Gatwick Oriental - Mole Valley

Situated within Sofitel at Gatwick Airport open to residents and non residents. Superb Pan-Asian food in a delightful restaurant. The food is delicious but even with a reservation you have to queue for your table along with those without a reservation. Once seated, drinks order was taken quickly, food order less so. Without doubt the food is worthy of a 5/5 rating but the service let it down. Once we had ordered and the food arrived, we felt very hurried to finish and leave. For that reason I have rated this place 4/5.

What a diamond this place was. We came here, purely because we staying at the hotel. There are 3 restaurants and this one stood out for us. Our waitress was Elena, she was a star, had a lovely smile and very pleasant. We had a starter each. I had Vegetarian spring roll they were amazing. My main meal was Pad Thai Jay this was yummy and first time having tofu. My husband’s stater was Hot spicy soup he said this was WOW! And main meal was Singapore noodles. He loved every minute of it, lush he words were. Great service, fantastic atmosphere. Will definitely come again.

Had to return the egg fried rice. It was not fried and there was no egg. First waiter was very stroppy. After he was changed service was good and although the meal was pleasant it was very average.

Both the welcome and the service at Vanda were perfunctory. We have been coming to this restaurant, and its predecessors, for over 30 years and never before has there been such a performance over signing the bill to our room. We were the only people in the restaurant using chopsticks – we had to ask for them and there were no rests for the chopsticks. The Sweet and Sour Prawns and the Pad Thai were good but we can't honestly say it was an enjoyable evening.

We booked two months ahead but on arrival they didn’t have our reservation. Fortunately they still gave us a table but it wasn’t a great start. When we asked for a kids menu, as advertised on the website, we were told to go next door, order food and wait for it to then bring it into Vanda. A shocking experience for a family trying to eat together.