China House — Restaurant in District Municipality of Muskoka

We decided to try this place out despite the bad reviews because they are the only Chinese food joint in town. Sometimes you ignore reviews and get to be pleasantly surprised. This was not one of those cases. We arrived at 7:00, 2 hours before their closing time, and the buffet was empty aside from a few spring rolls and a couple pieces of veggie stuck in the pans of the other dishes. No meat, no noodles, a bit of dried out rice. If you think that sounds dramatic I promise you I couldn’t believe it either, it looked like they had packed up for the night. We sat for 40 minutes waiting for them to restock before finally going over to ask when the food was coming. The lady asked “what do you want restocked” pointed to an empty tray with 3 pieces of mixed veg stuck to the bottom and said to my husband “there’s still some in there”. We had to point to what we wanted and again sat back down to wait. When the food came out I though it was a joke at first- From across the room I saw a server bring out a bowl and dump it in the sweet and sour chicken tray. I immediately got up and went over to the buffet to find that there was nothing more than a single scoop of the dish dolloped in the middle of the tray with 6 small pieces of chicken in it. I didn’t understand how they could even cook a portion that small or why it took their kitchen so long to get out a handful of chicken. And of course you feel bad taking the entire single portion for yourself because there are other people waiting to eat too, so I took 2 small chunks on my plate and sat back down. This trend continued on, with one dish coming out at a time in tiny scoop size portions. It was very unappetizing. When we were done eating we asked the server if there was anything else coming out for the deserts, because the 8 foot desert bar had one plate with a few square inch chunks of questionable looking coffee cake on it. Again she asked “what do you want” and then just stared at us like we were supposed to know what they served in their desert bar. We said forget it. They are very cheap and care more about saving food/money than proper presentation. No body wants to eat the scraps left in the bottom of a tray, come on guys! If you aren’t willing to stock your buffet then just close it for the night. For $20/plate after tax we should have been able to actually have a meal on our plates. Would have been better off with takeout, very disappointed. All I could say while picking off the scraps on my plate was at least the food was hot this time unlike the other...

I have ordered from China House and have enjoyed it in the past. Unfortunately tonight, I’ve had an unpleasant experience. I placed an order for pickup for 5pm. I showed up at 4:55 to pay for my order. There were 5 other people waiting for their orders for 5pm. My order was not ready until 5:26. I have had this happen before in the past and have been patient because of the limited staff they have working as well as I had ordered over $100 worth of food. I live 25 minutes drive away from China House, so between travel there and back and waiting for my food I was done driving. When I got home and unpacked my order, I was missing my sweet and sour chicken balls, which has happened in the past. I called many times, as the phone was busy. Finally when I got through, I spoke with them. They were aware of my missing chicken balls and told me to pick them up at 7pm. I told them that I couldn’t do that considering I live out of town and the amount of time it takes me. They asked me to have someone else pick it up and again I told them this could not happen and I didn’t want them at 7pm at night. I asked if there could be another way like a credit to my phone number I was told they could not do this and they were sorry and good night….. I would not have made a review with all of the previous experiences with them today UNTIL I was told they couldn’t do that and did not try to...

All sorts of bad... Went for dinner, the food all had a film all over it as if it had been sitting since the stone age. Tasted about the same. Could have made the effort to at least mix the food. The desert bar was... well none existent other than ice cream and some HORRIBLE pastries that you really couldn't make out what they were, accompanied by the stale taste/texture. The servers took quite about 10 minutes to notice our cups empty. But I think hands the worst part of the evening was when we got our bill. $39.99 for two people, plus $2.20 for tax was written down. But then the total was $45.89... There was a magical extra $3 that was on it, so either the server was that bad at math, or they just scam their way to extra money. (We don't care about the money, and really just wanted to get the hell out, but it would have been interesting to see the excuse made). We were less than thrilled about the experience as a whole. Save your time and money and do...