SFU Dining Commons — Restaurant in Burnaby

We decided to try out the Dining Commons at SFU for dinner. It's 24/7 All you can eat, and wow...they have options galore! The quality of the food is a bit of a hit and miss. Some of the food is very nicely done and then some of it is...not even mediocre. Consider for a moment however that while this facility is open to the public, the majority of the people who are meant to be dining here are: students. Take that into consideration and then realize that these students are dining like kings and queens. I certainly never had such fancy options offered to me when I was a student. I ate tons of chicken burgers, and pasta with sauce that was very...meh. If I wanted to get really fancy, I ordered pizza! The SFU Dining Commons has got to be the best AYCE deal around. Call us crazy or what you will but after stuffing ourselves silly, we came back less than 24 hours later and tried out the lunch buffet!

Dinner Highlights: Teppanyaki Grill - This is the best option if you want some piping hot food on your plate. It's just like a Mongolian BBQ restaurant. You choose rice or noodles, mix of veggies, choice of protein, choice of sauce and then they cook it up for you nice and hot!

Sandwich Bar - Regular sandwich bread, bagel, or tortilla wrap and if you like, they can press it in a sandwich press to make it hot and crispy for you!

Ice cream: Vanilla/Chocolate twist from a soft serve ice cream machine. Ice cream that magically falls into my bowl with the push of a lever? Can't go wrong with that! . When we came back the next day, we arrived at around 10:30am, which is exactly when Breakfast ends and Lunch begins. They still kept the breakfast food out for a long time so we paid the lunch price and basically had ourselves a brunch buffet!

Lunch/Brunch Highlights are the same as dinner plus... Omelettes, Smoothies and Waffles - These you have to make for yourself but they provide equipment, ingredients and ready made batter for you to cook it or blend it up!

Oatmeal Station - This was my personal favourite. There were lots of toppings to put on top of my oatmeal. It was kind of like making an ice cream sundae, only healthier for my body, and hot instead of cold. I put desiccated coconut, dried cranberries, raisins, chocolate chips, honey, and pumpkin seeds to my oatmeal.

Things I wouldn't bother with: Pasta Bar - The pasta was, how shall I put it? Not exactly al dente?! Also, while I did ask for garlic in my pasta I felt that they put way too much garlic. It was a garlic overload.

Congee: I couldn't even bring myself to try it. It looked dry, clumpy and absolutely pitiful. Quite a shame really. I'd have loved to scoop myself some congee if they'd managed to make a decent pot of it.

Service: Fair (Lots of people working here. Some are more helpful than others.) Parking: Paid parking. This part was kinda tricky due to construction or roadworks of some kind. West Parkade is where you want to go. It's the closest to the Dining Commons. There are a lot of barriers set up around the parkade. It is still accessible but you will need to pay extremely close attention to signs, vehicles, and crew in order to maneuver your way into the parking lot. We made the mistake of parking super far for dinner and trying to find our way back to our car was quite a pain. After the previous night's blunder however, we managed to get to the West Parkade rooftop when we came back the next day. Location: Convenient if you're a student at SFU; a little bit out of the way...

We decided to try out this lunch buffet for $21.95 per person (kids half price) and the options were endless. I can't say that everything I ate was good because I ended up throwing out some things so a good idea is it take a tiny bit of each to try first. We got here at the tail end of breakfast so they still had some breakfast items left which worked out.

Scrambled eggs were decent and nothing amazing to write home to, but I like eggs. Turkey bacon was fine, but could have been crispier. Waffle station was a good option especially for kids.

Sauteed kale was too salty and I wished it was toned down because I love veggies. The rice and beans were good. Jerk chicken was tasty. Hummus was delicious, but falafel was way too dry that I couldn't finish even a tiny one.

Their rice and noodle stir fry station was likely my favorite since you can choose your ingredients, toppings and sauce. It's cooked in front of you.

Salad station was fresh with tons of veggies and meat options so this was my second favorite.

Sushi station was available, but I didn't try it as it didn't look appealing.

Pizza was average, but still edible.

Burgers were fine if you grab them when they are fresh.

Chicken noodle soup was a little too gingery, but I still finished it.

Overall, dont expect a high end meal. It's great for variety, pricing...

Come on guys, let's be honest.

This dining hall is a buffet, if you come by as a random guest it costs you roughly 10 CAD per person, and the staff is extremely unfriendly, imagine all of them from HongKong are extremely hostile to Chinese people, basically a group of radical but hidden extremists.

Ok, if you live in SFU dorm, you are FORCED to purchase the meal plan, is like 2000CAD per term (3 months)......

Everything is exactly same daily, the only thing changes is 2 hot items, they just use really really cheap materials, like spaghetti, pasta, chicken thigh, you rarely see beef, and never see salmon at this restaurant.

Staff are unfriendly, when you pay the bill, they always warn you yeah you have to leave before lunch starts, because u paid only for breakfast....... Come on, why the heck they are so cheap? Breakfast and lunch only have a difference of 2 bucks. So based on their insane logic, I should request refund since I paid 2000CAD bucks per term, but I did not go to buffet every single day!!

Like I said this is the culture of SFU, I mean how come would you expect a school that cannot even get a rapist, while kicking soccer in front of media, and wish to host a responsible meal? Is like a dream.

BOTTOMLINE: DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY HERE, AND DO NOT WASTE YOUR APPETITE AT THIS HORRIBLE DISGUSTING...