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Mandarin
Category: Food Specialty Food Ethnic Food Ethnic Food [Edit]
366 Bunting RdSt Catharines, ON L2M 3Y6
(905) 938-7000
- Price Range:
-
$$
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Parking:
- Private Lot
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- Yes
4 reviews for Mandarin
4 reviews in English
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Review from Archie A.
5/18/2012
Recently just went to this restaurant and I must say, the service there was phenomenal as well as the food. They have improved since the last time I ate here. The layout is impressive and everything there was clean. It's everything you could want in a buffet. Great service, great food, and a reasonable price. There is no complaints here whatsoever! Highly recommend visiting this restaurant.
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Review from Grace P.
Saint Catharines, ON
10/8/2009
I have to say, I love this restaurant.
Everything I've tried here is tasty. Everytime I've been here, too.
This place makes me like sushi, although I stick to the vegetable and chicken kinds. What can I say? I'm not too big on fish and I am not hardcore enough to try it. -smirk-
My other favourites are the Salad Bar, Croissants, Sweet and Sour Chicken, Roast Beef, Seafood Nicoise (when they have it), the aforementioned sushi, brownies, cheesecake, chocolate dipped strawberries and their rice pudding.
Soooo tasty.
What I love is how it always tastes exactly the same. -heart-
I don't like suprises.
Service itself though, is a bit hit-or-miss.
Sometimes you can't get rid of the serviers and sometimes they take forever to bring you a simple glass of water.
And don't ever ask for a glass of water with no lemon.
Not.Happening. :P
PROS
-srsly awesome food selection
-food always tastes the same
-reasonable price considering what's being served
-clean
-nice decor
-lots of different pries to win, and promos
CONS
-speed of service is inconsistent -
Review from Natalie C.
East York, ON
8/16/2011
Who cares if the food at Mandarin isn't authentic Chinese? It's delicious. I find that you get what you pay for with this chain. I haven't been to this location a lot, but it always has great food and even better service.
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Review from Martin B.
7/12/2009
Never before have I eaten at an establishment like Mandarin. I use the word 'establishment' because the word 'restaurant' does not apply here. After eating here, I thought that the nearby Tim Hortons would have provided a better meal.
Mandarin is a chinese buffet. Already you should have some warning flags flying up: chinese food, which if it's made poorly is really bad, and buffets which have food sitting there for hours. Still, this was a big family (well, extended family) gathering so I didn't have much of a choice. I'll start with the good: the service was friendly. Granted all they do is bring you drinks but at least they were nice.
Now for the bad. First the decor: you don't feel like you're in a Chinese restaurant at all. You feel like in some cheap imitation, replete with tacky fake bamboo and little wooden pandas peeking out at you. They screwed up the water (it had lemon slices in it. So it tasted like weak lemon juice.) They even screwed up the iced tea for christ's sake. I mean how hard is it to just get some iced tea syrup for a soda fountain? No matter, I tried to look past the drinks. I headed for the buffet. Oh lord.
There were a variety of items. I tried the general tso's chicken (or a cheap imitation of it). General Tso's strategy, so legend has it, was to feed this very chicken to his enemies so that they would get food poisoning and die. Okay maybe I'm too harsh, but this really wasn't good. You could feel the globules of fat and could taste that it'd been sitting there. Moving on, the terrible teriyaki meatballs. I had about a quarter of one before I stopped. Again, lack of taste and lack of any redeeming quality. No matter, perhaps the "sweet and sour chicken balls" (no, they were just balls of chicken meat. Chicken testes would've been better though) would be good. No such luck; they had zero taste save for the weak sweet and sour sauce you could put on them and they had the consistency of hush puppies instead of tender chicken. Obviously it had been allowed to cook for hours on a hot plate. Oh yeah, the french fries were also terrible. Even the ice cream, arguably the only safe item there tasted bad.
I'm not a healthy eater. I regularly eat Chipotle, hamburgers, and other such delicious but not good for your heart things. I've even had a fried snickers bar. But this was one of the few places (KFC being the other) where I've actually felt like the 'food' was too unhealthy for me. There was a big sign at the sushi bar saying their sushi didn't have raw fish. Loss of points for authenticity, and loss of points for the fact that their sushi sits there for so long that the fish CAN'T be raw lest they want to be shut down. Oh yeah, and there was not an Asian patron in sight (the mark of a good Asian food joint is an Asian customer base. I don't know the demographics of St. Catharines but there must be at least a few Asians).
If you're a restaurant and your diners' fondest moments of it were leaving the damned place, you've missed the mark. I don't know what other eating options there are in St. Catharines but really, Tim Hortons is cheaper and you can get food there without fear of dying the next day. Depending on how old the stuff on the buffet was, this may be my last review ever.Listed in: A Disgrace to Cuisine and/or…
