Lunch Box Buffet

THIS PLACE IS NOW CLOSED!!! the Owner of the building took the space back (or that’s what the sign said at least.)
So this place no longer exists!!! Just FYI!!!

I came in here to day to get lunch before volunteering. I just wanted rice or noodles with one meat or veggie dish. I saw that was under $ 3 before tax. I asked for the rice noodles with vegetables and the kung pao chicekn. That was more than enough food for lunch. The $ 4.82 special is good but it was a bit too much for my appetitie at the time. The kung pao chicken was sufficiently spicy but had no peanuts, which I usually see in that dish.

The word «Buffet» in it’s name is deceiving. Yes there is a variety of Chinese dishes here put out on warming trays but at $ 5 for 5 items it’s not bad. You first head to the back of the line and pay FIRST! You are asked if it’s to stay or go. Better off choosing to go as the food wells in the container are deeper and seating upstairs is CROWDED!
You are handed a red plastic try, paper napkins, and a Styrofoam school lunch compartment tray on which your selected dishes will be plopped on.
The dishes are okay. Not great but when you are hungry and on a budget… The sesame chicken was pretty good as was the tofu dishes.
The bakery upfront is Boba on 34 and has great bubble teas and pastries. Where the customer service is lacking at the Lunch Box area, the people at the front business are more accommodating and friendlier.

Great place if you come during lunch hours and know which dishes to select.
The ladies behind the counter usually just follow you around until your five items are completed. There is little to none customer service but what can you expect at $ 5 for 5 items bento box place? Take it to go is a better option than sitting upstairs.

Although I hate when they are skimp on the selections they put on your plate, there are days when they do justice to my appetite by distributing great portions! Either way, the price is awesome… Go when the food is freshly rolled out on the buffet table… Try to skip pre-​closing when the food is dried up ;)

The «Buffet» in their name is so deceiving. This is not an all you can eat establishment and don’t expect anything gourmet. For $ 5 you can choose 5 items, for $ 3 you can choose noodle/​rice & 1 item, for under $ 2 you can choose 1 item. It’s probably one of the cheapest if not the cheapest place to get lunch around the area. This is good if you want a quick cheap meal that just fills your stomach. There is a 2^nd floor dining with a decent amount of seating. So on to the process; you walk towards the back, decide how many items you want, pay accordingly, and they’ll give you a container on a tray. You walk down the buffet line and point to the items you want and the ladies will put it on your tray. Then you walk upstairs to find a seat or if you want it to go, there’s another station that will bag it up for you.
There is a bakery in the front but it’s not Fay Da bakery anymore. This bakery has got to be one of the worst bakeries I’ve been to. The service is really slow in the morning and the buns are stale. I want my buns fresh and soft in the morning, is that too much to ask for?!

They serve BUBBLE TEA, even though the flavor is a little below average, it is something I really needed while shopping around Penn Station.

I go here for the bubble tea business at the front. Always friendly and accommodating, they help me pick out a flavor every time because I am so indecisive. It is always delicious!
In regards to the Chinese buffet, it’s great if you’re into quick and semi-​questionable Chinese buffets — and who isn’t into that sometimes? Honestly, I crave the unhealthy, potentially-​been-​out-​all-​day food offered by these places from time to time and Lunch Box is always the best. Fun atmosphere, great prices… why not, really?

Joined my partner here for a quick bite before he needed to catch a train back to Philly. He had one of their $ 5 lunch deals, where you pick five things. They seemed kind of annoyed that three of his things were orange chicken, and then he in turn was annoyed because the orange chicken did not turn out to be very good. Each serving was only about 3 medium size pieces, so it wasn’t even a lot of food.
I had one of their steamed pork buns, which was okay, except that I lost the entire base peeling off the paper.
What struck me the most about this place were the posters on the walls; every couple of feet, there’s either a sign warning you of thieves or an ad for a nutritional supplement or a colon clinic. I get that people don’t come here for the décor, but that was way weirder than it needed to be.

Five items for five bucks, probably one of the cheapest places to eat in mid-​town NY and the items that they serve vary ranging from ridiculously salty to surprisingly delicious.
The highlight out of all the items I got was the water spinach that had a nice garlic flavor to it and was perfectly cooked. I wish I had gotten two servings of it, and for some reason, the sweet and sour tofu tasted better than the sesame chicken.
The seaweed salad was exceedingly salty and after two bites, I knew there was no way I could finish it.
You can get a steamed bun and a coffee for 2 bucks, another great deal and a lot of their baked goods start at $ 1.50, I bought two, one being a napoleon slice and another being the peanut roll.
The peanut roll tasted like an unsweetened poundcake rolled in crushed peanuts with butter as filling, while the napoleon had a custard filling that didn’t seem to have much flavor at all; they definitely look a lot better than they taste.
I would definitely say try this place out, especially if you’re low on cash and want a super filling meal, but if you want really good Asian food, head down to canal street instead.

Ugg. I felt like I betrayed my best friend the moment I sat down with my meal. Saved myself a walk to my usual Chinese place and came here to check out what this $ 5 buffet was all about. Word to the wise — it’s typically bad when a place advertise in big bold numbers $ 5, $ 1, whatever… Cheap is what you are looking for, cheap is what you’re going to get. The broccoli in my chicken bits was turning yellow (not fresh), the chicken roll (wrapped in bean curd skin) was a patty floured up, the brown rice was definitely low quality, and just all around awful. It’s no wonder Chinese people don’t come here and if they do, you can bet they won’t be coming back. Also, while the seating area is pretty clean, I was tired of the advertisements on the wall and television. No, I’m not interested in buying any acai drinks today. Irony that it’s a health drink while I’m eating food that’s not even close to being good.

Chinese food snobs need not apply. For $ 5 you get 5 items (rice is included as one of the 5). This is where New York’s downtrodden (and frugal, in the case of yours truly) come to lunch.
As my homie LL reports, several dishes are carelessly drowned in sauce with little quality control, but for the most part, the food gets the job done. It’s a Chinese buffet with a few hints of something not quite American thrown in (I’ll let you discover those for yourself).
There are interesting items here that seem fairly authentic, notably the buns and other pastries you’ll see upon entering. They probably get obscured by the queues of cheap lunch hunters and various sad people occupying the lower floor.
I will continue to occasionally patronize LBB and its «permanent recession specials» but I hesitate to recommend it to anyone unless you’re (1) in the area; (2) strapped for cash; or (3) aren’t too discriminating about Chinese food.

The best Chinese food buffet $ 5, for 5 items!!! Awsome!!!

This Chinese place is one of the best lunch deals in the area. For $ 5, you get to choose any 5 items from the hot and cold offerings. You have to walk to the back and pay first first. Then you get a tray and there are ladies at the steam tables to scoop out the food for you. They are generpus with the portions that they dish out to you. There is a very big seating area upstairs on the second floor.
The food here is mostly average takeout quality but there is a very large selection. There are lots of different vegetables dishes with mushrooms, cabbage, bok choy, and more. The meat stuff was the usual — sesame chicken, fried chicken, soy chicken, beef and broccoli, fish, and more. One of my favorites are the pork meat balls which are very juicy.
The food here is not the best, but the price makes this place worth a visit.

Sure, I probably ate way more sodium than is needed for my entirely daily intake here with my meal, but for $ 5 and for such a variety of food and for a ton of food neither Matt J. nor I could finish, at a spot in Manhattan, this place is a steal.
It looks weird on the outside, but you walk in, and pay in cash a whopping $ 5 – tax is already included so it is literally $ 5 – and then you get to walk up and down the food aisle and just pick which items you want! It is pretty magical. And you can tell that they actually change out the food pretty frequently too and that they take their food seriously too. They have a cold salad section, hot sides, all kinds of noodles, green beans, spicy options, and even some seafood options too! Spring rolls and things like that are extra and by extra I mean a whopping dollar more. Or you can be smart like we were and get a pork bun which is giant for $ 2 more and it is kept hot and tastes pretty darn good if I say so myself. And if you are feeling healthy they make fresh fruit smoothies here for a few bucks too! You can take it to go, or they even have seating upstairs! Crazy!
Like I said, this is a magical Lunch Box buffet and I think all lunch boxes in the world should have as much magic and bang for the buck packed in there.

You can’t bet five items for $ 5! The food isn’t the greatest Chinese takeout but it’s a fast and cheap, fast lunch. My favorite is their pork and green beans, I could just eat that and rice. They have steamed buns which is a good breakfast and dumplings for an appetizer.
Also they have a drink bar with a juice bar which isn’t bad, $ 5 for a small and they have bubble tea too. Not food to rave about but if you’re low on cash and hungry, I guess you can’t be too picky.

On a quest to find a lunch spot, my co-​worker and i stumbled upon Lunch Box Buffet. Drawn in by the 5 dollar lunch, i was skeptical. Needless to say i should be by the 1 star rating i gave.
Lunch Box is a take on Chinese buffet style lunch-​in where you can pick 5 items for 5 dollars flat. Soda runs you 1.25 as where juice and vitamin water cost 2.25
There’s definitely a variety of Chinese food but in my opinion, has had the American twist on it. To me it just didn’t taste good. Rice tasted like there wasn’t enough water to cook it and the other sides (fried tofu with oyster sauce, string beans, bok choy with garlic, curry chicken) were unappetizing to say the least. Most of it was either drowned by heavy sauces or grease.
You get what you pay for and I’m definitely gonna pay. Excuse me for the short review, the porcelain gods are calling my name…

Choose 5 menu items for $ 5.
If you’re on a budget and looking for a quick bite to eat, Lunch Box Buffet is for you.
It’s not an all you can eat buffet. It’s simply set up like one. When you enter, there will be a bakery to your right. Pass the bakery and walk all the way to the back of the store. Pay the cashier and grab yourself a tray. You point at what you’d like and ladies behind the buffet place the food on your plate. Don’t expect a friendly smile. Go for the low prices.
I think the food here is OK, maybe even a «Meh. I’ve experienced better.» Most of the items here are Americanized Chinese dishes. Some Chinese dishes can be found. I would suggest you stay clear from the salad bar items. I’ve been here a few times, and it never looks as fresh as the warm buffet items.
There is seating upstairs. At times, it can get really packed up there. You may have to share a table with others.
If you’re in the area and in a hurry, Lunch Box Buffet is a good place to try out. I wouldn’t go out of my way to come here through.

With a friend, through our Christian faith, for a mid-​afternoon lunch at $ 5.00 I schlep my tired weary, broken spirit and drained body for a sendoff to his hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee. Lunch Box Buffet is the Chinese version of fast food. For $ 5.00 lunch special poor patrons can gather five different servings of hot or cold prepared food on their plate. Seating is on the upper level. Fast food for the extreme struggling New Yorker in this permanent declining economy. Plates are served in the anti-​environmental friendly Styrofoam partition school lunch trays.
Lunch Box Buffet appears very much in disrepair where the floors upon entering is dilapidated with an uninviting feeling of callous and abrupt staff. Customer service is near nonexistent as they do not or cannot hone their interpersonal skills for instructions of the number of portions for one’s plate of the $ 5.00 value set. Lunch Box contains all the sterling qualities of the 4 B’s: Bland, Blah, Boo, and Bù (the fourth is Chinese for NO)!!

Ugh, terrible. The pork bun is big and $ 1, but I had to toss it after a couple of bites. It’s cold, a bit stiff, and the pork is disgusting.
You need to take the trip over to Chinatown for some hot, fresh, and delicious tasting buns, instead. And you can find ‘em for 80 cents.