Mandarin Restaurant — Restaurant in Oshawa

Another visit and another disappointment. Start with the easiest thing, the absolutely worst virgin Caesar I have ever had it my life. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the rim was pepper and not much else. Terrible.

My spouse found a lot of the food soggy and mushy rather than crisp and fresh. The Caesar salad was at best a miserable excuse for a salad. The roast beef bar was unstaffed and only after a 5 minute wait did someone step in . Numerous trays were empty and lots more close to empty. Just not the same atmosphere as before covid. Miss the tablecloths and was amused that the place mats used instead were promoting a 2019 trip.

A Disappointment overall Once covid becomes a note in history, we will return to the Mandarin, until then......................................

well this evening we again returned to this Mandarin at the insistence of my spouse who missed the variety more than anything else. It was great to see that even though the mandates are irresponsibly lifted by the Ford Government the Mandarin is making an effort to keep COVID from returning. My wife and I did wear masks when getting food at the buffet and always wore the provided gloves.It was interesting that the majority of self-absorbed idiots not using the gloves or masks were the mid20-30's crowd.

Want to bring your appetite to a crashing halt? Watch and ungloved, unmasked 30's woman get the sticky sauce from the lemon chicken on her hand, then lick her fingers off before picking up the food tongs, serving herself and then placing the tongs on top of the food. Or the 200lb overweight tattooed jerk who stuck his finger into the honey garlic ribs so he could taste the sauce. On the 1st instance, I caught the attention of an attendant and she immediately removed not only the tongs but the entire tray of food. (Good for her!) Consider this, I observed 2 incidences while I was up and about. How many did I not see?

Mandarin, you are doing a great job on getting back to where you were but, and it's a big but, until you actually enforce wearing gloves we won't be back. Never mind just COVID, those two idiots could have had shingles, influenza or even mononucleosis and short of you taking a strong position against not wearing the gloves, everyone who eats there would be at risk.

The experience was good enough that we rewarded the servers with a 20% well deserved tip but thanks to the dueling banjos crowd it will be some time...

We were there for my father's 70th birthday on Nov.23... everything was going well, food was great. The waitress tho was very rude I noticed, like in an irritated mood already. We gave her my dads I.D to verify his bday, but when we pulled up the bday coupon online, she became more irritated about having to deal with it, she almost refused it even tho it was valid. Then when she came to the table singing happy birthday, half of our guests had no clue it was for my dad, so half of our company completely missed it. Then she comes back to do the family photo, again she didn't give us any heads up or confirm if our whole party was there for it, she just told us to smile all of a sudden while we all had food in our mouths, a few of our guests weren't even at the table... we felt as if she was just rushing us out. There was 22 of us, we were all very respectful, weren't causing any issues, so there was no reason for it, we continued to be polite with her despite how she was being towards us. I was guessing it would cost us no more the $200 for myself, my wife and our kids, so I pulled out exactly $220 for food and tip thinking that would cover it... our bill came to $219 and change, so we couldn't tip... she made it a point to ask us if we needed her to break another bill for her tip 😳... so I had to tell her "im sorry, but thats all I have"... she literally tisked at us and borderline stormed off, you could tell she wasn't impressed... but all our guests tipped her tho, its not like she walked away with nothing, she probably made a few hundred off our table alone... we just found it really rude how she was treating us and...

My husband and I went to a sit-down dinner for the first time since covid, so over 3 years. We thought going to the Mandarin would be the perfect place to treat ourselves on this special occasion. I'm not a fan of the price per plate as I'm not a big eater, but the fun is in the selection and varieties of foods to choose from. The food, as I remember it, was amazing. We were seated right at the entrance to the dining room, so we were constantly having people walk by us going in and out to get their dinners. Which is why I gave the atmosphere 3 stars. Now the service was decent with serving our drinks, taking our plates and the warm towels at the start and finish of our meal. When it came to paying, being our first time out in years, my husband was having difficulty with entering in the tip amount. The server had dropped off the debit machine and gone to tend to other customers. When she returned she stood over my husbands shoulder looking down at the debit machine and as he was trying to figure out the tip as I have a friend in serving and do a different percentage than the preprogrammed tip percentages offered on the machine. Our server started to make comments before my husband had entered the 0 at the end, about how small the tip was, and she was clearly agitated. It was at this point that my husband just hit enter and left her with a tip that was 3% rather than the 30% she would have ended up with. She literally grabbed the machine, tore the receipt off, dropped it on the table, and stormed off. After years of not going out to dine-in, we won't be doing it again any time soon after...