The 2nd of Emma's birthday parties. This time held in the Wing Wah Chinese Restaurant in Coventry. They do an all-you-can-eat buffet for around £12-14 evenings and weekends, only £6 mid-day but there is less choice. As well as all the usual stir fried food (which is very tasty) they also have a Teppanyaki bar where you select the food you want cooking and it's cooked in front of you. It's fascinating to watch this in action, with the spatulas almost dancing across the grill as the food is mixed and cooked. The highlight of this is when the brandy gets added, and the grill briefly becomes a wall of flame.

The dessert selection used to be fairly typical until they got a chocolate fountain. I think you're supposed to use the sticks and fruit provided (usually lychees and melons) but we tend to pick other things off the dessert table and dip those as well - grapes, lumps of cake, that kind of thing. It's also good to collect some of the chocolate in a spoon and pour it over the ice cream where it sets into a hard shell.

The Wing Wah also have a special birthday dessert - usually a melon or pineapple filled with ice cream and with a giant sparkler sticking out. This is brought to the table with great ceremony to a recording of a chinese lady singing 'happy barthday'. We tried to make sure that Emma didn't fill up on all the other foods because two of her friends had ordered one of these. In the end, we still had to help her out eating it.

(photo of Emma and the ice cream taken by AndyMac. Andy - hope you don't mind me stealing your photos and using them on my site!)