To mark my birthday a group of friends and I went out to dinner in Milton Keynes. I wanted to pick a restaurant that we hadn’t been to before. I found this web site very useful and eventually selected the Royal Lido Chinese restaurant on Midsummer Boulevard as it had very good recent reviews.

The eight of us were seated around a large circular table (with plenty of elbow room!) that had a Lazy Susan in the centre. I had fun rotating the inevitable bowl of prawn crackers around before the waitress came back and took our orders.

Five of us decided to have one of the set meals whilst two splitters decided to order dishes from the main menu. The set meal starter was the usual suspects; spring rolls, battered prawns, sesame prawn toast, chicken satay, spare ribs and crispy seaweed. The seaweed is the one thing in the entire meal that I can criticise. It was chewy rather than crispy, almost as if it had sat around too long. However, the spare ribs were excellent and more than made up for the seaweed.

The next dish was crispy duck and there was plenty of it, enough for the two people who weren’t having the set menu to help themselves. Someone on our table pointed out that the duck was nicely moist as well as being crispy. So often crispy duck is cooked until it is far too dry. The waiter was good too, bringing more pancakes without having to be asked.

The main course was deep fried shredded beef, kung po chicken, king prawns with asparagus, plus vegetables and special fried rice. These were all excellent, especially the prawns and asparagus which turned out to be a great combination.

We just about managed to finish the main course but had to decline the offer of desert. The cost of the set meal was £23 per person but what with several bottles of wine and other drinks plus a tip we paid £32 each. I think this was fine; you can eat out for less but the quality of the Royal Lido was worth the extra. I look forward to going back, hopefully before my next birthday!