The Buffet at River Rock Casino Resort — Restaurant in Richmond

River Rock casino portrays themselves as a high rollers casino for the niche crowd. Hotel rooms start at $300 per night and up.

I’m not here to talk about the hotel but the buffet at the River Rock casino. We arrived at 6:00p and waited in line for 45 minutes before being seated. I walked around the buffet counter to what foods were available. This is a snip from the River Rock casino’s website - Enjoy endless options, from pasta and Chef’s choice of roast carvings, seafood dishes, sushi, salads and more.

Like all other buffets they offer the standard fare – roast beef, salad bar and pasta dishes.

I started off with cold shrimp, clams and mussels. The cocktail sauce was nowhere to be found by the cold seafood. Another customer told us the cocktail sauce was located at salad cart where the salad dressings and ketchup was located. Odd place.

The texture of the shrimp was dry and tasteless but the backs of all the shrimps were cut so it’s easier to peel the shell off. The cold mussels and clams was a nice touch. They did offer sushi……only maki rolls. Yes only simple maki rolls – California rolls, lettuce and roast beef maki rolls. Yup that’s it! The roast beef must have been left over roast beef from the night before. It was super dry and difficult to swallow.

The roast beef was acceptable. The cuts were inconsistently cooked…perhaps it was the heat lamp over the carving tray. Horse radish and seeded mustard condiments were nice touch although the horse radish was a bit too vinegary.

I had what was described as rock fish cooked in a white sauce. I only had once piece as it was SUPER dry even with the white sauce.

I’ve never been much of a dessert person but I did find the flavors of the dessert I had was not well balanced. The cranberry topping on the mouse was SUPER SOUR.

The River Casino also describes their buffet as “Our dishes are inspired by the best of West Coast cuisine, with a focus on fresh, locally sourced ingredients”. As stated earlier…..it’s your typical dishes you find at any other buffets. Food court food would’ve better in this case. By the way, there is NOTHING at the buffet which I found would be West Coast cuisine.

In fact I found the Maki a disgrace to sushi. Lettuce maki roll? Roast beef maki roll? They should’ve also maki maki rolls with potato chips, chocolates, etc. ….all the good stuff not used to make maki.

Would I go back? ABSOLUTELY NOT! It’s not worth the $35 we paid per person. Don’t let the River Rock casino’s advertising fool you! The best part of the meal was the...

For my 36th birthday weekend (jan28th)my boyfriend took me here for my first buffet experience.. I was so excited and I loved the fact there were many options however we did come until 8pm so food was not as fresh… though the dinner options were bland however the desert bar was very cool… getting ready to head over to get our hotel room and have a fun night of soaking in a hot tub and gambling until the sun comes up… my boyfriend said babe did you see that.. (while just about to drink our beers and head out)… I look to the next table and there’s two very small mouses… a few minutes later more mice starting surfacing all the empty tables next to us… we must’ve seen atleast 10… my stomach dropped to the floor .. I guess you call it Musophobia.. it triggered my trauma of growing up in one of my old homes with my family the mice infestation had got into our food, pantry .. our clothes.. it was awful and to think I just ate at a high end buffet at one of the best casinos in the lower mainland completely gut wrenching destroyed my entire experience. We canceled the hotel and went home. When telling management they seemed to not believe us and offered me my dinner for free for my birthday. That was not the point. They need to address it and fix this because our good hard earned money should not you spent for under these circumstances tonnage us sick … this place should be shut down. This wasn’t just a couple of mice this was and is an infestation. When the manger comes back to refund my boyfriend my portion.. there’s 3 more mice at the next table … we point it out.. there’s no denying it at this point .. she said I’ll refund you both as we walked quickly to get the hell out of there .. We couldn’t even drink our beers that was paid for separately and not reimbursed as the disgust in our stomachs overpowered any other desire...

we went on sept 24 for dinner. Mia - probably the front office supervisor was awesome, she immediately fixed the cashier-ing issue that the cashier had made, am sure not on purpose. Mia was very pleasant and very helpful and accommodating !! We need more people like her in any customer service industry !!! Our dedicated server ( we were a party of 8) was incomparable with his warmth and hospitality ( unfortunately did not get the name but seemed Hispanic / middle eastern ) .

As a party of 8, service charge was mandatory at 18% only to find out that mgmt had changed the policy on the service charge / gratuities. Learned this after dinner when we ran into a friend at the casino who told us as she knows some people working at mgmt . Everyone now shares what is received for the night - between everyone - be it the servers or the dishwashers etc . I learned that our awesome server will probably get a couple bucks out of the mandatory gratuity of approx 60$ that for instance a party of 8 would have paid. Something wrong with that system.

The food. VERY BAD. It was a complete joke, an insult, I will be calling in the morning to ask even some of my money back . Disgusting . The boasted of seafood but all there were over cooked shrimp and pathetic mussels and meatless clam shells.

Whoever heard of sushi with sausage / hotdog in it ?

Don’t be deceived by any of the pictures posted on the website. Everything looked old and tired and tasted bad . Nothing was aesthetically appealing.

Paid a fortune and Should have brought that money to Cactus Club.

The only wonderful thing about the visit were MIA and our server. Would not go back and hope to run into more employees like Mia and this lovely...