Buffet City

Reviews

• ★★★★½ Boiled Crab Legs General Chicken Philadelphia Roll Coconut Shrimp Spicy Tuna Roll Mongolian Beef Visited Sep 10, 2023

  Buffet Is OK, Not A Destination, But Decent Enough For A Meal On The Go

  According to my phone, my last visit to this buffet was just after it had reopened from Covid shutdowns. The visit was pretty disappointing and I never returned after it, until last week.
  
  Surprisingly the prices have only increased by $1 in the last couple years.
  Lunch is now (Mon-Fri $12) ($13 Sat)
  Dinner is now (Mon-Thur $15) ($16 Fri-Sun)
  
  I had checked the prices online out of curiosity when I saw the sticky note saying "Crab Legs" were on the weekend menu. Not many buffets have them anymore, and when I saw this, I decided to give it another shot.
  
  I started my visit off with a plate of random items. Some triple delight, a little general chicken, a random selection of sushi, a cheese rangoon, seaweed salad, some pepper steak, and beef & broccoli.
  
  The peppersteak and beef & broccoli both had the same kind of beef in them. It was kinda chewy, and mushy for lack of a better description but the flavor was OK, one was definitely hotter (temperature wise) than the other, but neither were impressive. The triple delight was a bit better, but again, I felt it was lacking some flavor. The general chicken however was a total disappointment, it tasted like dark meat, the sauce didnt have good flavor at all, and the pieces of chicken were soggy.
  
  The couple pieces of sushi I picked out included a piece of a Philly roll, and a California roll. The Philly & California rolls both lacked flavor as well, and Im not sure if it was starchy rice, or odd cream cheese, but they just tasted bland. I never made it back to try the nigiri or other rolls.
  
  The highlight of the first plate was the cheese rangoon, and the seaweed salad. The cheese rangoon was crispy, the bottom wasnt soggy and the cream cheese inside was creamy. Probably some of the better buffet rangoons Ive had. The seaweed salad was good as well, seasoned with sesame oil and sesame seeds, not salty, with a little bit of crunch to it, and no fishy flavor.
  
  I decided to give the Chinese buffet a break and grab a plate of the crab legs. I was prepared for the worst, soggy legs that I'd have to fight to get meat out of. So I only grabbed 4 pieces. Surprisingly the crab legs were crisp, you could actually snap them with your hands, and pull the meat as a single solid piece from them. People were eating them so fast the buffet had a constant fresh batch coming out. There was also drawn butter, but it was a bit lacking
  in flavor as well and required some salt. It was more like a butter flavored oil, but overall for the price of the buffet the crab legs were much better than expected.
  
  I made another trip to the buffet cart for more crab legs, bringing my total to about 10 legs.. Along with the 2nd batch I picked up a deep fried crab cluster as well. How fresh were the crab legs? I didnt even ask for the crackers, I used my hands and a regular fork to peel and eat all 10.
  
  For dessert, I tried 2 small cubes of cake, a cube of mango jello, and some vanilla ice cream. The vanilla ice cream was probably the best thing. The capuccino cake was decent as well, but everything else was just average.
  
  Overall, the entrees I tried were all just average buffet food, with some of them below average. A few items were pretty good, but I didnt really find anything amazing. The price of the buffet was below most the places in town, and Im not sure theres a cheaper Chinese buffet in the city. Im pretty sure there isnt one with crab legs for less.
  
  Definitely room for improvement when it comes to flavor on some items, I felt like many items just needed salt. But overall I would go back for more crab legs, and a few other items, I just dont feel like its returned to the point it was at before.

  — Paul