East Kylin Buffet

The place was so filthy we had to leave. I did not want my mother and son eating there. The tables were sticky the windows had old crusty handprints on them. Then I went to the restroom and it looked like it’s never been cleaned. I can’t even imagine eating food that was cooked in this place. Also the «waitress» was a little girl and seemed to be the only one who spoke English. We walked out before our drinks arrived.

When you want a lot of food for cheap, you think about a Chinese Buffet place. At the same time, when you are heading to a Chinese Buffet place you expect a football field full of food options but, lacking on taste.
This place exceeded that expectation. They had a very good collection of variety of food. Eventhough we reached there very late (6 PM), we were able to eat so many items. For my surprise most of the items tasted very good. Definitely not like a place where you take a date but, food was tasty enough for a Buffet place.
Very friendly staff too.

Awful! Disgusting! If there’s a 0 star… they definitely earned that! What happened to the public health restaurant rating? Even looked online and was shown not found, business may be closed down already… really?! Something fishy… and not just the food! The table were sticky… and have a minor working there… restrooms were nasty… the restaurant reeked overall. The rice in the sushi roll… good luck… partially ok… the remainder is hard (meaning it’s been sitting there for like… forever!?). Stay away!

The tables were not clean when we were seated. The food can barely swallow, and the Apple juice does not taste like apple juice, too bad…

This place was pretty bad. Yes I admit I may be somewhat critical and impartial to western Chinese food, why? I’ve never really been impressed with what is to offer with many of the local joint, needless to say it wasn’t my idea to visit this buffet. Any who, I came In with my family if I recall correctly on a Thursday evening around 6, regrettably…
One thing I have observed in my many times dining out, places are fairly busy during the time we came in, this was not the case here. When we walked in we saw only two other patrons (insert face with frown), I immediately had a bad feeling, not that I had high expectations but this was not the first impression I had hoped for. We were immediately greeted in a friendly manner and led to our table, shortly after we ordered our drinks and off we went to begin an evening of gluttony (so I had hoped for).
The food (insert another face with frown). Let me begin by saying the selection of food was very Minimal for being a buffet, but of course The steam tables did have all the typical and expected participants present, such as Sweet and sour with what they claim to be pork, fried rice, chow main, orange chicken and of course not to forget, chicken nuggets and fries (yes you read that correctly) and some Japanese inspired items like tempura squid and sushi, which by the way was horrendous, but I’ll get to that later.
I started off with fried rice, orange chicken and a fish filet basting in some mystery sauce. The fish was disgusting, second worse item I ate that evening. The texture of the fish was just so off putting, it was like chewing greasy rubber and the orange chicken was borderline burnt and the fried rice, well the fried rice wasn’t too bad, maybe a bit more seasoning and I would upgrade it to «good» after this failed start I was one and done with the steam table options. I moved on to some wonton soup which essentially was simply hot water hosting some wontons, it had ZERO taste, no flavor whatsoever. 0 for 2 at this point. I was hoping the sushi would be a tiny redeemer but it was by FAR the worst thing I attempted to eat here, why? It was warm! Warm raw fish is not a recommended way to eat this particular food. At this point I was done with this place. I had no desire to try anything else. I just wanted my check and to get out.
All In all, I left hungry and I now knew why there were only two other patrons. The food is just bad and even though inexpensive it is not worth coming in. Aside from the rice I can’t think of anything positive to say about it let alone recommending it to anybody. Save yourself the disappointment (you have been warned) and just avoid this place.

Please give this place a chance!
This is an ambitious restaurant that tries very hard with a large food selection, but unless they get customer traffic the food will sit on the steam table for hours. They would be better off with a smaller selection so that everything stays fresh, a la Panda Express.
I’ve been here once on a recent Saturday evening and there were only a handful of tables and acres of food steaming away. During my time there not one new item was brought out to the steam tables.
I was not terribly thrilled with anything that I tried, but it was VERY cheap, and I left quite full. Lots of fried items. Wish they had more traditional Chinese items.
I have a soft spot for independently owned businesses, especially restaurants, and I wish them all to succeed.
The place was bright and clean. Had difficulty communicating my drink order to the waiter who spoke no English.
Give them a try!

The place is new so my family and I thought we would try it out. Bad decision and worst dinner we’ve had in a while. The food wasn’t very good. I keep looking for something good to say but it’s just not there. Stick with old town buffet if your looking for a buffet night. The sushi wasn’t very good. The food was just not good in general. It was cold, old, and dry.

For the price at lunch, I had a very low expectation, but was greatly surprised. Fresh Sushi and stur fry vegetables to order, large varaity of healthy fish and many items familiar and new to me and all very well prepared.

I don’t know where to start. We figured we’d try this place now that it’s new. They don’t have a big food selection. The salad and fruit bar was small. The deserts even smaller. I tried a few of their rolls, meh. I kept waiting for them to make more and they never did We got here at 6pm so you’d think everything would be hot and fresh IT WAS NOT. Everything tasted old and stale. The king crab legs didn’t taste like anything but water. The crab claws were old and dried up like jerky. The Crawdads were disgusting. The hot and sour soup was the worst I’ve ever had, it didn’t taste like anything, sad because it looked good. The gyoza was old, cold and tuff. The battered and deep fried shrimp was also cold. My husband had one of their oysters and said it was good. The only 2 things I liked were a slice of watermelon and a strawberry desert thing, it was very good. The egg rolls were ok. I tried their cheese cake again old and stale. I can’t believe this place is still open. It was horrible and we won’t be back.
Stick to Sakura! Much better choice.

Since this restaurant is new, we decided to give it a try. We do not plan to return.
There were several problems:
1. Somebody was smoking in the men’s restroom, and the ventilation is not very good. I could hardly breathe and wound up holding my breath while washing my hands. Two attempts to report this to employees resulted in blank stares.
2. Poor selection of food, minimal vegetables. There are several other Chinese buffets in Salinas with more variety and better quality.
3. The service. What service? No refills on water, practically no recognition that we existed. But, maybe that was because I tried to report the smoker in the restroom. We couldn’t even get the bill!
Even if this place improves substantially, there are several other Chinese buffets in Salinas which are far better. Why give this place a second chance?
By the way, Monterey County Health Department DID provide excellent service in regard to my complaint about the smoker. In less than a week they went out and inspected. Great work!

From what I heard, this location has just had bad luck. It’s my first time in any asian buffet here in salinas. So far, I’m not super impressed. The ones in San Diego will blow this one away to shame. What i was surprised about was the selection of the food. There was a good variety of food, which even included mussels, crab, dimsum, and build your own chow mein station like Great Khan at the mall, as well as sushi. The down fall of this place is that it doesn’t get enough business to have good turn around of the food. So unfortunately, the food stays under the lamps for hours, and some of the stuff ends up tasting too chewy or old. I watch a lot of food network shows, so I’m all about fresh ingredients and home-​made type of tastes. This place lacks that. The only I really liked was their homemade dumplings. Everything else tasted like it was previously frozen, canned, etc — except for the fish and stir fry chicken. I give this place props for trying… esp with the walnut shrimp … but try using bigger quality shrimp! Quality ingredients is key to bringing back customers, in my opinion.

Service is good, food not so. The food was warm, not hot and not much flavor or variety. They do not keep up with keeping the food trays filled so there were a lot of empty trays or the food looked old though the restaurant did have good amount of customers. The signs were wrong because they are either missing or are from the previous dinner and we ate a normal lunch time on a Saturday. The place was clean. The food is not even close to AA Buffet or Sakura Buffet. I was hoping for better.

Food was good, very similar to Sakura buffet, so if you like Sakura buffet on N. Main st. you will like this place. Booth seats are kind of small, big people might whant to seat at a table with chairs instead of booth seats.

Food was good. They were a little low on some of my favorites but they filled them quickly. Overall very satisfied

Stop by on a Saturday. Dinner buffet started at 4pm. We were well greeted. The food was very good and the service was outstanding.