I know in the past that I’ve been quite critical about the eating establishments at the Trafford Centre – and with good reason. They’re all poor chain restaurants who feel like they don’t think they need to provide either good food or good service, purely due to the fact that you have no choice but to eat there. So when Kieran and I found ourselves there in the midst of the January sales the other day, we were having trouble deciding where to go to have a mediocre, but expensive lunch. Then I remembered Chaobaby.

Chaophraya is a small chain of restaurants based in the north, with seven venues so far. The restaurant in the centre of Manchester is widely regarded as serving the best thai food around. I’ve been there multiple times and loved it. It’s quite upmarket (apparently all the footballers eat there or something) and the service is brilliant, though the food is very reasonably priced, with main courses priced at around the £10 mark.

Chaobaby is a sister restaurant – but with a twist. It calls itself a ‘banquet restaurant’, but it is really an ‘all you can eat’ buffet. Again, a buffet isn’t something that usually inspires me with culinary confidence, but thought we’d give it a chance due to the fact that it was related to Chaophraya. And we were so glad. The food was just as good as anything I’ve eaten from the a la carte menu of Chaophraya.

Various Thai samplings

There were a variety of curries on offer – I tried the thai green curry and the panang beef curry, both of which were delicious. Other dishes on offer were pad thai, satay chicken and various noodle dishes. One of the highlights for me was a fresh beef salad, which was bursting with lime and ginger flavour. All the food was fresh – the vegetables in the green curry were all crunchy, so had obviously been freshly cooked and not left to stew for hours in the sauce. Just delicious.

There were chefs stood at the counter who you could ask to fry you up some crispy noodles, which Kieran used to top his Tom Kha soup, which was probably the most delicious thing there.

Yes, they do dessert too.

Dessert was something else though. They had a chef stood at the dessert cart cooking up fresh pancakes, which you helped yourself to. I, of course had two portions covered in syrup and chocolate sauce. They also had a cold rice pudding made with coconut milk, which was lovely – and the obligatory fruit salad.

I would definitely return here to eat. Kieran and I both agreed that we would have been happy to have been served any of the dishes on the buffet at a standard restaurant, with some dishes being the best thai food I’d had in a long while. And all for £12.95 per person. Brilliant.

Best of all, I’ve finally found somewhere half decent to eat at the Trafford Centre. Hurrah!