Tong Yang SM Megamall — Restaurant in Mandaluyong

Dined here at a Sunday lunch. ALL staff looked so irritated and doesn’t even look you in the eye when you ask them a simple question. When we asked for a refill of the soup at our table, they acknowledged it but never gave us anything lol. You can raise your hand but they’ll pretend they don’t see anything lol.

One staff wearing black uniform, maybe a crew with higher position than others? He even scolded another crew in front of us customers - awkward.

The food was great, IF you even get the chance to get anything. They do not refill the buffet part immediately, they take about minimum of 45 minutes to one hour to refill a dish. There were no plates, no drinking glasses for an hour. There was no RICE for an hour. Never served any white rice, and the fried rice (chao fan or yang chow i forgot the name) was only served around 1PM. Already past lunch time. You have to return every 5-10minutes just to check if they refilled anything and ofcourse, NOPE!

Lots of times there were no staff maintaining the buffet/fresh table. It’s like they purposely do NOT refill anything just so you leave immediately and they can accomodate other customers. They only start to refill at 1:30PM which is way past lunchtime, and there were still no drinking glasses by that time lol. The only thing they were good at was the ice cream, as if making sure you are on your dessert already and leave the place early.

The place was not good as well, too crowded and did not account for the space in between the customers. The tables were long so you’ll have to sit with strangers, no space to walk to in between the chairs, literally MASIKIP. So disappointing, they wanted to accomodate more customers at the expense of customers’ satisfaction.

Food can be worth your time and money, but the service is definitely NOT!!! If you still want to try Tong Yang, maybe take a risk at other branches. Definitely not...

Staff were attentive and nice. Food were okay. Grill and utensils were filthy.

Compared to their MOA branch, there are less options here. Beef and pork were tasty and freshly sliced. Fried squid, and tempura were rubbery and cold, it tasted like they were leftovers from the night before. They had 2 dimsum (hakaw [i think] and Japanese siomai), tasty but not remarkable. Korean fried chicken was disappointing - idk which part they used because it was all just bones, I was not able to taste the meat at all. Fish fillet tasted good. Kimchi was great. They had like 5 types of juices. Sushi rolls were just there to say they have sushi, nothing remarkable and ingredients were basic. Ice cream flavors were disappointing too, they had the plain ones: strawberry, choc, ube, and mango. MOA branch had better ice cream options. The vanilla cake was good, very fluffy and flavor was light. Brownies were good.

Worst thing about this branch is definitely their plates, utensils and grill. Looked like they dont clean their grill at all and they deal with the filth by putting thr wax paper on top of it. We were actually the first ones seated during lunchtime because I reserved so the dirty utensils and grill is a big issue to me. 😬. Some plates on the buffet part also had some dirt. Idk how to explain this nicely; but the first time I asked for sliced beef, the staff took those plates from their kitchen and they were stacked, before he sliced the beef, he looked at the plates and 3 of them were dirty so he did not use it, like there were literally some yellow stuff on the edges. Looks like staff here are not a fan of cleanliness. Honestly wanted to go after I saw that but we already ate some of the cooked food so I just let it slide because I have to pay anyway. Obviously would not dine here again, even though the staff were...

The staffs are overall accommodating, female staffs were always smiling but I hope the guys would do that as well. It was not that crowded when we ate, just half of the area was filled. I think the seats of each table are too close from each other, there are not much area to move around.

We really enjoyed grilling and cooking our food but the other grill (there are 2 grills and 1 for hotpot in our long table) was not that well heated. Anyway, I think one thing that's good about shabu-shabu restos is that you'll burn calories while cooking so you can eat more. 😂

The range of food selection is not that wide compared to other buffet restaurants and everything is self-service, even the ice cream. Staffs are there in each station tho if you would need any help.

The sinigang soup was of my type so I really emptied my bowl. One advice I could give to you is to pour some on your bowl before you cook your raw ingredients on it so it wouldn't be confusing with different tastes. The beef was also very tasty but it really shrinks too much. I do not know anything about beef so I can't say that that's a bad thing. 😂 There were also raw eggs and plain...