Great Wall

The food is really fresh and delicious and there is more of a variety than at other Chinese buffets in Bloomington. The environment was very relaxing and the servers were very helpful and polite. I love this place!

It’s closed… I don’t understand why Unilocal still said it’s opening.
I called before I went, but nobody picked up the phone, so I drive down there cause I used to love its food! Then I found out this restaurant has been closed since summer!!!

This Unilocal page needs some serious updating! First of all the website listed here is for a very expensive Chinese restaurant in Minnesota not the one here in Bloomington! Secondly, after reading the reviews on here that the place was closed with no notice to the public, I tried to call today Sunday August 30^th and I didn’t get any answer the phone just rang and rang with no answering machine or anything. That right there is a very poor business ethic. The last thing you want to do in a town as small as ours is alienate your customers.

The buffet is well made and the people here are super friendly. When I first found this place, I came 10 times in a row. It’s definitely worth a try.

This place is closed for the summer. Rather than leaving an outgoing voice message indicating that to customers, they thought it would be better to direct the phone line to a fax machine and post a piece of paper on the door so that each person could drive over to find out they aren’t open… for no particular reason.

Super impressed by the revamped restaurant! Layout was redesigned so their buffet is the star of the show in the middle of the restaurant. The store is now a seating area with a bar and karaōke! They have fried dumplings! Usually I just see steamed dumplings around town, but the potstickers are my favorite. So happy to give this place a try after the reopening!

Their God is okay, but nothing fabulous. The bathroom smelled pleasant. With Mr. Hibachi, I give this place 6 months and that’s being generous.

The food wasn’t very fresh and most of the plates were dirty. The new interior was pretty, but they got rid of the cool little Asian grocery they used to have attached which was a nice feature. They were kind of stingy about drink refills. Not really impressed and not much has improved other than the interior.

Congratulations to the new owners. The new buffet truly has a good representation of many different dishes. I would consider this the best Chinese buffet in Bloomington. There’s a good variety and many of the dishes actually have fresh vegetables in them unlike other buffets in the area. i will eat here again. I hope they can continue to provide such a good product for such a fair price.

Had dinner here tonight for $ 11.99. Was just bad. Best dish on the buffet was the egg/​tomato, e verything else was drenched in salt, sushi was made with dry rice. I try to stick with local businesses when traveling for food but this made me feel cheated out of my money…

Some of dishes are very good. But a few of them taste like adapted to American style. Overall it’s very good Chinese restaurant.

I went there for the lunch buffet today. You cannot ask too much from a buffet place, and this place is the best Chinese buffet in town, with no doubt.
The best part of that place is the variety of dishes. They have some traditional Chinese dishes (not very authentic, of course, it is a buffet place!!!) and some American Chinese dishes. For lunch, they have about 30 – 40 different dishes, plus a sushi bar. I will try their dinner sometime.
Another unique part of this place is that their dishes are REAL dishes. Most Chinese buffet places *say* that they have many dishes, but about ¹⁄₃ to ½ of them are some fried food (chicken wings, cheese stick), veggies from the salad bar, plus large portion of baked dishes like baked beef, salmon, mushrooms, etc. They are not real «dishes». But this place, Great Wall, does not have those kinds of «cheating dishes». Almost all of their dishes are real dishes like pork with garlic sauce, Mongolian pork, beef with onions, Mapo tofu, eggs with tomato, sour and sweet shrimp, just name a few. Just imagine a buffet place having all dishes you can get from Panda Express (American Chinese food) plus equal amount of traditional Chinese dishes.
I have to say that I may not have an upper class taste but I think Great Wall is what a buffet place should be like. So, generally, 4-​stars, as a buffet, 5 stars.
Btw, not sure whether this is by accident or not. This is the only Chinese restaurant I’ve ever been that has Jazz as the background music…
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I went for dinner a couple of days ago. It was good. But I have to say that the upgrade from lunch buffet is pretty limited. Compared to lunch, the dinner is 4 bucks more expensive (11.99), but it only has three more dishes. Yes, they do change some other dishes (5 – 8? I did not count) and make the dinner more fancy and more authentic. But for the price I think lunch buffet is a better choice.
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I marked another star off for the price. They recently raise their price. (I was told today (April 2^nd) when they charged me more than before.) The lunch is $ 8.95 now (before tax), not sure about dinner. For a lunch buffet with variety of food but without anything really fancy (e.g. no seafood for lunch), $ 8.95 is not that reasonable to me. Apparently they did a poor job updating their ongoing advertisement, since their advertisement on IDS today says that the lunch buffet is $ 7.99 and their google plus page also says the price is $ 7.99.
This either means that they are being lazy updating their price, or they overcharged me. I doubt that they overcharged me because when I asked why I was charged more than before, which was $ 7.99, the waiter told me that they raised their price. So do not trust their commercials…

Great Wall, great buffet!!! We were sent here by the HolidayInn hotel staff. They said it was great. It was even better. Beautiful restaurant, super tasty, fresh food and awesome staff. Try it.

Hurrah, glad to see the Great Wall reopened. The interior has been spruced up. Food at the buffet includes some standards and some unusual dishes all well done.

Aaaand, they’re out of business again. u_​u Sonofa…

As Chinese buffets go, this is one of the better; totally a 5 star buffet.
I like to take small portions of a lot of items and everything was good. The bourbon chicken and spicy chicken received second helpings.
The wait staff is very attentive and seem to actually take pride in their work.
The food is varied and tasty. There are even some more authentic dishes available.
There is a small sushi bar that’s adequate.
The portions on the buffet line are smaller meaning they are replenishing frequently as opposed to letting things sit. Shortly after something was low, it was replenished with fresh.
The overall establishment was clean, and the updated areas were modern. There is still a little bit of updating to do in this big place.
If you are in the mood for a Chinese buffer, check this place out!

The Great Wall is open under new management and have brought back the buffet. The problem with most Chinese buffets is everything tends to taste the same. Not here. It it obvious they have worked hard to make sure the food is the best they can serve and it shows. They have remodeled the interior making it open and inviting. We would definitely come back. Soon to come… a Sushi Bar.

Great food… the chicken fried rice was fantastic! There were so many vegetables in the rice that it surprised the crap out of me (onions, zucchini, peas, carrots, peapods and an occasional mushroom). BTW, the Crab Rangoon is pretty awesome too.

I like that they put a mirror on the wall next to the clean plates. That way you can see how fat you already are before you start eating.
Standard American style «Chinese» food… all you can hold down for about $ 10 a person with drink and tip.
There are rumors that this place also has a «regular» menu, presumably with normal human-​sized portions of food available.
The attached «Asian» store is neat-​o.

Might have given a 3– or 4-​star review in the past but after a recent experience I might not be back. In general, the buffet is a good deal even if the bulk of the food is greasy or loaded in sugary sauces. It’s an American Chinese buffet, after all, what do you expect? The selection of maki is OK. The crab rangoon are good. I like the Mongolian Beef. (The fried rice is blah.)
All of that said, I was disappointed that the weekly lunch buffet appears to have halted, which kind of sucks. On the other hand, the lunch specials they offer in its place are reasonable and include full access to a soup/​salad/​ice cream bar.
Most upsetting during my most recent visit was watching one of the servers (an older woman who’s never been anything but attentive and polite to me) get loudly berated and criticized several times by a 20-​something co-​worker in pigtails and a hot pink shirt (a manager? a child of the owner? both? I don’t know). I don’t care what this woman had done, admonishing her loudly in the presence of customers is uncalled for.