Palace Buffet — Restaurant in Biloxi

A review of your Palace LUNCH Buffet, from Saturday, July 30, 2022. It starts with, B.Y.O.B, as in Bring Your Own Buns for the flame-grilled hamburgers AND the BBQ pulled pork, as buffet personnel has not taken notice that these 2 items NEED a bun for lunch. Who eats hamburgers without a bun? Who eats BBQ pulled pork without a bun? Let’s move on here. There are 5 mainstay stations here: #1.) Coastal, which translates to seafood items. #2.) Asian / WOK station; #3.) Comfort food; #4.) Flames, referring to MEATS. #5.) Desserts. The REAL PLUS side to this Palace lunch buffet, in my opinion, are the WIDE SELECTION of MEATS. Come here for the MEATS, in the labelled, “Flames” section. They offer a REAL, LIVE FLAME BROIL, wherein they’ll cook to order pork chops, chicken breasts, & hamburgers, Furthering to the MEATS selections, you get choices of SMOKED chicken, jalapeno sausage, which I thought was dry. They also serve up smoked RIBS. The nice touch about the ribs I LIKED was having a bowl of BBQ sauce wherein you control how much sauce you’d like to spread OVER your ribs, as the ribs are first served to you dry. Also, during lunch, they serve ham and turkey. The RIBS when brushed with BBQ sauce were pretty super, though, and I recommend the ribs WITH BBQ SAUCE. As for the BBQ pulled pork, the meat is tender enough, but the sauce it’s in, is light, lacking flavor. Again, BUNS needed for this, as well as the hamburgers, need buns. Palace Buffet chefs, are you reading this??

In the Asian station, it’s a small section, and they rotate out General Tso’s chicken with a pepper beef, and there is Pad Thai noodles, “Tempura” onion rings, Crab Rangoon, egg rolls, & fried rice. The egg rolls were weird-tasting, though. There is a cook-to-order WOK, in where you select your meats & veggies, for the cook to assemble for you.

For those who crave seafood, you get it, in the “Coastal” station. Here, they serve boiled shrimp, both COLD and WARM. Not spicy, but still had seasoning flavor. They also serve small pieces of fried catfish, fried shrimp, crab tater tots, boiled potatoes & corn. They also have a cook-to-order station HERE in Coastal, wherein you select your pasta & seafoods, custom made.

That 3rd section, the Comfort food was same as what you’d expect to get at Cracker Barrel: Green beans, corn, carrots, potatoes au gratin, hush puppies, fried chicken – basically, all the tired, hum-drum food you can get anywhere else, so I skipped most of this station, of “Comfort” food.

Finally, the desserts station: There are a couple of SPECIAL items I need to highlight here: They have a specialty pralines sauce and a MEMORABLE, SPECIAL Vanilla BUTTER sauce YOU MUST TRY over the peach cobbler. Yeah, they have cakes & pies, but so does every place else. I’m HIGHLIGHTING for you the few special items you can’t get anywhere else, and THAT IS the vanilla butter sauce and pralines sauce you can POUR with a ladle, AS A TOPPING, over the cobblers, or even the soft serve ice cream, or any cake of your choosing. (“Wait, what? No REAL ice cream here?”) Nope. Sorry, gang, for REAL ice cream you have to head over to Island View Casino buffet. Here, it’s the machine soft serve vanilla, or vanilla & strawberry swirl. To try & make up for this shortfall of soft serve ice cream, they offer a PUMP for chocolate sauce AND for caramel sauce. What else for desserts? They have a number of cakes & pie slices. There is a Strawberry Shortcake. I saw also a lemon pie & lemon cake. There’s banana pudding, and an oreo cookie parfait-style dessert.

Last part is service. This I found to be a WEAKNESS, and ultimately a 3-star rating, as this is a part of the dining experience. Had it not been for lack-luster service, -- server & drinks were hard to get -- this would have been a 4-star rating on account of the WIDE SELECTIONS of food, even if I overlooked the missing buns needed for the hamburgers & BBQ...

OK,

Let me say, before I get started, this review has good & bad. PLEASE take the time to read the whole review. This was our first visit to experience the Palace Buffet. With that being said, the Staff from the Cashiers, The Hostess, to the Wait Staff was VERY attentive, friendly, and added to the overall ambience of our dining experience. The Casino as a whole appeared and smelled clean. As we were sat, we could see a couple of fruit flies/gnats buzzing around our table, but not enough to cause a distraction, yet. After we both served ourselves some food and began to dine we noticed that certain dishes lacked the quality, flavor, and consistency you would expect for $30 a plate. Specifically, the Prime Rib looked amazing. But it was tough, difficult to cut with the cutlery at the table, and had very little flavor. Also the seafood/cajun genre dishes seemed over seasoned (i.e.-the Jambalya). As a high note, the Crab Tots were to die for as was the Fried Rice!!! I only had a single plate, with small portions of each choice. To be fair, I avoided the buffet offerings that are what I consider to be "every day food" (like meatloaf, fried chicken, fried fish, corn, meatloaf, etc.). The only reason I avoided these foods wasn't based on any lack of quality or flavor, its just because these foods are offered by almost every resturants and I wanted to concentrate on the more specialized buffet selections. I decided to abandon the entrees and sample some of the desserts. I picked 2, the Red Velvet Cake and the Chocolate Creme Pie. The Red Velvet was like tasting Heaven, if Heaven had a flavor. Unfortunately, the straw that broke the camel's back was after the second bite of the Chocolate Creme Pie, there was a dead fruit fly on the plate (please see attached pics). As I discovered this, I flagged the Hostess down and showed her my "discovery." My appetite was immediately lost.

We did point this out to the Hostess, who brought it to the immediate attention of the Buffet Supervisor. As I was pointing this out to the Buffet Supervisor, she witnessed the fruit flies buzzing my Wife & I's heads. Both were more than apologetic for the situation. The Buffet Supervisor alerted the Buffet Manager who graciously apologized for the situation and vowed to correct the situation immediately. Both the Buffet Supervisor & Manager went out of their way to correct the situation. As a note, we understood this was not intentional and we responded to their kindness with kindness of our own.

Overall it wasn't a great dining experience, but the time both the Buffet Supervisor & Manager took with us to discuss the issues and gathering information to share to improve the dining experience for future guests demonstrated their desire to...

Never again. I don't remember when was the last time I had scraps for dinner. I Mean I can't even begin to describe! I came here because of the decent reviews and it seemed to be the better buffet in town. I have tried Beau Rivage a few times and although fairly satisfactory it wasn't up to the hotels advertised standard. But OMG this, this just makes Beau Rivage look and feel like the promise land. And it's funny that the price is exactly the same! The entire room is dimmed and looks like some old Soviet canteen. The Asian section is the most horrid I've ever encountered among all the cheap Asian buffets. Once you put the food in your mouth - you truly don't want to keep it there. They managed to screw up even the fruits that you could feel were already fermenting. The entire place is full of flies flying around. I certainly had one interested in my meal. Some of the meat options are tolerable and fresh made pasta dish was the best here. It was still pretty bad in comparison to what you'll make at home if you can cook at all or get at a more refined place. Marinara sauce was of the cheapest grade and way too acidic. But the chef did his best given the options. Fruits are the cheapest canned fruits you get a base supermarket that will cost you a dollar or 2 for a can at the store. So what's the point? Staff looks like an implant from the local Whataburger or equivalent. Their manner of dealing with the customer is reflective of such place, meaning inexistent. Chewing chewing gums while greeting guests, barely looking at you with nonchalant casual behaviour, talking way too loud that the entire place can hear them. But given the clientele this place gets, no offense to anyone, I can understand why Beau Rivage is rated lower. Since the audience is completely different. That audience would never step foot here and vice versa. It kinda hurt my ears hearing some of the conversations on the floor. That is if you can understand even 1% of it. So, if you're looking to explore or wanting to try this place out because the reviews look better- let me save you trouble. Don't. Just go to Beau Rivage or Island View or something local with freshly caught seafood, you have a WAY better experinece for...