Zen Buffet

I’m pretty sad that this place closed. It was one of my favorite restaurants but oh well.

About time they closed this place. As a former employee within a store here at the towne center, was told by another person the back of the restaurant had rats! Eek! Food wasn’t the best either.

It is with great sadness to report that Zen Buffet at the Long Beach Town Center has closed their doors due to losing their lease on 01÷01÷2015… Giving them 5 stars for all the good memories and food we savored over the years… We will miss you Zen

Generic Asian buffet. Favorites were the sashimi and miso soup. Everything else was sub par.

We went there today for a dinner-​of– 2 + tip is about $ 31. Smart if you used a coupon on their website which i did. I saved $ 6, but it’s good ONLY monday-​thursday.
Food is good. Price is good. Service is good. Area is good.
I’ll go maybe once every 3 – 5 months for my sushi fix.

Went for my bday and OMG, they made me feel very… UNSPECIAL! I was Alice in wonderland… I had a very very unbirthday! I went in with a group of ten. My waitress rarley came to check in. There was no open beverage machine, so I had to wait and ASK for a refill… UMMMM, can you NOT see? On top of that, I had to pay a service charge! FOR WHAT? I didn’t get good service and it was a buffet! I served myself… The deserts, BLAH! The cheesecake was OLD and the strawberry cake was a little crunchy. Not to mention the knats that where in the desert case. The food was okay and they had a chef at the hot bar ready to sauté my personalized meal :)
My bill was over 45 bucks (FOR TWO PEOPLE), I was told that I would get a bday discount. But the manager (LADY) was short and rude. I told her that it was my bday and provided my ID. She said that she could not honor a discount w/​o a coupon. SMH REALLY!
On top of that, the sushi tasted TERRIBLE! I know its raw fish, I’ve eaten it before BUT TUH this right here… Taste like it had been sitting out a little to long. Well I can knit pick all day about what I didn’t like. I’m just happy I had good people around me b/​c if I had not, I would have showed my «HAPPY BDAY ASS» royally!
Never again

We’ve come here a couple of times before in which their food was okay but slightly mediocre. Tonight it was just not good at all. I’m super disappointed by tonight’s quality of food.
We walked into some kind of confrontation occurring at the front desk. Apparently they refused to accept an online coupon because it’s not for their store even though it is from the correct site. You could clearly see that the lady at the front desk was getting agitated by the lady complaining.
Most of the food was rubbery and gross with the exception of the crab legs and steak. The guy made my noodles way too spicy even though I asked him for only a little spice. He ended up putting a spoonful amount. The sashimi was placed on the plate still frozen with ice on it. All the fish was rubbery.
It is not a satisfactory night here at Zen Buffet. I would have much rather had wasted my time to commute someone further just to get slightly better food.
As a final note, while I was getting strawberries for the chocolate fountain, I noticed that some of the strawberries had white mold on it. So be careful when picking fruit here!

Normally when you go to a buffet there are always bound to be dishes that are just meh. Can’t nail everything. Even then, they still have items you can stomach. It’s a deal you accept when you eat at all you can eat establishments for $ 10 a person. I struggled to find a single item here that I could handle. I literally tried a little of everything and left feeling like a dirtbag because I wasted
food. Better to waste some than risk illness though. If you’re in a troll mood take a date or some friends otherwise avoid

La Comida es deprimente, cocinan con demasiada grasa, el servicio no es bueno,
Y esta desierto!!!

Why for the love of gawd do my friends and I ever consider coming here? First of all, even if I still ate meat, I wouldn’t eat the dried-​out, overcooked, killed, and then killed dead again, carcasses that are served here. Dark brown prime rib, all the way through?
My friends ate the mayo shrimp and were groaning with stomach pains half an hour later. Luckily I stuck to the chocolate fountain, miso soup, and plain rice, and I’m actually queasy as I write this.
Everyone just get so excited by the thought of a buffet, but jeeeebus, not this one! I mean sure, it was open, close to my friend’s house, and $ 17/​person, but at the risk of spending the next week clutching your tortured tummy? No way.
If you’re will to brave it, they do also have a Mongolian bbq section, with pitifully dried out veggies and a few meat scraps, and some sushi that my belly said looked shady as f**k.
The chocolate fountain flowed nicely, but the big tray of bananas had turned mostly brown, and the strawberries were pretty sad looking too. Marshmallows looked good, but those things are also damned near indestructible.
Eat at you own risk, honeybuns!

Not worth the price… food is bland and tastes like the take out places on the side of the road. The sushi was not holding the way it should and was warm. I will not go back

You’re not missing much.
My group and I saw this place and thought we’d try it. The dining area and buffet area looked clean. There are plenty of different dishes but a lot of them looked like they’ve been sitting for a long time. They have Mongolian style cooking. The raw beef looked old… I was surprised that they had it out. The food tasted okay, nothing really impressed me here at this place. Would I return? Nope.

It wasn’t too bad, the choices are a little bit better that other buffets in the same range. Most people come here for the crab legs. I’ve tried and liked a few of their entrée like the fried calamari, stuffed shells, spicy fish and they have a chocolate fountain… Which was very pleasing.
I can’t comment on the service because I came with a large group of people who come in regularly at this place and the manager knows.

Can you say DIS-​GUSTING.
I am not pleased one bit. Called around 8 PM to assure that they closed at 9:30 and that there is still food comming out till 9:30 and the lady said yes.
We come at around 8:15ish PM, as soon as we were seated we found our way to the buffet section.
I was so excited to get my sushi, and then shot down seconds later as the only thing was left was california rolls –_-…Really?
Then I asked one of the servers if they were still going to make sushi, with a blank stare she yelled «NO ENGLISH, I DONT UNDERSTAND»
FOLLOWED BY MINEUTS LATER SPEAKING ENGLISH TO A CUSTOMER AT THEIR TABLE.
AWSOME.
All the food was cold, and the little of the california rolls that were left smelled fishy and was mushy to the bite.
The food was o-​kay. I mean, we were hungry, so we took what was left.
Im never coming back to this location, I know I am a tough cookie to please but seriously? The service was sh*t. We had a high stack of plates on our table and empty glasses the whole time. Food was cold and no sushi =(
Ill stick with the san gabriel location, thank you very much.

Food is mediocre, $ 104 for 5 adults, 1 child & 3 soft drinks & the staff is rude. Save your money & get better food at a better price somewhere else.
Came on a Saturday evening at about 8:30, still an hour until closing. Most trays of food were less than half full & look like they had been sitting there for a very long time. They have a large selection of items, I’ll give them that. I don’t eat seafood, so I stuck to the chicken dishes & ribs. Orange chicken tasted like it was rolled in sugar, practically inedible. Ribs were extremely dry & then smothered in a funny tasting sauce.
Looked forward to the dessert (who doesn’t love a chocolate fountain?), but they never refilled the fruit bowls, so I wasn’t able to try it. They have a cabinet filled with «pastries» & I tried asking the woman who was refilling it exactly what they were. She ignored me. Then my aunt was next to me & asked the lady as well, she just snapped at us «I don’t know» & walked away.

The manager was rude, dismissive, and pretended she could not understand English. How are you running a business in America, but cannot converse in English?!
When we were about to leave, I asked for the check. They charged 2 dinners + tax, which was expected. Upon payment, I handed the waitress my payment plus a coupon, which should have been $ 6 off ($ 3 per person). When they handed back the check to me, they took the $ 6 off, but then taxed the discounted price, which added another $ 3. They taxed me twice! Once before the coupon, and once after the coupon was applied. I went to the manager and complained that they cannot tax me twice! She was rude, dismissive, and pretended she couldn’t understand what I was saying. She made me feel like I was the stupid one. I know it’s only $ 3, but that’s not what I was mad about. It’s the principle of the situation.
NEVER EAT HERE! You can spend the same amount of money at a different restaurant, and receive better service, and better quality food.

Food is decent. Limited selection for $ 10 lunch. Seafood soup is good
As far as buffets go. It’s not bad

Yuck… yuck…yuck…total waste of money. I usually don’t go to buffets anymore but the kids wanted to try Zen. It turned out to be a very bad idea.
Cons: Simply put, cheap and tasteless food. Not a bad selection but the taste of the food was just BLAH. BBQ pork was extremely tough, chicken skewers were dry, rice noodles were tasteless, chow mien was also tasteless, dim sum was nauseating, and sushi was disgusting.
Pros: Tasteful fountain drinks (yeah)
Don’t waste money or time.

Well, it’s a buffet.
It’s much better than Hokkaido (located where Charlie Brown’s used to be). And it’s better than Hometown (but what isn’t?). They always have a coupon available online. So what do I eat here…
Pepper steak
Thai chicken
Siu mai
Cream cheese filled wontons
Green beans, asparagus
Scallop shells filled with seafood-​like substances and corn kernels
BBQ pork
I’m wary of eating snow crab at any buffet so I generally give it a pass.
Overall, as buffets go, this is the one I’d choose. The bad news is the parking. It’s at LB Towne Center which is the epitome of poor design/​planning.

I don’t know why Zen gets such a bad rap! I mean, yes it’s a chinese buffet so you can really only expect so much, but they do pretty good by chinese buffet standards!
Weekend dinner ends up around $ 20/​person. They have a huge variety though! Plenty of seafood – shrimp, crab, oysters and mussels and a couple of fish dishes as well as a salad bar, some soups, and all the buffet «standards.»
They also have a mini sushi area, with mostly variations of California and crunch rolls but they’re all fresh.
Dessert has some cakes, delish crème brûlée, and dun dun dunnnnn a chocolate fountain with accompanying fruit and marshmallows! Too much fun!
Overall, if I’m eating at a chinese buffet, you’d better bet that it’s going to be Zen!

Zen buffet wasn’t TOO bad. Compared to Hokkaido… Zen isn’t as good. BUT then again, Zen has Prime Rib (something that Hokkaido doesn’t have).
You get what you pay and Zen isn’t too expensive. If you find a Redplum coupon, I think it comes out to around $ 15 a person for dinner if you’re doing the buy 1 get another half price with sodas.
I can say that the crab legs were pretty good but a bit bland (good luck grabbing some cuz people snatch them up really quick and sometimes I’m embarrassed at how much one person can put on a plate). The sushi actually tasted pretty good (rolls), the Chinese food was pretty decent but the prime rib was a bit too cooked for me. But what more can you ask for if you’re going in paying like $ 12 – 14 a person. Keep it open-​minded. The place is pretty big inside so seating isn’t a problem.
Will I go back with a coupon? Probably. Kids pay by their age.