Tops

I’d say it’s a bit pricey but the variety of food and sweeties makes it worth, it’s my second time I’ve been there and as usual, had a lot of food! It’s the type of place I’d recommend to go in a large group, as everyone can make their own menu unless they’re very picky.
Regarding drinks, whether alcoholic or not, I think there should be more options, that’s a weak area from my point of view. I liked overall the music and the volume at which is played, yes, that’s important to me the place not being a hell of noise.
The staff always helpful, we happened to deal with an Italian waiter and my French friend started joking with the other staff members, very funny, one of the fewest time I’ve been laughing so much in a place just to have dinner!

I have to say I’m with James G on this– I love world buffets!
You never have to wait that long even on a saturday, without booking a table!
The staff are always trying to be helpful, even if they speak english that well and are ALWAYS and forever topping up the food!
This is always a good bet when you can’t decide whether you want, pizza, chinese or Indian… why not have ALL of them?!
I get that some people dislike this place as they don’t like stuffing themselves but maybe don’t come to an all you can eat??? Just a thought!
They really have everything here! Amazing meat and veggie curries, rices, starters– including chicken nuggets, chips, calamari, prawn toasts, samosas, onion rings, kebabs, MAINS include pizza, thai curries, chicken chow mein, vegetable chow mein, BBQ sections with sweet sticky ribs, Sushi, massive pudding section and popcorn machine they’ve got pizzas coming out their eye balls, teppenaki where they will cook anything you desire as well as a… CHOCOLATE FOUNTAIN!
Does life get any better than this?
Well yes it actually does as they have gone to the next level and acquired a robot that cuts noodles– yep you heard it here!
They have chefs all day cooking bits and bobs up for you in sauces of your choice! This includes steak, seafood, ribs and much more!
On Saturdays it is around £16 for an all you can eat and drinks are separate but it really is worth it!
Drink aren’t too exspensive either and they have a range of soft drinks, juices, beers on tap, spirits, wines and ciders though not a massive range it does suffice!
Basically I love this place!

I know… I’m giving 5 stars to an all you can eat gluttony hall… but I just can’t help it! It might be down to the fact that we only end up here when we can’t decide between cuisines or have fussy eaters… but I always have a great time and you can just turn up without booking and get a seat on a Saturday night without waiting an hour.
The food is what you would expect, lots of sweet sticky sauces and meats, a selection of currys, sushi, BBQ, crispy duck, and some veggie options too, but for the amount of food this place is churning out each hour they don’t do a bad job and the food is tasty.
But what I love about this place isn’t the good (for an all you can eat) quality food… it’s the experience! I love getting up with friends, plate in hand and having über choice! You start to discuss tactics, what’s the best dish to start on… the don’t eat any carbs ones… the let’s get one of everything… the let’s put these guys out of business troopers!
You instantly feel relaxed and laugh at how ridiculous your food strategy is! That’s why this place deserves a 5 stars review! And the staff aren’t half bad either quickly clearing any used plates and offering help to the un-​inniciated.
All I can finish with is give it a go… look past the glutinous consumer gone mad attitudes and get your food tactics right! Let eat all their food and put them out of business ;)

Tops was a horrible place to eat. Their drinks and food were overpriced and nasty, their food had been siting out there for god knows how long, even with some of the food pans sitting there empty without it being topped up. I am vegetarian so i have trouble finding good vegetarian food in restaurants. Their vegetarian selection was poor. I’ve been there 3 times, and every time it has been worse, to the point where i refuse to go there any more. And besides their chocolate fondue, the rest of their desserts were also unappealing. All their staff is concerned about is getting your money before even welcoming you in. It’s in such bad taste. Save your money and run away elsewhere!!!

Im not a massive fan of all you can eat buffets generally, however if you have a large group of people and want to keep the eve relatively cheap they are a great option. Buffet on a Thursday eve here was £13 and you could buy and pay for your drinks at the bar area so perfect for a big group where you don’t want any bill surprises at the end of the evening! There was about 25 of us so a normal restaurant would have been a bit of a nightmare to organise and co-​ordinate.
Tops is based on Portland Street and doesn’t look all that big from the entrance but it is really quite large once you get inside. It was busy too and that’s good for these buffet places as it meant the food will be refreshed often not left to fester (which is one of the reasons why I’m not normally keen!)
They have your usual Chinese and Asian food which you can help yourself to, but here they also have a grill section where you can have your meat, veg or prawns freshly cooked in front of you which is nice and an option I went for. Also randomly have Italian and Mexican.
Dessert wise they have a a Mr whippy type ice cream machine a various toppings as well as cakes and other sweet treats
Food was OK nothing to write home about but for £13 I can’t really grumble.
If you are a large group book in advance for some table surprises :) we had a lobster dish and some cakes delivered to our table.

Oh my god. I’d forgotten about this place until now. Gavin L and I ate here a few months ago and totally regretted it.
If you want to stuff your face with as much low quality food as possible while sitting almost elbow to elbow with the best of the city’s oxygen thieves, you’ve come to the right place. Otherwise, run in the opposite direction right now!
Tops promotes everything I despise about today’s world: false happiness, crap food, bad health, obesity, freely exhibited and acceptable greed, shit music and a rubbish choice of alcohol.
We left the restaurant feeling really dirty (and not in a good way), like we’d just eaten a load of food we didn’t even really want /​need, followed by «I feel so full, I don’t think I can walk» and of course, a large dollop of guilt.
Don’t do it, people! Go to a nice restaurant and order something you genuinely want. Don’t eat for the sake of eating or be lured by a sign outside promising all you can scoff for a silly price. There are so many better places in Manchester!

buffet for lunch is reasonable for 7.99. There are many kinds of food, most of the Chinese food are nice. Or maybe it’s because I Miss them so much. We had a great time there.

Of the three (that I can think of) buffet places in Manchester, this one is my favourite. In case you’ve never made it to Tops, it’s a simple land, full of delicious, tasty food, which you can eat. Lots of. All of the food in fact.
The cuisine is mostly oriental, with some Indian and, in what I can only assume is a concession to the fact that they call themselves a ‘world buffet’, pizza.
The selection of pre-​prepared dishes is pretty varied. To give you a few examples (without hopefully going too overboard), you can load your plate up with…
Prawn toast, chicken satay, lemon chicken, salt and pepper prawns, sushi, hot and sour soup, chips, nan bread, korma, chicken tikka, thai green curry, fragrant thai rice… *deep breath* … shredded duck, pizza, sweet and sour chicken, Mongolian lamb (great!), noodles, rice, char shui pork and beef in black bean sauce. You know, just to name a few.
Where the real fun comes in is the live cooking. In the evenings they have a teppenyaki style grill (the squid is brilliant!) a BBQ grill (great lamb skewers) fresh roast duck and lamb and fresh sea food.
If you’re thirsty, you get table service for drink (having paid for food on the way in) but you have to pay per round, and there’s a pretty reasonable selection of drinks available.
The only disappointment are the desserts. If you like fairly plain cake, or ice cream (ice cream mountain, mmmm), you’ll be fine. Of you want something which will satisfy your more refined palate, you might be out of luck. That said, they do usually have chocolate fountains (yes, plural).
If you’ve got an appetite for something good, you could do much worse than tops.

Visited this restaurant last sunday for the evening menu, the building is nicely decorated and well laid out, the staff were efficient and professional, the range of foods avail is extensive and covers many types, the place was busy with easy access to the majority of foods avail, slight queues for the freshly prepared, but thats to ber expected and well worth the wait, Children are well catered for also.
Overall a nice place, very enjoyable and I would recommend it

I would give 3.5 stars but can not give halves on here.
It is pretty good for a buffet, I enjoyed it more than Red Hot.
Great variety of food when you go in the evening. Really liked the choice of sushi, and teppanyaki counter where chef would cook 2 of your meat/​sea food options on grill. However, the queue for it was long and it took absolutely ages to get to the teppanyaki counter, maybe they should consider to get one more chef for teppanyaki counter.
The bar can get a bit busy and you would have to wait quite a long time to order drinks.

Move over Red Hot Buffet World !
At around the same price as the above Tops felt more intimate & not as noisy.
Same amount of food same kind of food but with tops being more central in the city centre, this will now be my preferred choice if wanting a all you can eat «world style»

Great place, reasonably priced, great food. Really good for kids too. Lots to choose from. Friendly staff.

Yum, that’s some good buffet food!
I’ve had buffets. I’ve had Vegas buffets, I’ve had Los Angeles buffets. This, however, is good buffet food. What they lack in extravagance (i.e. Vegas serving lobster and crab legs) they make up for in variety catering to Asian-​style foods.
There’s a sushi bar with rotating options of cut rolls — you can ask them for sashimi and you might get lucky. Several curries to choose from, all the go-​to fried «Asian» food that you never actually see in Asia, and more realistic duck and pork choices. Loads of desserts, plus beers if you feel like paying for them.
I’ve been here a couple times for dinner, and have always left satisfied. The staff is nice and accommodating to large groups. I wish some of the food options were a bit higher quality, but for the price I think it’s definitely fair. When I get all you can eat, I can’t help but think of the AYCE Korean bbq or Japanese sushi that some places offer, but that comes with a hefty price tag.
I’ve been here a couple times so far, and no doubt I’ll be returning again. You get your money’s worth with each trip.

Was just at Tops and the service was horrific!!! we had made a reservation I asked a member of staff a question in Cantonese and he turned around and said he don’t speak the language in Mandarin and walked off! I then asked the reception then they told me to queue outside and wait at the end of the queue when we were the 1^st one their but the security guy said it was alrite to wait there as i have a 8mth old baby with me!
I have never been to a restaurant where the staff was so rude and argumentative!!! They treat people as tho they were tramps and begging them for food as we are the ones who pay them, we just walked out and ended up in Tai Wu where they actually have customer service!!! I do not recommend any of my friends and would also warn them about the staff and their attitude!!!

Tops exceeded my expectations. £6.99 for a lunch buffet seems to be standard fair in the Manchester area but this building is SO pretty inside — they have really glammed up the buffet experience! You pay at a till then get your barcoded ticket then you get seated, a process i’m sure is worthwhile when it’s busy but on this slow lunchtime it felt like it could have been avoided. We got shown to our seats and you get a fun gold wand placed at your table so the servers know that your table will need cleaning at some point. If they had given us a gold wand each they would have a 5 star rating.
Starting with the starters (ahem) I quickly plated spring rolls, lemon chicken, chicken satay, salt and pepper chicken wings (good thing I like chicken…), and sweet and sour pork. As I am not a lover of fish in any sense of the term the start selection was cut in half for me but that is what you expect. I also picked up some broccoli from the main station as I was trying to make sure I got some veggies onto each plate. Everything was warm and tasty, with the satay and lemon chickens having help yourself sauce, so everything was balanced as I like it. I really enjoyed the salt and pepper wings and went back for more later. Second plate for me was green thai curry which I added egg fried rice and green beans to and it was lovely, nice and spicy. The chicken did feel like it had been sat there a while but, in all honesty, it had, it’s a buffet, you can’t expect it to be fresh for your pickin’s. It was at this point we realised that many of the stations were closed off until dinner time, something we were slightly suprised hadn’t been explained to us, but, when we had finished, we decided that those stations would have been our downfall as the lunchtime selection was wide enough. Sweet and sour chicken, more green beans, broccolli, a small salad from the sushi bar, more spring rolls and salt and pepper wings, thai fried pork, and cashew chicken all came later on two more plates. The stand out dish for me was the vegetarian ‘peanut vegetables’ — there sadly wasn’t much left of the dish but it involved mangetout, baby corn, and some absolutely delicious celery. So nice to find some vegetables amongst an otherwise heftily sauced and fried selection!
Now, dessert. DESSERT. THEY HAVE SWEETS AND WHIPPY ICE CREAM PEOPLE. If that is the only thing of this review you take away, take it now and run with it. It was like having a flash back to Pizza Hut many a year ago. I had some lovely pineapple and watermelon too, but whippy ice cream laden with jelly tots, marshmallows AND chocolate peanuts? I know which I prefer.
Attentive service and some stand out dishes. Some were below par but I often think that’s the fun of buffet’s — and there has to be something they’re bad at!
I now fancy a night where I visit both Tops and Taps in a night, just because. Oh the life of the unemployed.

As far as buffets go, its one of the more expensive ones. It cost £14.99. This is the same price of Red Hot World buffet is for a Saturday — although Red Hot World buffet at lunch time is £9.99.
Its similar to Red Hot in that that is food from around the world and also chefs cooking food fresh in front of you. All sorts of different foods including Chinese, Indian, Pizza, Sushi, Thai, Teppenyaki etc plus lots of desserts.
The quality was pretty good but you could argue you are paying for it. I am more stuffed because I just wanted to try different things rather than the food was «amazing». It was overall good — very good for a buffet.
However, there are some negative things:
The Teppanyaki — it took ages! I was waiting for about 15 – 20 minute and there only about 4 people in front of me. The problem was the chef was really slow and he also just cooked one person’s order at a time. He also had a spend time slicing the meat — really it should have been prepared especially since hes so slow. Instead of getting a few peoples order and basically multi-​tasking, he just focussed on one person — which was a maximum of 2 items. The items available included sirloin steak, calamari, lamb chop, scallops, prawns. I had steak and calamari. The pieces of steak were tiny! Both were OK but can be the problem with teppenyaki, it can be too salty.
By the time I had got my food, the queue was much bigger. This meant the queue extended back into the food «stall» next door — which was for Wonton soup. And that one had a long wait too. As well as the waiting, next door to the teppenyaki was some dim sum. If you wanted some, it meant jumping in-​between people in the queue.
I tried most of the different cuisines. Sushi was nice — had about 3 plates — they didn’t have wasabi though. Curry was tasty — meat was a bit tough but nice flavour. Poppadoms were actually some of the tastiest and crispiest I have ever had. Nice selection of Chinese starters/​mains which were decent. The only dessert I had was an ice cream in a cone. Not much of a dessert person but also was very full. It was just from one of those machines you help yourself and it was as you expect — pretty good but very sweet.
Another negative was the breaded crab claws. Now we all know these are never 100% proper crab but you expect it to taste like crab and have some crab in it. This tasted just like potato — and very bland potato!
I am tempted to knock it down to ³⁄₅ but the service was very good. (Although saying that, the guy at the front sent us to the wrong side of the desk to pay by credit card but no major issue but it could have potentially put as to the back of a queue and basically queue twice). The woman who showed us to table was very friendly and the plates were cleared up efficiently by the staff.
Tops has been open less than a week — grand opening was 17^th June — so maybe the minor issues to iron out???
I would actually give it 3.5÷5 if I could but Unilocal doesn’t allow half marks.