Su Tao Cafe

Great Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years Buffets. Good vegan lunch/​dinner buffet. Really worth checking those out. They have a great vegan turkey and mashed potatoes along with other options. My favorites are the Veg General Tso Chicken, Spring rolls and dumplings. I have been eating here regularly for over 10 years. Every once in a while you just get cravings for fried vegan food. Also a good thing is that they label everything that has sugar or gluten in them. Seriously though treat yourself to one of their holiday buffets.

Several years ago I sought out a vegan restaurant on my trip to PA to visit family and found this gem of an eatery on Happy Cow and just ate their again tonight. The food is really good, curry dishes, dumplings, salad bar and about 10 varieties of common Chinese food without meat or dairy. Clean rest rooms and friendly service. Dessert bar too.

Just don’t go here.
The food was truly terrible. I love vegan and vegetarian food done right, but this food sits out (some of it isn’t even kept at the right temperature). It’s salty, gummy, grossness. The best thing was the dessert, which as it turns out was a store bought pie not made on site. I felt terrible after eating here. Also, the place felt unclean (and looked it).

Since my 2008 review Su Tao has gradually and steadily declined. The buffet isn’t kept fresh enough and the vibe has gone from warm and friendly to apathetic. We probably won’t be back.

Wow you can hardly tell the difference between this place and a normal Chinese buffet. I’ve missed sweet and sour so much!

First of all; A VEGAN BUFFET?! How often can you run across one of these?
With a very large selection rivaling the buffet of a meat based restaurant, it’s easy to choose from different options.
I heard many people who normally ate meat marvel at how good the food was, and that there wasn’t much of a difference.
For under 10 dollars, one can get the entire buffet selection, which will leave you full and satisfied. Dessert even comes with it! How awesome is that?
Great atmosphere and great people who are friendly and don’t seem overworked. I am happy to have spent my money here. They’ve been keeping strong for 16 years. That is an amazing record and I applaud the owner for her perserverence and the profit she gave us to serve quality, healthy vegetarian food.

This place has become a dissapointment. Being a vegetarian and coming here for last 10 years the food depends on who’s being given employed as the current chef. Otha’s become a place of much sodium, fried veges and seitan and very little originality. As an example then genre Tags chicken is all batter and very very little seitan and it is as hard as Angola ball.
Hope it changes

Let me start out by saying that I love me some Su Tao! This place has quickly become a go-​to for us, sort of a vegan comfort food wonderland.
When you first walk in, there won’t be a heck of a lot of ambiance, but what it lacks in décor, it makes up for with friendly service and great vegan food.
Our favorites are the veggie lamb with cumin (this may be my deathbed request), and the twice cooked spicy chicken.
So go check it out. Whether you get the buffet, or order off the menu, it’s a vegan win!

You can’t go wrong going to Su Tao. The variety of options is beyond belief. The staff is very helpful. You can eat a healthy meal or go with some pretty fatty and high calorie deliciousness. The parking is great, the staff is helpful, and the space is nice for larger groups of friends who want to eat and eat and hang around.

My husband and I have been coming to Su Tao for many years. Lately our trips to the café have taking a turn for the worse. The waitress is the worse, she is rude and distasteful. Because of this, our trips to Su Tao have been infrequent and eventually I will not return. I believe customer service is the key to success, unfortunately for Su Tao, the help will be the demise of this restaurant.

Can’t say I would ever go back. I thought Robert Irvine and his camera crew on Restaurant Impossible would stroll in any minute during my visit. Don’t get me wrong I do like vegan food and I cook tofu often as another alternative. The buffet was lacking options. The restaurant just looked dirty and run down. Service was poor. The waitress did not give an option for a menu. So if you’re looking to eat in a dirty restaurant with poor service and little option, give this place a try.

So Ed C has been wanting to take me way out to Malvern for this Vegan Chinese Buffet for months, but it’s a super long drive for two people who rarely leave Center City. Yesterday, we finally got around to it.
This buffet is AMAZING. Vast selection of tasty vegan food, much of it fried, but I’m TOTALLY fine with that. My faves were the dumplings, spring rolls, and WHOA the sweet & sour meatballs… I’m still thinking about them today. I also really enjoyed their fried rice and all the beef & chicken dishes.
Loss of ½ star because their hot & sour soup doesn’t live up to my (possibly unfair) standards. Rounding down for no rational reason other than the fact that I had to sit in a car for nearly an hour to get here.
I’ll be back, but like next year. Highly recommended, especially if you live closer than I do.

This is one of the best Chinese restaurant for vegetarian hunters. I visited on weekdays and food was also delicious. I opted for buffet and there were lots of varieties to try. The buffet was $ 9 and was worth for money. The ambience was good. I am more concerned about cleanliness of things in every restaurant I visit, and here it was up to the mark. Would definitely recommend my friends for lunch or dinner. Have no idea about foods not in buffet. But buffet was good and tasty.

Unique vegan deliciousness! Kind of like vegan junk food to a point though, lot of fried items. However it is a great place to bring carnivores and allow them to try mock meat vegan dishes. The people are nice and I always enjoy myself. Hidden treasure in a offbeat strange strip mall. Occasionally they have a special buffet around the holidays which is especially exceptional!

I used to like to eat here with my sister who is vegan. Let me start out by saying that I liked their food and I still like their food. Every time my sister and I came here, they ALWAYS gave us the option of either eating at the buffet or ordering from the regular menu. We always ordered from the regular menu because what we like to eat is not offered in the buffet. The past two times we ate here, they did not give us that option. We had to ask for a menu. However, on our recent trip here, our waitress was very rude when we asked for a menu. I believe her exact words were, «Really?»
I understand if Su Tao offered only their buffet, but this is not the case. If Su Tao does not want their customers ordering off the regular menu, then take away this option! When our waitress grudgingly gave us menus, we decided to make her life EASIER by just eating from the buffet. However, when she came back to take away our menus, she even rolled her eyes.
I never write reviews for restaurants because I’m not tough to please. In fact, this is my first review that I’m writing because the customer service (or lack of) that we received really upset me. Our waitress was incredibly rude. I will definitely not be back… EVER!

This is my favorite place to eat in Chester County! If it were closer to me I am sure I would eat there every week. The owners have always been sweet to is and even remember the items I like from the buffet when i come in.
All vegan thru and thru so I never have to worry about picking and choosing. Their hot and sour soup is perfect!
Fresh veggie sushi rolls are made for dinner and if you ever want more of anything on the bar they will make it up on the spot.
Love Su Tao!

Hidden treasure!
WOW is the first word that comes to mind. We were referred by someone who lives with a Vegan and I can see why people really like this place.
The food was amazing. We tried just about everything from the mail dishes, the apps, the salads and even the desserts… all of the food is vegan.
My wife got tired of me asking there server if the food was really vegan — I am still shocked of the flavors these guys could get from veggies.
We will definitely be going back soon, and we drove an hour to get there

Let me start out by saying, I like to eat. If there’s good vegan food, I tend to pig out. This was awful with a side of awful. Nothing was fresh, and if you’re ever bought canned mock meats before you’d know where they get 80% of their buffet.
If you like flavorful, delicious, succulent vegan food, go elsewhere.
It was edible. It was not tasty. I won’t be back and I couldn’t even finish my first trip to the buffet. I had to stop somewhere to get a water to wash the taste out of my mouth. How can so many people be so wrong about this place?

I come here once, maybe twice a year, for a change of pace. I like what they do here in general.
But I now think that there’s a reason why I don’t come here more often.
As I said previously, I’m a meat eater that likes different things. I’ve always liked Su Tao due to the flavors they use and a reasonably priced lunch buffet.
Today, the flavor didn’t entice me like they used to. I’ve always known that the food can suffer a bit texturally if sitting out too long, but today the General Tso was rubber. The veggie meatballs were mush. Thankfully I still enjoy the fried rice, lo mein, and broccoli tempura, so it saved the meal.
I noticed a few more things. I had some iced tea mixed with lemonade from the dispensers, and it just tasted funny. Maybe they weren’t meant to be mixed. Maybe some dish soap was left behind in the glass. I stuck with water after that.
I also wish they offered more for dessert than a few Oreo style cookies at lunch. I understand they have vegan pies and ice cream. They don’t seem to offer them at lunch. I know it’s an added expense but that’s a shame. They have such a good main entrée selection on the buffet, and that selection disappears at dessert.
They do enough well that I believe I’ll be back sometime. But it will probably be once a year tops.

The Chinese Moon Festival means SuTao brings out the better buffet. It includes things that they only make to order from their regular menu: fantastic tender cumin lamb, daikon meatballs, fish cooked in nori, shish kabobs, mashed potatoes with kale and leek, scallion and zucchini cakes, okra soup and two others, several different kinds of fancy mushrooms, and an array of about ten ice creams, a lovely way to end a meal. They even had lemon sorbet and mint chocolate chip.
The only food I didn’t love was the actual moon cake, a tiny cookie that seems to be a tasteless fig newton. We ran out of room before we could taste everything we wanted to.
What a great idea that they do this for Thanksgiving as well, since any restaurant serving dinner that day is all meat and butter. It is offered once a month, a little less in the summer. $ 20 a person is well worth it. But if you don’t want to spring for it, the regular stuff is still there, and I could not resist grabbing an egg roll and the tempura broccoli.
It was wonderful to see people of all ages enjoying this food, including many babies and young children. The diners who come here seem extra nice.
They have a front dining area that has windows and looks out onto the street. It would be a great spot for tables, but it is just used for storage. I spotted one of the owner’s kids napping in there (cute). I think it could be better used. I’d love to see SuTao spruce up its dated interior to be more like the low-​lit spot a few doors up in the same strip.