China Buffet

This place wasn’t awful. It did come so very close to awful though; six of us dined; it’s food selection consists of mostly chicken dishes and most of it would not rate more than one out of five, most of it though didn’t even rate one out of five. It’s an off — street, and below street level cattle market basement. It’s a cramped and grotty dive. There’s more room in the toilet than you have room to dine. The food is, at best, poor. It was £9.50 a head at 3pm on a Saturday, no fish of any sort, and no duck of any sort, in fact not even a red pepper. If you were drunk you probably wouldn’t mind the food, but in my case never again, not for free. I posted one photo, which I took while standing in a dirty stairway waiting to go in. I didn’t take any inside as I would neither recommend or promote this place to anyone, in fact the opposite is true. I tried the cold seaweed, which was soggy and pretty near tasteless. I tried the so called sushi, it had that awful factory made chemical product known as crab stick, if there was as much as one per cent of this real crab meat in this muck I’d be astonished. So I removed this grim muck and left it on the plate. The sushi rice was ruined by an acrid cheap and nasty vinegar. I also took the total portion of wasabi beside the sushi — it amounted to about a quarter of a teaspoon portion. Their soy sauce while in the small Kikkoman bottles is another Chinese made, cheap and nasty chemical brew at fifty pence a litre retail. The pork fillet wasn’t pork fillet, and the deep fried battered mushrooms and battered onions just dripped in cooking oil. The sweet & sour chicken and pork were again the cheaper meats and each had an awful aftertaste. These dishes weren’t helped either by the stewed vegetables floating in the sweet/​sour gloop, the onions and the green peppers were limp. The pork ribs (two types) were fatty and poor tasting. The only two out of five parts were the lukewarm chicken & sweetcorn soup and the sliced fresh orange slices; they actually had some taste. The desserts consisted of vegetable oil based ‘ice cream’, cheap ‘Swiss’ rolls (the Swiss are too discerning to allow this stuff into the country) rice krispy buns, cubes of jelly, and tinned lychees. As we left there was a much larger queue of people on the stairs. One chap asked if we enjoyed our food and I told him it was grim and I suggested he go elsewhere. He didn’t take my advice.

3 sturdy stars for the boringly but accurately named, China Buffet. This kind of restaurant is a tad predictable. There are countless places serving the same food, cooked in the same way for more-​or-​less the same price, so it is unlikely to wow you, but what it does give you is value for money, and an altogether pleasant experience.
I went for lunch: £5.50 for an all you can eat buffet on a midweek afternoon. Not bad at all, and you weren’t ripped off on drinks either. The staff were attentive and polite, and made sure there wasn’t an empty plate on your table for too long. The décor was… a little worse for ware, although they were clever in their use of two enormous mirrors on opposing walls to expand the smallish room.
The usual selection was on offer, except for crispy duck (much to the disappointment of my boyfriend). A couple more main dishes might have been welcome, too, but a more limited spread than some was understandable as they were a little short on room. Nevertheless, what was there was universally liked, and my lunch ended up being big enough to count as my tea as well.
Evening and weekend prices are around £2 more, but still very reasonable for the quality of service. I didn’t feel wowed, but I didn’t feel cheated either. I left satisfied, full to the brim and could understand why the man on the table next to us goes every week.

my god, where to start well lets imagine you are me going to this so called buffet you see it, in all its imaginitive glory, and thinkWow, a great name! china buffet! you go down a small flight of stairs and see two unfriendly women staring at you. You are directed to a table. Hungry and famished, you run over to the starters when prompted. onion ringsvegetable wontonsbanana fritterschips. Well, not much there! moving over to the other part theresswimming tofu in a discusting brown sauce, sweet and sour chicken, whats this? it seems old and its been covered for a whileegg rice, noodles (best part .) soo theres no spoon to scoop any food. You take a spoon to get some food, and a staff member who knows little bloody english say, NO! YOU USE THIS HERE!
wow, that didnt go so well after two plates you edge over to the desserts ice cream machine doesnt work, plenty of jelly, fruit cakes are from the bargain shop, swiss roles 10p from tesco oh dear. and when i left i felt very illthe food tasted off. the staff charged extra very unfriendly.

This place is down a flight of stairs, so the restaurant has no windows or natural daylight. The tables are so close together that even my skinny-​as-​a-​rake partner found it hard to move around. It even felt claustrophobic.
The usual bog standard chinese buffet food is on offer. Starters were a choice of two kinds of soup, spring rolls, veggies, duck pancakes, curry samosas (?!), chicken wings, prawn toasts without the prawn.
The main meal food was not of top notch quality. We were disappointed with the lack of any curry dish, there were three types of sweet and sour, stuffed mushrooms in sauce, fish in sauce, chips, rice, and funny-​tasting soft noodles.
Desserts were okay — the ice cream machine was out of order. Lots of fresh fruit and jelly though.
We left here feeling a bit cheated and wished we’d gone to one of the other, more popular chinese buffets.

Ich habe selten ein Buffet mit einer so guten Auswahl für den Preis gesehen. Für 9£ haben wir neben aromatic duck, Garnelen, Jacobsmuscheln, usw. auch eine grße auswahl an Suppen, Vorspeisen (Wan Tan, Dim Sum, etc.) sowie eine gute dessertauswahl genießen können. Natrürlich wird dann versucht über die Getränke auszugleichen. Der Rose ist jedoch sehr günstig! Der Service ist sehr hinterher die teller abzuräumen, was zunächst irrtiert aber doch sehr angenehm ist.
Kann es nur empfehlen. Wir hatten richtigGlück sofort einen Tisch zu bekommen. Normalerweise steht man wohl auch schon mal sehr lange an — lohnt sich aber!

I ate here a couple of months ago and was very satisfied. The food was very satisfactory; there could have been a little more choice, perhaps, but the quantity and quality were both very acceptable. It was also good value too — two of us ate till we were pleasantly full and only paid £30 (which included drinks). I could imagine parking might have been a bit of a problem had I driven in, but this area of Manchester is so well served by public transport that it never occurred to me to take the car. All in all, a very worthy place, and I certainly wouldn’t rule out going again.

I like this place, ive been a few times, it is dark, but thats cause its underground. I have always found the staff helpful and friendly. There is a good choice of food, the bog standard chinese buffet of rices, noodles, duck, chicken, beef, ribs, lots of veg, deep fried bananas, fresh fruits, jelly, ice cream. Im a meat eater and enjoy a wide selection of the dishes on offer, but i have also been with a vegetarian, who enjoyed it too.
I think its good value for money for what you get, its not gourmet cuisine, but its an all you can eat buffet, and sometimes that is just fine, and what you need.
Close to Oxford Rd, its a good location and a handy stop off prior to catching a film, show or gig.

The fact that I’ve only been to this place once gives a good indication of the standard to expect. It should have been apparent from the outset from the dark, dingy dining room and the grubby, slightly sticky tables you always seem to get in a bit of a dodgy eating establishment.
Although I always take an ‘all-​you-​can-​eat’ buffet style restaurant with a pinch of salt, this particular restaurant really did test even my low standards. The food was much more greasy than the usual buffet standards and simple dishes such as sesame prawn toasts turned out to not contain any prawns. Moreover, some dishes were completely indistinguishable; they looked nothing like they should and more often than not were just anaemic looking meats flopping around in a greasy brown sauce.
The same can be said for the desserts; we couldn’t get ours as the whippy ice cream machine was broken, which is an authentic Chinese dessert if ever I’ve seen one. The waitresses looked just as bored and moodily slammed plates down on the table without speaking.
Generally speaking, this is a place I would never visit again, unless I really fancied turkey dinosaurs and chips, which I could just nip down to Tesco for, anyway.