Zen Buffet

AVOID at ALL COST. No matter the situation or how much you’re craving to gorge Asian food down — just listen to me. DON’T EAT HERE! The reviews are true!
I live in DTLA and travel a lot so I know great Asian food and of course realize an Asian Buffet isn’t going to be the most amazing food but it can be enough at times.
I had to run out to Pico for some errands about 3 weeks ago and have driven by this place before and saw that they had an A and pulled up and parked. I checked the reviews saying service was horrible and some reviews on the food but took a look for myself. It wasn’t the cleanest on the floor but the food looked legit.
After biting into food — it’s not legit. When I was at the Sushi-​Bar I asked for California Rolls and the woman threw up her hand and said WAIT! 10 minutes later of not saying anything the rolls were ready but the tongs were dirty and so I pulled out fresh chopsticks to pick up the rolls and she yelled to use the spoons. I told her they were dirty and she yelled JUST SAUCE! I told her I have potential allergies and not sure what all sauce is on the tongs and she screamed again throwing her hands at me and I told her in a raised voice to lose the attitude. There is no reason to have an attitude.
This is the type of restaurant owned by immigrants you DON’T want to support. If they want to be rude and un-​grateful that they were given the oppurtunity to own a business in the states then they need to be reminded how quickly it all goes away when people quit patronizing their restaurant and they get shipped back to the country they came from.

Service is the worst here, save your money and go elsewhere. The cashier cant even know how to split the bill!

I will give 0 star for the food if I could. All dishes looks so old, the crab legs and cold shrimps were only few pieces and stay like that for 1 and half hour, feels they will never refill it until tomorrow. I don’t want to come here ever, I hope you do the same.

food was average. The sushi wasn’t fresh but it was decent. but what really threw me off was the service. the service was h-​o-​r-​r-​i-​b-​l-​e! I asked the worker for more water and he said «I no work» so I asked another worker but he never came back. Service was just bad and food was mediocre

The prices are really cheap. I went there on President Day for lunch. Unfortunately, I didn’t find Tuna there. However, they do serve Tuna for dinner. I had a lot of soups there. They’re delicious.

I never been to zen buffet until last night, and omg I loved it !!!
Pros: all u can eat, great choices. I loved their walnut shrimp and sushi… Yummy
Cons: there was food all over the floor, waiters never came by to ask if we needed anything, like a refill. And let me tell you, It was much needed.
Overall I will be coming back. Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. It was really busy ! Maybe that’s why the service was bad and the floor was dirty …

The food here is actually not that great. Heck, a lot of times it downright sucks. So why 4 stars? Because I sometimes get constipation and eating at Zen works even better than a whole bottle of Ex-​Lax. When I’m feeling stopped up, I swing by Zen for a sushi and sashimi feast. And like clockwork, within an hour the rumbling begins, and that’s my cue to sprint to the nearest restroom, with one hand over my ass to buy a couple of extra seconds.
The pain, noise, and smell are more than worth it for the priceless feeling of being cleared out. Four stars all the way.

So I’m here at the zen buffet
And the food unfortunately was not that great.
The service as far as I could tell was verry
Bad. Never did the server ask or come to see if we needed anything I had to flag one of them Down just to get a refill of my drink after almost chocking on my food. He appeared to be verry attentive to the other guests around us though.
I have no choice but to give 1 star but if I did have a choice i wouldn’t even give that star.

Service was nonexistent. Servers look all depressed, and they should be, being in this place. There is a Hibachi stand/​bar and a sushi bar. Fortunately, they couldn’t afford to hire someone to be there all the time otherwise I would have ate the stuff they could have made.
Nothing is really fresh here. I don’t even want to know how long some of the food sits out before they decide to toss it away. Everything is lukewarm and not hot. Sushi bar sucks because the fish taste sketchy and rice was hard. Some of the food was acceptable, nothing is great or worth coming to. Otherwise, most of them are just bad. They have a variety, but nothing is good. And for the price I pay for this food, I rather just go somewhere else. This place used to be a lil better. Now, it is just one big shithole. I didn’t see a cockroach in my food fortunately, but knowing this place, I probably ate something they crawled on.
Summary:
Expect bad/​no service.
Expect old/​bad food.
A place where everything is bad and is bound to keep switching managements if there isn’t a makeover. They need that guy from Kitchen Nightmares from the Food Network or something to get over here.
P.S bathroom is dirty. How can it be this dirty if no one even comes here that often?

I don’t even wanna give my 1 star. My pictures can tell you everything. The food are not fresh at all, most of them actually are stink, it smells like shit. The green been soup test terrible. The sushi cook put the used sushi rice in the pot for next time using. The waiter wanna us to finish the last piece of crab leg or he won’t take it away.
And the most ridiculous thing is the temperature in door. They set up 62 – 63 degree to save money. Honestly i don’t really feel the difference between the in and out. Garbage place, I used to came here couple years ago but this time it shocks me. I wanna give a 0 if there is no requirements to write done the comments. Really piss me off, food like shit. Shit at least is hot! The food all fucking cold! Freezing!

This is THE WORST PLACE TO EAT EVER!
My boyfriend an I came here to eat an found that the fried chicken was RAW.
We understand that things happen as we work in the food industry, he being a chef an me a waitress but when we repeatedly told the servers the chicken was RAW they did NOTHING!
We then asked for the manager an after 20 MINUTES she finally came up with one of the WORST attitudes ever!
We told her to please REMOVE the chicken from the buffet line as it is RAW an people will get sick if she didn’t. She proceeded to say, «you can just eat something else things happen.»
We know things happen an we only wanted her to REMOVE the RAW chicken from the line!!!
This place will get you sick please don’t eat here! If you do please check the food!

I used to come here with my grandparents because they have a really awesome Tuesday deal for seniors where their lunch meals are only about $ 6. That’s why this place becomes swamped on Tuesday afternoons! There are always coupons in the mail this for this restaurant too, but even if you are not a senior and you go with some seniors, they will not let you use the senior deal for them, which doesn’t make sense to me. Other than that, customer service is something expected from a typical Asian restaurant where they are not super friendly, but they will get you what you request in a timely manner.
Every time I come, the selection of certain dishes changes, so it’s nice that they rotate options every once in awhile. What always remains the same are the salad bar, sushi bar, and dessert area. There is also a place where you can make udon noodles. Sushi bar isn’t too great because they don’t offer a lot of fish and most of their rolls just consist of a lot of rice. They are pretty generous with the seafood options at this place even though the lunch prices are really reasonable. There is a wide variety of seafood options such as shrimp, oysters, and salmon. I, for one, do not trust their seafood because I have had friends that have gotten sick from this buffet. Also, sometimes the salmon seems very mushy and not fresh. For me, it’s important to go when it’s busy because then the chefs are constantly cooking and rotating the food so it remains fresh for the customers.
The food that I really love eating are the vegetables. They always have stir fry vegetables that are fresh and delicious. They have a wide variety of them too, which is always nice. Also, the hot and sour soup is delicious here! The basic dishes that they always have are the soups (miso and hot and sour), fried rice, chow mein, egg rolls, and a variety of dim sum buns.
Overall, the food isn’t the best quality and taste, but the price with their deals keeps me coming back on random occasions.
Parking is easy with a lot in the back but it can get full easily. However, there’s a plaza across the street of various stores like Office Depot with an ample amount of parking.

Food is so good, and lots of choices, sushi is just fine, but everything is delicious.
Good job zen buffet! :-) :-) :-) :-)
Love it :-) :-) :-) :-)

Pretty empty on a Friday night… that’s already bad news. Servers are very distant and the hostess was almost kinda rude in the way she talked – like she didn’t want to be there, which she probably didn’t. Décor is outdated, old fashioned, and almost depressing as it was practically empty save a couple people eating by their lonesome.
Food-​wise? Let’s just say I didn’t trust the sashimi enough to eat it. Shrimp wasn’t even peeled and desserts are generic and blasé. Let me break it down for you: The meats were all over cooked and fatty, chicken was okay but everything was probably chocked full of corn starch to keep the cheap quality from tasting cheaper than it already was. There was also an insane amount of sodium in everything (that kimchi WTF??) so it’d make you thirsty and not want to eat any more.
Seafood-​wise, rolls were actually OK, though they put seaweed in everything as a filling OR a bunch of rice in the nigiri. The tuna tasted sour so I stopped eating sashimi right away.
You don’t get anything fancy in desserts – just little tiny cakes with no labels so you have no idea what you’re getting. The assortment of fruits are nice – dip those in the chocolate fountain, which has extra cheap and sweet chocolate. The marshmallows offered are all smashed and stuck together, so at least that will force you to eat more fruit. Frozen yogurt is overly sweet and melts extremely fast, so you might not want to eat that either.
Overall, yea, I wouldn’t come here again. I don’t even know why I agreed to come here in the first place… It’s a decent price ($ 13ish), but I’m not paying that much for two plates of fruit… I’d rather pay double and go to Kirin.

This is my 2^nd time ate at Zen Buffet. I liked the food last time and was in the area so we came back.
They have wide selection of food. Sushi and sashimi was pretty fresh. Personally I was surprised to see they had crab innards (brown meat) at AYCE buffet, I’ve been to many AYCE but this is the first and only one with it! I usually order canned crab innards all the way from Japan so I was so impressed to see they had it!
Service is not too good. Waitress barely come around, when you want your drink refilled, you have to look around for a few minutes, find the waitress and get her attention by waiving your hand.
They keep their «stone face», say nothing back when I say «Thank you!» and walk away.
Well, you can’t expect them to behave like waitresses at Nobu’s, but still yeah they need to behave much better.
We handed the coupon to the cashier girl when we walked in but when we got our check we didin’t see the discount was applied. So we walked up to the cashier and explained to the girl we gave the coupon to. She gave me the famous «stone face» look, fixed the price, I gave her my card, she gave it back to me and I said thank you… she stare at my face and said NOTHING. Haha that was actually funny to me.
Overall their food is pretty good, price is very reasonable.
Just don’t expect the workers to make you happy with their service. If you want to save $ make sure to go to their website and print out the coupon.

I haven’t been to a Chinese food buffet in YEARS. And Zen Buffet reminded me exactly why I haven’t been to one. I was already hesitant from the start but when a coupon came in the mail for a $ 12 weekday dinner, I figured why not. We literally walked into the restaurant 30 minutes before closing but there was still plenty of food there and the service was still good.
The problem with Zen isn’t that there wasn’t enough food. It’s that there isn’t enough tasty food. I mean to be honest I probably could have eaten better Chinese food at a Panda Express. The egg rolls had that microwaved taste to it, and the crab legs looked anemic and the sushi was just terrible. My boyfriend and I basically had one plate of food each from the entire buffet. I was really hoping that the desserts might be better but nope! Even the pastries and cookies were kind of bad. My boyfriend ate jello for dessert just because it was there and he hadn’t had it in ages. Talk about just plain bad food.
I’m not a hater of buffets but I just have never been to a good Chinese food one. Maybe I’ll never find one but I’m willing to try! Either way I’m glad that I got to try it because now I can say that I’ll never be back! Coupon or not! ¹⁄₅

Not sure about why all these low star review because I’m a fan of the buffet!
For the price that I paid (about $ 15 including tax and tips with coupon), I thought the selection of the food and its quality were pretty good. Majority of the food were above my expectation and even the average ones were still decent. A few of my favorites were the crab legs, mushrooms, buttery shrimp, clams and sushi.
The service was quick. Every time when I came back to the table for a new plate, the old plate there before was already gone.
Zen Buffet seems to come out with a coupon every month now as I have noticed so look out in the mail and make sure you get one before coming here.

Theres 2 locations of Zen Buffet, one in Monrovia and one in San Gabriel. I have been to both and I can honestly say that they’re both the same. This place is pretty big and I always see big parties and families come for dinner time. Parking is NOT good! they have a very small lot in front of the restaurant, and there is more parking in the back and around that plaza, but when you go during dinner time it is usually hard to find parking. The reason is because it’s in the same plaza as OO-​Kook and that place is always popping. There is also a PepBoys Auto store next to it, so I usually park over there and walk to Zen Buffet.
Their prices change so I suggest looking online for their actual menu price. While you’re on their website, they always have coupons that you can use for dine in only. You must print the coupon out and actually give it to them. They will not accept it if you show them over the phone. The coupons are actually really good deals especially for weekday lunch, so for sure check their website before coming in.
I am probably not the best person to be reviewing this place because I am a vegetarian and I don’t eat meat or seafood haha. I cannot base my review on anything you guys are going to eat, but I can base it on a vegetarians point of view, which most of you guys probably won’t even care about.
The dishes i get here are very limited. The only vegetarian items they have are:
–Fried rice: Delicious ! I like it a lot.
–Fried noodles: Very much like panda express so I don’t care for this.
–Tea eggs: I love tea eggs, but the last time I came here they didnt have these anymore :(I don’t know if they took it out permanently but I hope they bring it back.
–Japanese seaweed: Pretty good, this dish tastes the same everywhere.
–Egg rolls: Also tastes like panda express but I really like it because its got a nice crunch to it.
–A-​choy: Yummy, I love A-​choy
–Vermicelli: I like this as well, I only try to get the vermicelli, not any of the other veggies that are in that dish.
–Salad from the salad bar: Don’t need to write about salad because all salads taste the same
What I love about this place is the Noodle Bar! At first the bar used to be a noodle soup area where they have either udon, egg noodles or the flat white noodles in a bowl with veggies and other stuff inside of it. A man behind the counter makes the noodles for you and adds in the soup. The most recent time I went, they took out the noodle soup bar, and they replaced it with a stir fry noodle area. Its exactly like Great Khans where you pick all your ingredients like meats, seafood, veggies etc all on a plate, and you get to choose the amount of noodles you want as well. I suggest you get the udon noodles because it is delicious! The udon is nice and chew which is how I like it. They also have garlic, chili oil, soy sauce etc for you to put on the plate, and the man behind the counter makes it for you. Don’t forget to tip him as well!
I noticed that change a lot of their dishes, so not everything that Ive listed is going to be there and there is a possibility that new dishes come out every day. Its always a surprise I guess whenever I go,

This place seems to garner quite a bit of hate. I’ve been here a few times over the years, and to be 100% honest, I do have some mixed feelings and reservations about this eatery. This place definitely has a number of shortcomings, but I honestly think it’s not as bad as some folks make it out to be … or maybe I’m just crazy and\or have no self-​respect for my body; read on and you can decide for yourself. :D
For those who have not yet eaten here yet, Zen Buffet offers a mix of «western» and Pan-​Asian foods in a AYCE buffet format, including desserts. Beverages (other than water) will incur a charge not included in the base dining price.
Some of the food here is actually quite good: I’m a big fan of the bacon-​wrapped shrimp, and the chicken wings are well-​executed as well. The majority of the other dishes I’ve sampled here have been no less than at least «acceptable».
But some of the other dishes … not so much. The BBQ Beef Ribs here are simply godawful, totally lacking in flavor. The fried crabs were also unimpressive, and I would not bother with them again either. But hey, the overall quality of the food is still at least commensurate with the cutthroat pricing.
Ah yes, the pricing … at the time of this review (Feb 26, 2015), there is currently a *promotional* price per person for dine-​in AYCE as follows:
$ 7.99 Monday-​Friday 11AM to 3:30PM
$ 11.99 Monday-​Thursday 4PM to 9:30PM
$ 13.99 Friday-​Sunday 4PM-​10PM
Even taking into consideration the sometimes questionable quality of the food here, I think you’re still getting quite a bit for your money (particularly when you factor in the wide variety of dishes made available) — particularly if you keep your expectations realistic for the price you are paying.
Briefly revisiting «food quality» … I don’t think I’ve ever developed full-​blown stomach cramps that were directly attributable to a meal at this Zen Buffet. Having said that, I think I’ve noticed a modicum of queasiness in my belly not long after leaving here on more than one occasion (in all fairness, I think the culprit was most likely the heavy presence of mayo in the mussels that I was going to town on).
The service here does also admittedly leave a bit to be desired — some of the staff members seem perpetually numb, traumatized, and demoralized … don’t expect any emotional labor here. On the other hand, my empty/​dirty plates were always cleared from my table with satisfactory frequency. My glass of cherry coke was also kept refilled very often, without my needing to signal any staff members. They did seem to rush the check to my table though, as soon as they saw my dining party getting dessert. :/​
Honestly, for the mere $ 11.99 I paid tonight, I don’t think I could have feasted on so many varieties of food at any other restaurant of the same price tier. Sure, I could have gone somewhere else (like the OO-​KOOK next door), and gotten conspicuously better food. But the cost of admission would also have been significantly higher.
So I think there you have it folks … you won’t have to pay a lot to eat here, and you’ll more or less get what you paid for. You’ll have a wide variety of food to choose from, and some of the menu items will be noticeably better than others. The service will not be flawless, but it should average out as «acceptable».
If you can afford better, then yes, there are certainly superior dining options elsewhere (the OO-​KOOK next door certainly falls into that category). But if you’re starving, on a tight budget, *and* have no self-​respect for your body, I think you could do worse than this place … although I’d probably stay away from here *if* you don’t have a cast iron stomach possessing the same Level 10 resiliency as mine. :P

Having been told this place was under new management I dropped by to give it a try.
The salmon sashimi alone deserves 4 stars! Wow! I’m flabbergasted they serve such high quality for an Asian buffet! They also have my all time favorite, lamb skewers, made to order. It was a nice surprise to see tea eggs at a buffet too.
I also had the coupon which made my meal such a SWEET DEAL.
Overall, I think it’s worth it for just the salmon.
Can’t wait to come back! Check out my pictures :)