Jin Shan Buffet

It is very rare to find a Chinese Buffet that offers unique offerings… it is even more rare to find one that serves both egg rolls and egg drop soup that are equally tasty. This place has both of them nailed! Add to those two offerings a light, well-​seasoned vegetable lo mein and you now have a Chinese Buffet Trifecta!
The interior is what you would expect of a typical, strip-​mall Chinese buffet establishment; indeed, when I walked in slightly after 5pm, and found myself to be one of only two guests in the restaurant, I was a little concerned. They three hit bars, one cold bar, and one dessert bar. They were all fully stocked, with steaming hot food (I initially wk served how long the food had been sitting there). However, when I went to retrieve my first plate of Chinese chow, I found the food to be fresh, moist, and appealing.
When I actually consumed the buffet bliss, I was amazed. I’m not going overboard by saying this was the best Chinese buffet fare I’ve had in a looooong time!

they were on time, super great deals, but the food was missing flavor

The only thing I can say would be DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT EATNG HERE!!! I would rather go home and eat a warm spam sandwich with warm mayonnaise!!! It’s that bad no joke!!!

Awful.
The service is poor. Overcooked, dry, would have been pleased with just mediocre. I get it. Its an inexpensive buffet. But there should be an effort to put out edible food.

Ordered delivery from this place to my living residence at KU. Being from AZ, it’s about as good as it gets for a Chinese food buffet. Definitely ain’t P.F. Changs… so be wary, but I had an absolute love affair with my orange chicken and rice. They have General Tso’s chicken here, and I don’t think I’ve ever tried it before but it was super yummy. Would definitely recommend their chicken! Rangoon was awesome, as was the egg roll that comes standard with every plate. Wasn’t too crazy about their sushi… got a California Roll and it was pretty bland, but the chicken itself was worth 5 stars. Recommend for KU students looking for cheap delivery or anyone wanting some decent Chinese food at a great price.

This applies to delivery only!
The food was decent, nothing too special but nothing inedible. What really bothered me was the issues I had with delivery. I ordered this food to be delivered at Anschutz Library on a late Saturday afternoon. The food took an hour and half to get here which in itself is totally unacceptable (not even taking into account that its a relatively slow time at the restaurant). When the driver arrived he called and said he was here, but what here meant was in the Lindley Hall parking lot, even though the address and location were specifically given to them. After walking there and back with my food, I opened my bag to see that there were not any utensils. I was already on edge about it being so late but that just pushed me off the cliff.
Do not order delivery unless you have VERY low expectations. If you’re going to order chinese, just go with Tryyaki.

I had delivery from Jin Shan for the first time last night and I was so pleasantly surprised. The food was excellent. Delivery was fast & My driver was so sweet. I will be ordering from here a lot while I’m in town!

Incredibly fresh food, lots of fruit, chicken and fish, plus sushi and a grill to get it cooked fresh on the spot. Great Prices for To go orders. A weekly must if you eat out in Lawrence!

Standard Chinese buffet — probably the best in town. It’s our go-​to when we don’t feel like cooking. Warm, fresh, good food and great service.

Eating lunch here is one of the cheapest buffets in Lawrence.
It’s much smaller than other chinese buffets but the sushi bar is much more well-​made than at the other restaurants.

Very bad. First of all its super hot in there. Imagine a hot summer day. Yes, like that. Boring variety of food of bad quality. Stomach problems guaranteed after a visit.
The only good part was a friendly attentive server.

I really would give this restaurant 3 ½ stars as a Chinese Buffet, and not as a competitive Chinese restaurant in most metro-​areas. Very, very few Chinese restaurants can maintain a good buffet, and I think it is simply the business pressure that forces them to try. In Lawrence, which is really a college town, and that is all it is, restaurants have to attract students and thus cater to the cheap, all-​you-​can-​eat crowd. Jin Shan does this well.
As a vegetarian they have enough dishes to satisfy me including the veggie sushi, one tofu dish, a reasonable salad bar which includes kimchi, and various noodle dishes. All the dishes I get are reasonably tasty, and these are the standards on which I judge this place.
If you want good, fresh made Chinese dishes with excellent flavor and sauces, then you have to go elsewhere, and I would imagine outside Lawrence, into for example the Overland Park area. The restaurants I go to do not have buffets, and I think they are very wise in not trying. However, the Lawrence area residents are lucky in that Jin Shan is there, and they can get a good buffet.
Let me add a comment here. In this area there is the banal practice of putting chicken into the hot and sour soup. For years hot and sour soup in the civilized world had small strips of pork and tofu, and then over time many restaurants removed the pork and just had the tofu. So many Chinese restaurants have a very good vegetarian hot and sour soup with tofu. Jin Shan puts too much chicken into their soup and sometimes it has a uncharacteristically thinner broth.

If you’re a student, lunch buffets during the week is just $ 5! Sushi rolls, good food (not great) for $ 5 is a steal. One of the hidden student gems in Lawrence.

This is the best buffet in town regarding to the taste. There are a lot of delicious food here: grilled duck (the sauce is too salty so don’t put it a lot), fried chicken, pie, grilled jalapeño, and so on. Well, like other buffet, some food are not good. I do not care about sushi very much because I think the quality of all sushi in Chinese buffet in Lawrence are dropped. I have not tried the hibachi grill there. Well, the restaurant is quite far from my house compared to other Chinese buffet. This is quite inconvenience because I usually eat buffet when I am extremely hungry and I do not want to wait for cooking. I wish they move closer to town.

i was pleasently surprised by this buffet! my boyfriend and i were devoted to Peking Taste so i had never gone anywhere else but since Peking closed we had to find a new place
the décor was nice. i loved the tables and chairs. the food was typical Chinese food but it was hot. the sushi bar was really nice. neither my boyfriend nor i eat sushi very often but i love vegitarian rolls and theirs were to die for.
the service was great and for 2 buffets 1 soda and 1 water it was $ 20. so the prices are resonable. i will 100% be back
EDIT: We went back here a few weeks later and I got violently ill. I don’t know what it was that made me sick but I was puking all night long and the next night it was coming out the other end. I will be back but I am going to watch what I eat to see if something makes me sick.

This is my favorite Chinese buffet in Lawrence because they have more seafood than others, great seaweed rolls, and good duck! My husband and I go there so often that the staff recognize us and know what drinks we want. Their seaweed rolls have a better balance between rice and other ingredients than the rolls at most other buffet places in town (some of them are too big with way too much rice!).

The only reason I give this three stars (otherwise it’s really pretty meh) is because of the fact that this place allows me to to enjoy/​experiment with a full plate of «i don’t know what that is, but I gotta try it.» I like to finish every chinese buffet experience with a plate of the more ‘questionable’ items (e.g., mussels that have been sitting out for god knows how, something white that is likely fish but with a cloudy and gelatinous-​like broth), and this place doesn’t disappoint for variety.
Nonetheless, lots of variety doesn’t necessarily mean it’s all good. I don’t like their sushi at all and often don’t like when Chinese buffets offer sushi if they’re not going to take the time to make it quality.
The food is ok, nothing special and pretty much the same as any other chinese buffet in lawrence, but I’m a sucker for a good, weird plate of grub.

All you can eat sushi lunch (california roll derivatives) for like 6 bucks a person. Need I say more?
So I understand if you turn your nose up at me for writing this, but I absolutely love Jin Shan Buffet. Any time I’m in Lawrence around lunch time, I make this my destination. It’s easily the best buffet I’ve ever been to, and trust me, I’m kind of a connoisseur.
I am constantly impressed with the quality of the buffet. The fried items are always crispy, every dish seems to be seasoned just right, and it never tastes like it’s been sitting there for hours. I’ve seen quite a few vegetarian friendly seeming dishes on it, too.
The staff is really friendly, although I am mourning the loss of their original (well, to me) sushi girl, Angie. She was really sweet and always made it a point to have a conversation with me or whip up a special roll for my dad and I (ok, so yeah, there’s some sentimental value to this review too. My dad, brother who lives in France now, and I used to go here for lunch all the time.)
I’ve never ordered off their menu, or been to Jin Shan for dinner, but lunch is always a great idea.

I’ve eaten here probably 15 times in the last couple years. The food is okay at best. Recently they were serving chicken feet on the buffet. I found that to be gross. They also had calamari that apparently they boiled. It was tough and chewy. Not prepared well at all and quite bland on its own.
The sushi is typically C grade. They use frozen fish and usually has a fishy smell to it. Not what I consider good sushi, but certainly edible. They serve mushroom caps stuffed with the same sweetened cream cheese mixture that they use in their wontons.
The service is pretty standard for a Chinese buffet. the owners are always there chatting. Nice people. Seems like they have a stable of regular customers.
Overall, this is a decent restaurant for the price and is better than the competition. It is the best Chinese buffet in town. But the Lawrence Chinese restaurants set the bar pretty low. I’ve always felt that someone could make more than a decent living if they simply opened a Chinese restaurant that served high quality food. Charge a buck more and serve something to remember!

My family and I love to eat at buffets. I guess you could call us connoiseurs of buffets, if there could ever be such a thing. We’ve eaten in buffets from Omaha to Flordia and Texas to South Dakota. Jin Shan is one of the better Chinese Buffets we’ve been to. We were in Lawrence, Ks for the Heart of America band competition and had no idea where to eat. From the time we walked in the door until we left, the staff took good care of us. The food was comparable to the other buffets we’ve eaten at. It had the «regular» chinese menu items complete with a dessert and ice cream bar. Two of the items were overcooked, but the other six items we ate were top notch. The restaurant, including the bathrooms were clean and well maintained. Mr. Jin Shan met us at the door and made sure we were taken care of. Because we’d been filming all day, the PC and camera batteries needed to be recharged. Jin Shan’s staff cheerfully seated us nextto an elictrical socket so we could recharge our gear. We will go to Jin Shan’s again when we return to the band competition next year.