The good: They had a WIDE variety of food there. I think it amounted to 5 or 6 different buffet lines (double sided) of food with everything ranging from egg drop soup to sweet/sour pork to watermelon to pudding to clams to baked salmon (not all on the same line, of course). The clams were good, the fruit was okay...most of it, anyway. They also have something of a stir fry grill available. It's no Ghengis Grill but it's certainly not something most "budget" Asian buffets have in their establishments.
The bad: the food was bland. The egg drop soup tasted...well...bland comes to mind again. I've had far better at other places and if Ocean Buffet hadn't closed I would have went there for my birthday. The eggrolls, while tiny, were also VERY hard...I mean, as a demonstration to my fiance, I took my egg roll in between my chopsticks and applied pressure on them in an attempt to squeeze the eggroll. As a result one of the chopsticks bent and the eggroll did not. The two pieces of chicken I got were very...very dry...pretend you microwaved a tiny leg of chicken (hotwing sized) in the microwave 2-3 minutes longer than you needed to (without burning it to ash or anything) and you'd get the picture. Overall the food wasn't horrible...just weak and the opposite of fresh. In addition this place HAS to be dipping their food in MSG like it's going out of style because that bloating feeling came on quickly. Ironically enough MSG is described as a food flavor enhancer but didn't seem to do the trick here. The sushi, as another reviewer described, did not taste fresh and inviting.
The ugly: the atmosphere inside was very subdued. While the place uses CFL bulbs to cut down on electricity usage they could have put globes around the bulbs or used a more subtle color to cut down on the glare. The back of my booth shifted back and forth as me and my neighbor settled into our seats so it didn't feel very anchored. The staff did not seem very inviting or friendly, nor were they rude or inhospitable, but rather seemed apathetic. We weren't really greeted when we came in beyond the small Asian woman acknowledging someone with a pulse had walked in the door and how many of us there would be (all 2 of us) and we weren't given a farewell on the way out. The floors were also on the dirty side.
The odd: Apparently management at the restaurant has become fed up (no pun intended) with customers loading up their plates, barely touching them, and then going to get more food...or something along those lines. We encountered a sign on the buffet lines that said, "Customers will be charged extra for over food use" or something to that effect. Translated and arranged in words we can understand it means, "Take only what you are going to eat or we will charge you extra". It makes sense but then again....I'm not at home, I'm not below the age of 10 anymore, nor is my mother making dinner. They also had numerous signs at various buffet lines, namely around the desert area, that forbid children under the age of 10 to serve themselves ice cream from the big tubs they had in the freezer (and the last time I had ice cream in that manner I was informed by the owner of the place [Ocean Buffet] that they were required to serve it to customers due to health code regulations...apparently such regulations, if they exist, have not caught up to this place), and children under the age of 5 or so could not get their own pudding, cookies, fruit, etc from another buffet line.
The price for adults was about $13 a person and honestly....you could get a better meal just about anywhere else. Even Filiburto's could provide better and tastier fare than here. For a little bit less you could even get semi-fancy food across the intersection at The Olive Garden. This place has potential...but I don't think I want to give it another chance to see if it can realize it. read more