DaiU all you can eat buffet, Mermaid Quay, Cardiff Bay: review
On January 17, 2025 by The Plate Licked CleanHere’s the thing. You have probably already made up your mind about DaiU in Cardiff Bay.
Cardiff is the first in a small chain (Brighton, Croydon) and their site prepares you for a ‘symphony of flavors, captivat(ing) your senses’ featuring ‘the irresistible aroma of fresh meats, perfectly grilled to succulent perfection’.
‘Experience the ocean’s bounty’, we are encouraged. It’s either AI, or someone needs to do better. Or at least use English spellings, your honor.
But that won’t matter, because you’re either all-in on the idea of paying to pick and cook your own dinner, or you arent. That either appeals, or doesn’t.
It’s all very clean and efficient and seems to be a big hit already. Within moments of opening it is busy, a diverse crowd with a sizeable east Asian contingent. Google reviews love this place. ‘Best restaurant in Cardiff‘- which it clearly isn’t- and ‘The best hot pot and bbq place‘ which it probably is, even if only by default. Social media accounts ‘invited’ here love it too, but colour me shocked: that’s not where you go for nuanced critique is it?
The topic of eating in The Bay is still divisive. If you’re feeling jaundiced you mention Greggs, Zizzi, Giggling Squid and the disappointing Picton and Co; on a sunnier day you name check Chans (well reviewed here by Soliciting Flavours), The Sultan, Fabulous Welsh cakes and Llanfaes Dairy ice cream.
You’ll be given a guided tour and a brief how-to, so setttle in front of your hot plate and choose from six hot pot opti
Of course, it’s easy to think of what the same money could buy you locally- more than you could eat in a sitting (or two) at Lahore Kebabish, a three course lunch at Asador or Ember at Number 5, even a tasting menu lunch at Heaney’s.
But that would be to miss the point. You’re not paying for memorable individual dishes, you’re paying for the experience. And if that interactivity strikes you as fun, you’re probably going to enjoy it here.
And if you didn’t, the fact you’ve prepaid (£33 plus £1.65 service charge at 5%) means you can slink away into the bosom of Mermaid Quay, muttering as you go. It’s £25 for children under 150cm and 13 years old, and there’s a vaguely sinister warning about height checks carried out at reception.
This site has buffet history, of course, and there’s a brief, vivid flashback before we even begin.
It’s the smell that takes me back as we reach the upstairs lobby: the incongruous old-school miasma of cigarettes hanging in the air.
Proper cigarette smoke, I mean, the stuff you used to smell when this was Cosmo (must check this before posting) and JRC Global. For years this huge space (is there a larger restaurant in the city?) and its ‘something for everyone’ menu made it an obvious pick for work nights out, nearby bars and all.
As an aside: who knew that decades of anti-smoking campaigns could have been sidestepped by telling us that the iconic cool of Bogart, Mitchum or Hepburn would descend into grown ups walking into vape shops to buy fruit-scented liquids. We would have quit in our droves.
Think of that scene in Goodfellas: Scorsese’s camera lingers on Jimmy Conway (de Niro) as he decides to kill Morrie. It would lose something if he was puffing on some clunky device filled with Watermelon Bliss or Apricot Blush, no?
Anyway. Where were we? DaiU.
What ends up on your plate is infinitely customisable of course. That’s the point. No two meals here will be exactly the same, which calls for a different kind of review, I suppose. Less dish by dish, more this is what it’s like here. Although, as a reader, that’s often the dividing line between enjoyable restaurant writing and the rest.
A Korean diner could give you the rundown on how authentic all this is, although I suppose that’s not always the priority in a restaurant aimed squarely at a mass market. DaiU’s ‘Korean and Japanese fusion’ translates into unremarkable sushi (sorry, the ‘expertly crafted flavors [sic] of our sushi rolls’) and a small range of readymade Chinese-leaning dishes.
Stir-fried noodles, egg fried rice, chicken dumplings, and, depressingly, chips sit under heat lamps. It all looks a bit unloved and unlovely, and there are obvious temperature issues, despite us arriving five minutes after opening. None of this improves during our stay. Cumin lamb- one of my go-tos, and so memorably done at Canton’s still-missed Old Sichuan and more recently at Cardiff Restaurant- is an underpowered mixed meats effort, crucially lacking that essential hum of the spice.
Head instead for the brightly-lit serried ranks where you’ll find seafood, marinated and unadorned meats and vegetables, although it’s more than possible you’d feel aggrieved as a vegetarian to pay the same for mushrooms and tofu as the rest are shelling out for ribeye steak, mussels and prawns. You can insert your own lame gag about having a beef with the pricing.
About here should do just fine.
Done that? Grand. We’ll press on.
Choose your soup base. Three mild, three spicy. The Sichuan pot brings genuine heat with dried red chillies, ginger and garlic; chicken and fish maw is far more well-behaved. You’ll be offered more as things go on, but as these seem to be an all purpose top-up you may feel your broth would be diluted. Throughout, staff are agile, attentive and smiley, and they’ll also be on the lookout for your grill paper needing refreshing as you grill.
Fattier cuts abound, so depending on the order you cook your meats, you can have everything sizzling in rendered pork fat; and when has that ever been a bad idea? Chopsticks, tongs, ladles, forks: they’re all on hand, though any cutting will have you reaching for some worryingly scimitar-like shears.
There’s no shortage of sauces and seasonings- birds eye chillies, sesame paste, satay and oyster sauces are all on hand- so crank that baby up, um…..baby, and get to work. Slim rolls of marbled beef, happily bobbing in broth. ‘This is so fun!’ A says, and you’d have to be churl to deny this place has some novelty appeal. As a bonus this might just be one time our old chum ‘cooked to perfection’ might not make you wince.
So, what to make of DaiU? It offers plenty of choice, it has an easy selling point to understand, it’s interactive if you like that sort of thing.
But you knew all that: like I said, you have probably already made up your mind.
Mon-Fri 16:30 – 22:30
Sat 12:00 – 22:30
Sun 12:00 – 21:30
https://daiu.co.uk/cardiff-bay/
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