Buffet City

If there was any way for me to be able to give this place 0 stars I would. This place is truly disgusting. The macaroni and cheese is watery, the mashed potatoes taste like soggy cardboard and even their own Chinese dishes are gut wrenching. To elaborate, at one point I gagged on a piece of sushi and had to spit it out. My last warning for you all is don’t go here. Save yourselves.

Don’t go!.. That buffet is horrible. The food is always cold and it tastes old as hell! I like going to the Asian Buffet by Cicero, its next to a Pet Store. Now that buffet is the bomb

I must admit some of the food on the buffet table was not my type of food! if you like squid and octopus and what looks like a star fish then this is the place for you! When I came here they didnt have signs up on all the entrees to tell you what your eating. I took A sea food salad that looked good when I got to the table it looked like baby starfish mixed with who knows what. I didnt eat it of course I was rather grossed out by it all. Make sure if you come here read the entrée and check what your eating! Some of the other food wasnt too bad and the inside is really nice clean and big.

By far the worst service I seen at a restaurant. First of the employees are extremely rude, and every time you want to speak to management they are nowhere to be found. They always give you a hassle when you want to speak with them. My car was broken into and I wanted to see if the cameras work seeing they have THREE POINTING to the parking lot, and they were so RUDE about everything. I was a paying customer and unfortunately more than $ 500 dollars worth of belongings were taken in my car. They wanted nothing to do with me, or the other two vehicles that were broken into. They wouldn’t even give me a mangers name.
NEVER COME HERE.

As others reviews stated, I ate it anyway. I was hungry.
The probability of me coming here again are very slim.
The place made me uncomfortable because it was not well kept. Not only did it have the dirty feeling, it was dirty.
I had sweet and sour chicken, didn’t taste like sweet-​n-​sour, more like freezer burn.
That is all.

Decent food, food temp could be a little hotter doesn’t offer crab anymore. However you can get a custom made stirfry. Big downside is all the people who let their younger children run around and get their own food. Feels like a kindergarten at times.

OMG; this place is HUGE! The clientelle (I hate to be rude but they are «BIG» people) frequent it often & despite it’s huge size, are often crowded. They do serve booze here & they cater & hosts parties. I have some comfort food favs here though they wouldn’t WOW anyone in particular. I often come with coworkers

I’ve dined in this place and have gotten take-​out more times than I should have. It’s not that this place is bad or that i can’t tolerate or stand the food, it’s just that this place is kind of a last resort for me if i can help it. The place on the inside is average, it’s not bad nor is it great. There is plenty of room to accommodate large groups and for the most part they keep things clean and i can’t really say that they don’t keep food stocked for the customers. But therein lies my issue with this place, the food. They have a decent enough selection to call themselves a buffet but there is nothing on the roster other than a handfull of things that i can somewhat appreciate. You go to a buffet so you can eat as much as you can of a few things that you like or are in the mood for and perhaps to try something you haven’t before without spending a crap load of money. I consider myself to be a bit of an adventurous person when it comes to trying to new things but i only get about 4 things from here that leave me feeling somewhat satisfied. I want more from a buffet than all your traditional setup. Now, i normally go to this place early in the day so i’ve never been there after 6pm so i don’t know if this place really has any special items that make it to list during certain days/​times but what they have is just average at best. They have sushi, which i like, but don’t really prefer getting it from this place. This really happens to be how i feel towards most of what they have to offer. I know yep looks at 3 out of 5 stars as «A-​OK» but thats average to me so thats why i gave them what i did.

What could be better staged than a Chinese buffet that shares a parking lot with a Family Dollar, thrift store, 35yr old K-​Mart AND a dialysis center?
Rhetorical questions aside, I expect any type of Asian restaurant to at least serve up a decent tea. This place failed three different ways and each involved syrup instead of leaves. I guess that’s no big deal if you’re hopped up on high-​fructose soft drinks like most Americans today.
The food here was just okay all around. I usually go through 3 – 4 plates at good buffets, but I lost interest halfway thru my second plate at this place. They get some credit for a decent salad bar, tasty grilled chicken on a stick and a nice fire-​roasted green pepper «relish» in the Mexican section — but that’s about it.
Overall, I found things looked average at best. I’ve even seen more enthusiasm from staffers in most government jobs… maybe the oxygen levels are just low in here? Anyway, the sushi selections looked as tired as the employees and nobody ever rescued the poor tongs that were submerged in one of the food pans.
Having moved out of the Ford City area in the early 90’s, I want to thank this place for reminding me why we left.

Buffets are not standard Chinese restaurant food people. If you want good Chinese food, don’t be a cheap ass and go to a buffet expecting gourmet. There’s a reason it’s all you can eat at a cheap price.
This trip was on Mother’s Day. Very crowded and they could not get the food out fast enough. Part of this was due to people having preferences for certain items and then piling up on those items once they came out and not leaving any for others that were waiting. The upside was if you were patient, the food was fresh.
There were many out of control kids running around too. All from Mexican families that had no interest in controling them either. The adults would just worry about stuffing their faces while the kids were running around.
Instead of an maitre’d, they should have had an INS agent stationed at the door. That would have eliminated the zoo atmosphere.

I came here as a kid before and I remembered things were better. I am quite disappointed the ice cream machine wasn’t working, but I found sundae cups instead!
This place is pretty loud and there’s not a variety of seafood like other buffets for the same price. The soda machine is free for all.

This place is hit or miss sometimes. Ive eaten there more then I care to admit just out of quick convenience. Sometimes though depending on the foods freshness it may not seem worth it. If you go earlier in the day seems like theres not alot of people there however more towards nights or the weekends… Theres tons and tons of children running around unattended. They recently added freezers there where you can get a styro foam cup of ice cream out. Big mistake in my opinion children have those things everywhere the staff seems like they have trouble keeping up with the cleaning. You will end up seeing cups on the ground everywhere. Now that being said when there is a super crowded atmosphere the food is generally coming out quickly to replenish. Sometimes that’s great the last few times it was disgusting. I’m not a picky eater but I couldn’t really find anything I sampled to eat alot of. Cafeteria quality. We ended up leaving and just grabbing something on the way home. First time we have ever had to do that. for two people think it came out to 28 dollars. As far as recommending this location to anyone else I dont really think I would.

Went with a Groupon and figured about $ 5 a person… can’t go wrong. We got there a little before 8pm and it wasn’t very busy.
The lady at the front just seems stone faced… no smile or if she was not spoken to she won’t speak to you.
Not a big selection and some stuff definitely were sitting out for a bit of a time. The clams, the spicy chicken was good. I didn’t get any, but my sister and mom said the green beans were good… but they never refilled that.
Sushi selection was sad and there was no description of the items.
The ice cream machine was out of order, but they had ice cream cups in a freezer.
Think they had a hibachi grill, but it was dark and no one was there so didn’t even know if it was running.
Overall, even with the discount everyone was pretty much disappointed. Definitely not worth the full price.
Also, saw a lady filling her to go boxes up getting fried rice and using her hand to get the rice off the spoon… eek! Well, I didn’t try the fried rice.

After seeing commercials about this place Aaron S and I made the trip out here to try it out.
Walking in the place looked nice enough there was a giant Buddha in between the doors when you first enter and a giant water fountain just inside.
We found our seats and went to grab drinks. They have suck tiny drink cups that it required grabbing two cups at once. Strangely they also had both Pepsi and Coke products. I am not complaining but having worked in the food service industry as long as I have and having a general idea of how contracts work, just found it strange.
The first thing I notice is that the buffet is well kept and pretty clean. The second thing I noticed was that they had a good selection of food to choose from. Even an area in the back where they made to order Mexican food. Also a stir fry station.
I’d say most of the food was pretty boring. Not much really stood out in flavor. The beef and broccoli was some of the worst I’ve had. Bland over cooked beef and way too under cooked broccoli the sauce it was covered in was only OK. The green onion chicken was devoid of any green onion and the spicy chicken really had no spice. I liked the garlic green beans though, but that can be found at just about any Chinese buffet and really always tastes the same at every one. Aaron and I had a laugh at the Lo Mein because it was just standard thick spaghetti noodles. I also tried out a shrimp dish which was in a very strange sauce that tasted only like warm ketchup and they did not depoop the shrimp EWWW.
The sushi section had a couple rolls that were decent\. Not great but butter than most Chinese buffet places.
Anyway worth trying once but I cannot really foresee any reason to come back.

(For brevity’s sake, I’ll be using the term «IAIA» a lot. It means «I ate it anyway».)
After seeing all of the commercials on TV for «Buffet City», I figured we had to try it, especially since the décor (and giant Buddha statue) reminded us of one of our favorite buffet places, Jumbo House Buffet.
We arrived and saw the giant Buddha, just like on the TV! How exciting!
We opened the doors to the restaurant-​proper and saw the giant chandelier and fanciful water fountain. Neither of which have anything to do with buffets and take up some useful space, so off to the counter we went to purchase our ticket to ride. The signs at the counter reminding us that Buffet City is not responsible for stolen items left us very wary about leaving anything of ours at the table while we went to get food. I don’t like the feeling that someone should «stay with our stuff», but this place and its clientele suggested that we should. We didn’t, and our stuff was safe, but it was still a tough decision that shouldn’t need to be made.
I guess that when your restaurant is so large and understaffed, it makes more sense to have a DIY soda fountain instead of actual waitstaff and drink orders. Still, the cups need to be human-​sized. If you’re giving us small cups to try and deter us from drinking up all of your precious fountain drinks, your plan failed. I just had to fill two glasses for myself at a time, and still needed to make several trips. (Your bonus points for having Mello Yello were immediately revoked for not having any syrup in the machine and serving me fizzy crap water instead.)
And then came the food. I went immediately to the sushi counter, where there were actually more than the 3 standard half-​assed rolls you find at these kind of places. Name tags for the food would have been nice, but I tried one of everything. The roll with tobiko on top was average. The other rolls were rather bland and flavorless, but IAIA. My shock at seeing a tamago nigiri sushi was a little short-​lived once I saw how very thin the tamago piece was, and its flavor was quite lacking from that of a real sushi joint. IAIA. They also had a «sashimi» section, but it was more like «sushi we were too lazy to put on top of rice» than «sashimi» in my opinion. Sashimi-​grade ingredients are typically supposed to be BETTER than the stuff used in the rolls. IAIA, including the thinly-​sliced tamago «sashimi». Had a few pieces of those, actually.
The wonton soup was the exact same that you’d find in any standard Chinese Buffet location, nothing special. I was too afraid of the «cream of broccoli» to even attempt it. I ventured to the Mexican area and grabbed a pre-​made «taco». I had my suspicion, and was disappointingly proven right that this place believes Cilantro = Mexican. One bite was all I needed. They had a crunchy taco section with «taco meat» and buckets o’ toppings. My S.O. tried that and gave a thumbs-​down over what they considered to be «taco meat».
American Station #1 was possibly my favorite. Chicken Nuggets! They weren’t McDonald’s quality (and yes, I consider those to be the Cadillac of Nuggets), but for seemingly-​frozen nuggets dumped into a deep-​fryer or wok, they were pretty tasty. The fries were meh, but IAIA. The calamari was a one-​bite no-​thanks failure, though. Pizza, yes please! It was actually pretty darn tasty! Garlic bread was dee-​licious, as were the little buttermilk donut lumps you always find at Chinese Buffets.
And then we get to the Asian Section. The General Tso’s chicken was not too great. The pieces were too big, and when I cut into one, my S.O. claims it was too pink inside to be safe. IAIA and I’m not dead, so it’s a matter of taste, I guess. The beef and broccoli was bland, with the beef a little tough and the broccoli a little underdone. The «spicy chicken» was only spicy if you grabbed one of the sliced jalapeño peppers floating around, but it was my favorite chicken dish (despite not tasting like it should have, IAIA and it was a good taste nonetheless). I loved the cooked shrimp dish, though the sauce was strange.
Oh, and Buffet City? It is NOT okay to cook up spaghetti, throw in some Chinese vegetables with some Asian Sauce and call it «Lo Mein». That dish could only be called «Chinese Spaghetti», and the noodles were way too al dente to be even considered good spaghetti!
Another randomly-​decent dish? The macaroni and cheese. The only thing I can say is that the «cheese» is a combination of canned cheddar cheese soup and that nacho cheese sauce that comes in a can. If you like those tastes, you’d also like their Macaroni and Cheese dish. IAIA.
The dessert cakes were all the same bland cake topped with various flavor layers. IAIA. The fruit was tasty, but hit-​or-​miss on flavor/​rinds. IAIA. The men’s bathroom was atrocious. (No.) The ice cream tasted weird/​off. IAIA.
All in all, not worth revisiting but worth trying once. We’ll stick with Jumbo House.

The food is awful. How can you mess up fried rice!!! The Lo Mein noodles were also disgusting.
The one on 87^th/​Cicero is way better.
I wouldn’t give this food to the homeless!!!

My uncle had his wedding reception here :) and my family says it was really good. Far better than the many other chinese buffet’s. I haven’t personally tried the place yet but my siblings and I have the same taste so if they say its good, it must be.

$ 12 for all you can eat and drink, including tax.
Buffet City is not exactly a «Chinese restaurant», it is a general buffet restaurant with an emphasis on Chinese foods. I would say that more than half of the menu is not specifically Chinese.
However, this place was a favorite of a Chinese colleague of mine, indicating that there are many things in an authentic style suitable to his native tastes. He remarked that «If everyone ate as much [as him] at Buffet City, the place would be bankrupted».
Vast selection of meats, seafood, poultry, vegetables, noodles, rolls, sushi, fried foods, bread, American classics such as pizza and onion rings, salads, fruits, drinks, ice cream, cookies, French pastries…
Gigantic space with 4 separate dining rooms. The interior décor is gaudy and over-​the-​top, with chandeliers, a rock-​sculpture fountain with running water in the lobby, and neon tubes lining the ceilings. The tables and chairs are fairly nice hardwood and the place is kept clean.
A high-​volume, low-​margin business model. The sheer size of the place is actually what permits them to maintain a high quality of foods. Lower volume would imply sacrifice of quality to stay afloat, whereas high-​volume with good food is a self-​sustaining model.
Like any buffet restaurant, the clientele is not exactly health-​conscious, because the place encourages overeating all kinds of things which are not necessarily wise choices. However there are enough healthy choices to satisfy those concerned.
Located in a huge shopping center with K-​Mart and other discount stores. Directly across the lot from Buffet City is what looks like an industrial wasteland with a complex of machines emitting steam into the sky.
$ 12 for all you can eat and drink, including tax. Very straightforward proposition. No pretense and no secrets here. Almost anyone will be able to get their money’s worth.

WOW, this place is huge, good food too. Lots of seafood and things that Chinese people love.
Only thing is it gets really crowded on the weekend. The wait can be long.
The only buffet can rival this one is Royal Buffet in Darien, IL 60 561.
I wish I lived closer to this place, so I could go more often.
Highly recommend, you won’t be disappointed.

When you first see this place, you might think it’s just like all the other Chinese buffet places you see everywhere, but trust me, this place is much better than the rest because it has a much larger selection.
There’s a pretty impressive sushi bar, which has basics like California and Alaskan rolls, along with sashimi (red snapper and ahi tuna are my personal favorites). At the back, there’s a stir fry buffet where you can select what meats, vegetables, noodles, and sauce you want, and they cook it for you. From the regular dinner buffet, my favorites are the salt and pepper fried shrinp, the stir fried crab, and the steamed sole fish fillets.
When I last went (beginning of August 2005), lunch cost $ 6.99/person while dinner was $ 9.99/person. This place is very reasonably priced considering the large menu.
The only drawback to this place is that it’s not the cleanest. You might have to pick up a couple of cups before you find one that’s clean enough. At the dessert area, the ice cream scooper sits in this cup of water that gets kind of gross as people keep putting the scooper back in after getting ice cream. If you think you can get over this though, I highly recommend Buffet City.