Starting to lose its flare? (Uncle Willy's Metrotown)

Uncle Willy's have been here for a while, I remember that it's been here ever since I was a child (not to date myself or anything). There have not been much change since I was a child. The tables, arrangements, even equipment and utensils have not changed. From the outside, it is obvious that minor repairs have been done (such as the addition of the "buffet" sign) outside. Once you enter, the signs look exactly the same as it has years ago.
   I decided to come here for lunch just to see what it is like years after (and if there was any change). The facilities appear to be a bit on the vintage side of things, but the prices were fair. The lunchtime price was around $13 per person. When you arrive, you would pay for your entry first, then you will be given your receipt. I then proceeded to look for food. The plates, utensils and even bowls seems like they haven't changed for 20 years (then again.. is it customary for restaurants to change plates within 20 years?). The utensils do look worn, but then again it is still usable.
    After grabbing utensils, the food options begin with soup. There were two types of soup (one is the tomato and the other was the chicken soup). I tried the chicken soup, which had rice in it as well, and I liked it. The salad bar came after the soups and it had things like salad (potato salad, coleslaw, caesar and more). The food and salad from the salad bar is typical in the sense that all of these things can be found in the deli at the supermarket, so it's not anything too special.
    The next section of food contains a miscellaneous selection of meats. During the hour that I was there, they had a few dishes that changed. One dish I liked was the casserole (I think) that was wrapped in cabbage. It had some rice in it and meat as well. They also had things like perogies, gravy and pasta, fried chicken, curry potatoes (these are good) and a variety of meatballs. The taste of these are relatively fair.
    On the far hand side, there were also three dishes of fried noodles, asparagus with vegetables and meat. The asparagus seemed a bit dehydrated... otherwise the other dishes were pretty fair.
     What was the most interesting was the drinks section. It seemed like the coffee machines haven't been maintained for a while.. and what was coming out of it was just hot water. The soda machine seems to have been there for a long time as well.
     The dessert section was pretty sweet. I've always liked their dessert section. They have a good selection of desert and reduced sugar desserts (which is great for someone like myself who does not have much of a sweet tooth).
   Overall, I would come here again, but I would not come here too often. The quality of the food is alright, however, the facilities are starting to become a bit run down. 

Inexpensive and to the point buffet (Agra Tandoori Restaurant Burnaby)

    If you are looking for a buffet that gives you your Indian food craving but don't want to pay too much, this is the place to go. Con Agra is a bit out of the way in terms of public transit, but there are many offices around so you see many business people eating here during lunch hours. The restaurant itself isn't too big. It can probably fit around 30-40 people, so it can get busy.

    I was there this morning (it's Tuesday) and their buffet is only $9.95. I had a flyer coupon that took $2.00 off of the original buffet price, which made my meal to be $7.95 (which I thought... is cheaper than getting takeout at the food court.. and I get to eat all I can eat).

    When it comes to the selection, the restaurant only has about 10 dishes. The first is the garden salad with a selection of 3 sauces. There is not much to write about for this as it's just regular caesar sauce, and hot sauce. The only thing that was special was the spicy pickle sauce that they had.

  The next set of dishes after the salad was Indian fries and rice. I must say, the Indian fries were pretty good. It was like regular fries infused with curry (but it wasn't as greasy as curry).

  After this, there was a choice of daal, vegetable curry, butter chicken, beef curry. The vegetable curry was pretty good and so was the butter chicken. I mixed it on top of the rice and the infusion of the curry into the rice was just right. They also had tandoori chicken and these circular egg like things. I

Overall, this place is limited in terms of how much selection there is for the buffet. Given the price, it is much cheaper than going to the food court to get take out of butter chicken... and you also get so much of it. If the options aren't enough for you, they have an a la carte menu too! Overall, I would definitely come back here again. 

The server that smiles only when you pay her/ pretty decent All You Can Eat Hot Pot (MaThai Hotpot Restaurant)

It was a cold night so a group of friends and I decided to look for hot pot. After driving through the Richmond area, we saw the sign outside of MaThai Hotpot for All You Can Eat hotpot for $21.95. To be honest, I was not too sure about how the concept of All You Can Eat for hot pots work.  If you think about it, soup fills you up and it's also cheap. By that rationale... you would get full really fast via hotpot, but I learned that there's more to it than that.
    The restaurant itself wasn't big, in total it could probably hold roughly 40 people. When we got in, there were only 2 people working that night and they seemed tired. We quickly got seated and the menu was brought to us. It was confusing at first because there were separate pricing for things (despite it being All You Can Eat). After asking one of the servers, we found out that we had to buy the soup base separately, and the All You Can Eat portion only referred to the things that go in the hot pot (like meat, fish and etc...). Apparently you can get more than one type of soup base (but they cost separately).
   We all decided to get the pork soup base. When the soup base came, there were huge pieces of pork in there. Compared to some other hot pot places I've been to, which adds the soup base using powder, they actually have the real meat in their soup bases. We started to order the things to put into the hot pot (I want to call them condiments, but that just sounds like ketchup... so let's just call them "things we put in hot pot for now).
   We decided to put an order for about 3 of everything to see what we are dealing with. In terms of the selection, there were many to choose from. From meat (lamb, beef, pork, chicken) to fish (shrimp, squid, and assortment of fish balls) to dim sum (such as dumplings, XiaoLong Baos) to things such as deep fried buns, potato cakes, nuggets to fish skin to quail eggs. In terms of vegetables, there was a fairly good selection as well. They also had skewers as well.
   After we put in our order, the first wave of food started coming. The portions were a bit smaller than we expected. 3 orders of meat really amounts to only a few pieces of meat in reality. The vegetables came in buckets, but the other items were similar in the sense that each portion/ order was small. After all of the raw foods came, the fried foods and grilled ones started coming too. The part I loved the best was the fact that the fried and grilled food was freshly cooked (hence why it took longer to come). You can also taste the freshness as it just emerged from the fryer. The food itself tasted pretty good, but it wasn't too special.
   That said, the portions were not too big, so we decided to go for seconds. Then we went for thirds... I think the server looked a bit annoyed with us (but understandably they were under staffed). When it was time for the third round, we decided to get more of everything just so we have enough food to fill us and we don't need to make another round. We ordered about 20 pieces of nuggets (of which only 4 came). By the time the 3rd order came, the server notified us that it's our last call (there was a time limit of 2 hours we can be at the restaurant.
   At that time, my friends and I were getting full.. so we decided to get our bill. It was funny when the server came with our bill, she wrote on there explicitly "+tips". When I got up to go pay her, I saw her smile for the first time in the entire time that we were there. The minimum amount of tips we had to give was 12%.
    Overall, I would say the service was a bit lacking, but it's understandable as they are busy and the food was relatively good. The price, after tips came to about $30 per person, which sounds about right for All You Can Eat Hot Pot. That said, for a meal, that tends to be a bit on the expensive side, so I'm open to come again, but not too often.

Dining with the sea and the mountains (BC FERRIES PACIFIC BUFFET REVIEW)

I’ve always seen the signs for the buffet when I board this route from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay, however, I never been interested in eating here as I get turned off by the price. That said, if compared to buffets in Vancouver and other places, the pricing is relatively similar. In addition, I was starving after I finished running in the Victoria Half-Marathon, so I decided to go for it during lunch and boy was it good! Coming into the buffet, the dining hall is pretty big. However, the best part of the dining hall is the environment as it’s at the back of the ferry (if you are on Coastal Celebration) and you have a view of the sea as you sail. It’s not exactly 360 degrees but it is close to 300 degrees.

The view is pretty magnificent. After paying for the entry into the buffet, your host will take you into the dining area to be seated. The environment is more on the quiet side even with the dining room all full. The also had faint elevator music (I am not sure how to deUnlike buffets that I am used to going, they don’t ask you if you would like a drink (which is good because the drinks usually cost extra, so I don’t get it anyway). Here at the Pacific Buffet, there is a selection of coffee/tea and 6 different soft drinks to choose from. Of course, being the caffine addict I am, I went straight for the coffee.

 When it comes to the selection of food, it is fair. There isn’t a huge variety, however, there is a fair bit. The main entrees already have at least 8 dishes. The dishes range from shrimp to salmon to pork curry to spring rolls. They also have rice, and teriyaki noodles. My favourite dish was the vegetarian ravioli. The perfect blend of mushroom inside the ravioli coupled with the cheesy sauce made it a mouth watering combination. I also liked the pork curry and spring rolls. It had a fresh taste to them. Besides main entrees, there was a salad bar that contains a large variety of condiments on the side for you to choose from.
There was also bread (baguettes that were sliced up with a selection of either margarine and butter). The condiments ranged from shrimp to different dried nuts and lemons. Personally I didn’t have too much of this. The most impressive however, was their dessert selection. As a marathon runner and health nut I shouldn’t be advocating for this (because they only had 1 variety of fruits when I was here – watermelon), but their cake and sweets selection was NICE. There was a table just for cheese cake, whip cream and strawberry sauce. In addition, there was another counter for a variety of cakes and macaroons. YES… macaroons, that was the first time I’ve ever macaroons appear at a buffet. Have I mentioned the views?! Sitting here is just absolutely gorgeous. Surrounded by islands and mountains with the sea and the sun reflecting the trees off the water… it is absolutely gorgeous. Overall, I would say the Pacific Buffet is worth coming to. The price is fair and also it is a great place to view the scenery and have a great meal.

Rice stuck to banana leaves and smaller than average sushi rolls! (Wonderful Buffet Review)

To many Vancouverites and Canadians, besides getting cheaper gas and groceries from Bellingham, another thing Bellingham is notorious for is their buffets. Among the Asians (well, from my grandma's social circles), I heard that there are two popular buffets in Bellingham. One is the Super Buffet (please read my review here:) and the other is Wonderful Buffet.
 Driving into the parking lot, you can see that Wonderful Buffet is located just across the parking lot from Costco. Before walking in I noticed something interesting, the blinds at Wonderful Buffet is on the outside rather than the inside. I am not sure why they do this, I'd imagine it would be a hassle to close the blinds if you are inside let alone if you wanted some privacy inside the restaurant (let's say at night), you wouldn't be able to get any because people can just easily lift the blinds up.

Very interesting choice of ceiling decor

That said, after glaring at the interesting setup of blinds, my friend and I decided to walk in. Immediately, at the door, you will see the prices for Lunch, Dinner, Take out. It was about 6 at night, so we were just in time for the dinner. Walking in on a Wednesday Evening, the place was not too busy. We were greeted by the host lady. I wouldn't say that she is rude, but she wasn't the most polite either.
  The interior decor is rather interesting. The lighting was abit on the dim side and the ceiling tiles were very interesting. I think the "Chinese Buffet" theme was the thing that the restaurant was trying to emphasize.
  After, we were seated, I noticed that there were six counters of food. Each one had their own features. There was one counter for sushi, one counter for seafood/meat (like two dishes, such as trout and mussels when we were there), one counter for western salads, two counters for Chinese dishes and one counter for desserts/ fruits.
   I didn't want to get too much food, so I had bits and pieces of everything to try things out. I started out with going to the sushi bar. I must say the sushi here are smaller in portion compared to many other sushi I've had. The selections weren't special though, they only have a few varieties and all of which are classic kinds like California Roll, Alaska roll, tamago roll to name a few. The taste of these are pretty regular, nothing bad to write home about.
   The next category I went to was the two Chinese counters. They had alot of the traditional Chinese dishes you would get at restaurants such as fried beans, chow mein, fried rice, lemon chicken. I got a bit of everything and tried them all out. Besides being abit on the greasy side, it was not too bad. The Chicken teriyaki on skewers were pretty good too. The only thing that I didn't like from here was the sticky rice. It tastes as if the sticky rice has been in the cooker for a really long time and the rice and the banana leaf that it's wrapped in is literally STUCK together.
  They also have a dish of lobster legs too, but I didn't try any. WAfter trying out a few more dishes, everything tasted regular, like it wasn't anything that was out of the ordinary that you can get at the Food Court. That said, I really liked the chick peas cold dish they had. The chick peas were cooked to the point where the flavour were brought out just right. Besides that, everything else was nothing much to write about.
  Finally, I decided to get some fruits. My friend decided to get desserts (even though my marathon is finished, I am going after maintenance and speed for the next marathon). The fruits tasted as if it's been out for a really long time. Especially the oranges, they were abit dry and kind of crispy. The creme puffs, according to my friend, was abit sour tasting too. Other than that, there is really nothing to complain about.
  Overall, the food here is pretty average, however, the price is pretty good. At about $13 for dinner, I would say that the value you get is pretty good for the amount of food and choices that you have. The quality isn't the best, but hey, you get what you pay for right?

An All You Can Eat That Plays Breakup Music (Four Seasons Buffet, Mt. Vernon)

Many Canadians that visit the US go to Buffets because of how cheap they are and how much food you can get. Four Seasons Buffet is one of the more popular ones that Canadians go to but is also probably one of the few all you can eat locations around this area.
Located across the street from Cascade mall and just a few blocks near exit 229 on the I-5, the location of Four Seasons is relatively convenient. They have parking outside too for you to park and if the parking lot is full (which I haven't really encountered the few times I've been here), there is the mall parking lot across the street you can park at.
  I'll be honest, the decor inside Four Seasons is a bit interesting. They have coloured lighting inside of the main dining hall, but the colours look as if it's meant for an arcade. Not to mention the music that they play is beautiful but a bit unsuitable for dining. Alot of the music are Chinese/Taiwanese ballads and instrumental versions of them. Some of the music are break up songs, so I guess when you are at an all you can eat, a break up song is appropriate because all the food you eat is making you break up with your physique.
 When it comes to food, Four Seasons is mostly an Asian styled buffet and features a Mongolian grill/teriyaki, sushi bar, numerous Chinese and western dishes, salads and dessert. Variety wise, there are quite a few items.
The Mongolian grill contains a cold bar of vegetables and raw things you can put on your plate and bring it up to the chef who will cook it for you. There really isn't anything special here when it comes to the things you can cook, these things being the meats and vegetables.
 The sushi is pretty average/ regular. Some of the rolls they have include the California roll and tuna rolls. There are usually about a dozen varieties. That said, during rush hour, it may take the chef a while to prepare the sushi. So essentially there may only be a few items on the bar at once.
 When it comes to the main courses, they have many dishes such as dim sum, chicken with broccoli, stuffed shrimp, garlic toast, cheese on oyster, lemon chicken. My favourite dishes that I liked when I was here was the glutinous rice with chicken and the dim sum pot stickers. They were slightly on the greasy end, but it was good.
The thing I noticed about Four Seasons is that eventhough the quality of food is fair, I find that alot of the items are very greasy. For example, the chicken with broccoli had a generous pool of sauce that was with it. So in the end, it was abit on the greasy side. Nevertheless, it tasted ok, but just abit greasy.

Overall, for less than $10 a person for all you can eat and with variety, I would say that this is good place to go to for all you can eat if you are in town.