Everyone has their favourite Chinese restaurant, the one they go back to every few weeks without question.

Well, everyone except me, I think. I used to be a big fan of Haka in Wokingham, but I moved away several years ago and have been struggling to find a replacement.

I won’t name names, as some of them may be your favourites, but a lot of those I've tried around Reading have been pretty poor. Lots of that salty MSG zing and very little by way of natural flavour, home-cooked feel or originality.

Furama in Friar Street, I’m happy to say, may well have filled the Haka-shaped hole in my life.

My friend Hugh and I went on a wet Wednesday night. It was early, in fact I watched the waiter turn the open/closed sign around before I went in, but happily, within minutes of sitting down the place was filling up. That is always a good sign.

Lynn, the manageress, greeted us excitedly and told me a bit about the place. The part I was most impressed by is that her husband is the head chef and was toiling away in the kitchen that very evening. I‘m not one for getting sniffy about Reading’s chain eateries but it is nice to see a proper family restaurant.

The way the place works is on an all-you-can-eat basis but it isn’t a buffet. This means you can order whatever you want and it’s brought over freshly cooked.

The nice thing about that is it removes that niggling worry about how long your dinner has been sitting under a heat lamp for.

I’ll just say this from the off because if I don’t you're going to be thinking, ‘is this guy really that greedy?’ – we ordered a lot of food. But it was all in the name of thorough research. And greed.

To start we had the mixed hors d’oevres. The dish, to be shared, is made up of sesame prawn toast, satay chicken, spring rolls and other such delights.

We also ordered salt and chilli prawns, smoked chicken and quick fried crispy squid at the recommendation of Lynn. It was a varied selection – the squid was a particular highlight and the smoked chicken was sweet, nutty and very slightly bitter. It was an unusual taste but very enjoyable.

Next we had a quarter of crispy duck as good as any I’ve had. In fact, crispy duck often seems to taste the same wherever you go which is usually tasty, but never surprising. For our main courses, (although to be honest the whole division between mains and starters and sides went out of the window) we ordered Szechuan king prawns, shredded chilli beef, Cantonese steak in pungent sauce (again at the recommendation of Lynn, it’s always good when a proprietor knows their menu well) and chicken and cashew nuts in yellow bean sauce.

Now, I’m a big fan of chicken and cashew nuts in yellow bean sauce and I use it as a sort of Chinese restaurant barometer – if somewhere doesn’t sell it I hold it against them and if it’s good I will almost certainly go back.

It’s sufficient to say I will go back to Furama.

The beef in pungent sauce was much, much more appetising than it sounds and the Szechuan prawns had a fruity, chilli heat to them

Crispy chilli beef is another one of those dishes which always tastes the same. It was sweet, hot crunchy and very, very enjoyable but no different to what you've had before, although that is no bad thing.

After all that, you may be pleased to know, we didn't go for dessert. It’s not what you go to a Chinese restaurant for and I think sometimes they know that and just serve you a frozen lemon full of sorbet whether you like it or not.

The menu at Furama looked nicer than that but I thought I’d be better using my appetite on the savoury dishes.

Reading has a lot of Chinese restaurants and most stick to the same formula. As I keep saying, that's not a problem.

But, really, it means that if they all do a similar thing then you only ever really need to go to the one that does it best and, in my opinion, that’s Furama.

The 'eat as much as you like' menu is £16.50 for adults and £8 for children under eight Sunday to Thursday and £17.50 for adults and £8 for children under eight Friday and Saturday.

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