it seemed to be all over the place and it was only on my third attempt to fill my plate did I notice the rather boring salad section. The deserts looked fantastic and there appeared to be a lot of various puddings to cater for most tastes. A lot of these were in very small portions which did not really matter as you could eat as much as you wanted. The only bad point was the ice cream it was rather tasteless.

I was rather surprised to find that we were being asked to leave just before 8pm as they had another booking for the table and looking at the terms and conditions on the website it does appear that at busy times they have a maximum seating time of 1 hour 45 minutes from when the majority of the party is seated. So that is something to consider when you are spending all that time deciding what to eat!

Luckily we have all finished but it would have been more than a little annoying if we had still been eating and eager to refill our plates.

Would I got again – Yes.