Em Buffet

Food minimum. charges different for lunch and dinner but menu is the same. Everything cold-​soup, tea. price is too much for selection.

This place is a waste of money and time. The food is not hot on the hot table. The hostess told me that I could use the microwave on the counter to warm up my meal. The sushi was mediocre but the best part of the meal. I will not return to this restaurant.

I love Chinese /​Japanese buffets and this one has become my absolute favorite. The food is delicious and the sushi bar beautifully presented. The buffet area is very clean and well maintained.
I ate here a few years ago and wasn’t impressed but I tried in again recently and was pleased to the point that I eat here once a week now.

Wow, this place is truly terrible. The selections are dry, tasteless, and/​or so gross-​looking that I ate only one small plate of food and left.

This review is for the bubble tea/​smoothie bar located outside of the restaurant area.
I was in the mall and wanted to grab something to drink, and saw that there was this new option (I didn’t know until I got my receipt that the juice station was a part of Emperor’s Buffet). You can get bubble tea for $ 2.99 and a ‘real fruit’ smoothie for $ 3.99.
I opted for a pineapple coconut smoothie and it was really good. You could taste the chunks of pineapple, thereby affirming that there is actual real fruit in it, and I suppose there was coconut water mixed in. You can also add different types of boba, pearls, or jelly for no additional cost.
I did find $ 3.99 a little steep than normal, but the size of the drink alone was enough to fill up my stomach completely, and considering how similar smoothies at different areas of the food quart only cost within a dollar less (which I’m guessing would be for smaller sizes) it’s not something to complain about.
Customer service sucks though, to be honest. Maybe the woman was having a horrible day, and I understand how hard it is to work in the service industry especially during holiday season, but she was downright rude. I asked (very nicely) twice if there was anything she would recommend, both times (the second time with much emphasis) that I should «just pick something».
Will I be back? Maybe, if I see someone different at the bar. Smoothies/​bubble tea is a nice, fresher, ‘healthier alternative in a generally lacking food court.

They definitely remodeled this place since the last time I came here with my family. It’s a lot brighter inside.
What didn’t change is the food. It’s still not really up to par, not to mention they have three bars of food. That’s all. One for main course, one for sides, and one for dessert.
For the price, it may be worth it for people to stuff themselves, but other than that. It’s not really worth it if you compare it to other buffet with the same price range.

The buffet who now has a different name and probably run by different person is OVERPRICED. 10.49 for dinner buffet when they only have two rows of food and half of that is sushi! The food isn’t even great; i recommend to go to a cheaper chinese restaurant. The smoothie section they added is o.k. but overall the buffet is horrible, the staff is unfriendly and i would not go back!

This place has recently changed ownership and enticed by the hip new décor, I checked it out. Unfortunately I was really disappointed. As someone brought up eating Asian food I thought nearly everything in the buffet looked unappetizing. The food either looked too greasy, too dry, or mishandled. The salmon looked good until I ate it and had to spit it out! The only decent spot was the sushi which was about average. The one thing that puzzled me is why they didn’t provide little cups to pour soy sauce in for the sushi. I supposed the owners think that the convention is to drench the sushi with sauce. Another decent spot was the Mongolian style grill, which besides the sushi, was really the only thing that I really delved into. The vegetables seemed fresh, but the beef was tougher than shoe leather. I was turned off that the cook handled everything with his bare hands instead of wearing at least some kind of glove. The previous owner had a buffet that played down to American tastes in an insulting way with the idea that «these customers don’t know what good food is, so we won’t make the effort to make it good». The latest owners don’t even come close to at least making most of the food edible.

Someone slap me. I have no idea why I would eat at a Chinese buffet after my first and last experience with one.
I think that the Sriracha sauce on the tables is what convinced me to come in. It looked like it might be somewhat authentic. Lunch was only $ 7.20 for all you can eat… seemed like a deal. as it would have cost the same to eat anywhere else in the food court.
They have a hot stir fry stand next to the register. Pick your own meats and veggies. Raw meat sitting out scares me, so I passed.
The next stand featured salads, desserts, and fruit. Another pass. Nothing looked appealing.
The main food stand had some decent things to choose from. Some were piping hot, others looked lukewarm.
The last food stand had soups, fried eggrolls, wontons, and American food such as pizza, fries, macaroni and cheese, etc. Who goes to a Chinese restaurant to eat these things?
So anyways… you know when you eat something, and you really think it’s good, and start feeling happy and thinking to yourself I could eat this everyday? I got that. but by mid plate… I realized that it wasn’t that great and I lost my appetite. I’m not sure what happened. Food is decent for a Chinese buffet, coffee was good. I’m done with buffets.

Kinda dissappointed by this place, I spent $ 20 here and the food that was on the heating tray was either warm or cold. They also don’t have much to choose from.

They dont really have a lot of choices to pick from. But me n my wife go there about every weak. The employes there know us very well and they treat us like family.

It’s inside the North Riverside Mall by the front and occupies what used to be Garfield’s. It’s okay. If you are shopping here and hungry, go ahead and try it. Don’t go out of the way. I don’t know why they opened this up when the established and similar Great China Buffet is about two blocks away from here by Dominick’s, and that one was the original buffet of it’s kind around here. I will say one difference is that the clientele here can be a bit pushy. However, the guy who used to run the Great China Buffet was a jerk and the clientele was nicer. I haven’t seen that jerk in a while though.