| rev:text
| - Finally able to hit this place for a weekday lunch and sadly was quite disappointed,
First off, the place overall looks quite dated but the washroom (men only reviewed) was clean enough, had blow driers and just outside the bathroom there is a hand sanitizer if desired. Waiters were friendly enough and did their part to clean the table of its dishes promptly.
Secondly, the pricing - it is $13.99 for Adults - but they consider a "child" to be up to 10yr old. I have a 10 and 14yr old so we were fine with this, this trip, but Mandarin's version of children is up to 12yr old. Consider this when coming here v. Mandarin esp during the more expensive time periods. Also this place offers coupons - buy one adult and get another free. I believe there was a child version as well - being hit with 3 adults we would have gotten the child for free as well as one adult. (Max 2 coupons per group; lots of exclusions; Not valid during a Blue Moon yadda yadda). The coupons are not sent across the GTA - appears to be within Toronto and East of the 404/DVP, but I was able to score one. Not available online and must pay with cash to use them.
The food? Overall quite disappointing. We passed on soup/salad (though I had coleslaw if you can call it that and it was horrible and had super long strands of cabbage). Note: We don't eat sushi or the fresh fruit - yes it was offered and no we did not have any.
The problem is that there just wasn't enough MEAT being served. There was a fish dish which we passed on, and they had a couple of dishes with chicken or beef (ie curry chicken; broccoli w/beef (they name it the other way around but trust me - you really had to search for the beef); scallions and beef etc. The chicken balls were formed chicken and HORRIBLE (I *never* get chicken balls but wanted some meat - and even here they blew up). The only real meat was the chicken wings and those were not (unlike every other buffet) always available and or replenished with very little. Either they are not putting out a lot or everyone else saw what I saw and took as many wings as possible.
On the positive side they had (a) good fresh shrimp - deveined and shell free (Mandarin is poor here - they always have the shell on); (b) pan fried shrimp - that was tasty - smaller than the fresh and not deveined and had the shell so a bit of a PITA. (c) they had a half decent calamari - salty/spicy. Nice but not all edible - a bunch of hard fried pieces. And finally (d) actually not bad BBQ Pork - a bit fatty but definitely not "cold" or "hard and dry" like you can get at Mandarin.
Vegetable fried rice; Young Chow Fried rice (it was okay); shrimp torpedoes (as with Mandarin - lightly breaded - pretty good); kids stuff like fries and onion rings (I saw more onion refills than wings and rarely see a need to refill at Mandarin). The pizza was poor - only cheese and not very good - kid didn't even want it. They had a couple of dim sum dishes (har gow) - pretty bad actually. They had some garlic bread with cheese - clearly they don't wash the tray before adding more - I could see remnants from other iterations.
So what is this thing about the meat? Well at Mandarin you would have MORE meat in the dishes (noodles; rice etc); but you also have (a) Roasted Chicken; (b) They have a station where you can get grilled chicken or grilled steak - good quality and (c) they have pork spare ribs floating in a sweet sauce (chuckle - not great but they had it). Note: Roasted chicken *COSTS MONEY* and this place is doing their part to cut costs. Bad move!
Desserts? Well this is where the tables are turned - it appears they want to excel with the sweets and they do. Ice creams are meh, but they have a LOT of good desserts - waffles and crepes freshly made; cheese cakes; various pies, puffs; Neapolitan Squares etc.
But dessert is not something a buffet can do alone to make up for the rest of the experience. Anyone can get fresh delicious desserts trucked in each day, but to skimp on the meat in the dishes and not provide anything substantial is just not good value.
As a result the first and last time we will come here. Yes YELPers did have the right rating on this one. The people at my work said it was pretty good but I passed the first time around and thankfully did. If you must go, you better not go without a coupon.
Overall, however, if you have a choice - go to Mandarin. You will have a much better experience at a far better value.
2 Stars because of the excellent desserts but otherwise - AVOID.
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