FLAMING GRILL & BUFFET (Roslindale Location) — Restaurant in Boston

I've been to another franchise but thought I'd give this one a chance. You know this is not your grandma's Chinese buffet as soon as you walk in. I immediately got a number & thought, what are they numbering? Nope. It was the lunch charge. Pay upfront. Pay for tea - or any other drink. Ice cream is extra as well. But the stations look visually appealing. Sushi was passable - supermarket grade (competently cooked rice, competently rolled, lacking flavors & dimension). It goes downhill from their. Our local supermarkets have better tepanyaki stations but it's inoffensive, just like sushi. Same with the soups (choice of 4). At that point, the "inoffensive" part ends. Typical of Chinese buffet, cocktail shrimp are overcooked. They're pasty & flavorless. One dish was "grill chicken" - not a hint of grill (boneless thighs). Turns out several other dishes are the same item with added flavor. "Thai chicken" had some kind of red sauce & 5-spice powder added (nothing Thai about it). BBQ chicken had the same meat dumped in a bucket of Kraft BBQ sauce (or Heinz), just revolting. All of these tenderized to the point of losing cohesion. While fried chicken, fried chicken wings & chicken skewers were generic, the buffalo wings were awful - greasy, unspicy, lacking any crispness whatsoever. Lost-identity general chicken suffered from similar lack of proper texture - the batter was pasty & thick, flavors simplistic & harsh. Similar problems with other dishes. Coconut shrimp looked like the white version of Geberal Tso chicken. I dared not try them. The purse-shaped dumplings reminded me of airline-food ravioli - no texteral difference between the wrapoer & the filling, never mind flavor. Manila clams & mussels looked appealing but clearly came from the freezer. In contrast, green salad looked fresh & crisp. Other salad fixings were reminiscent of Papa Geno's circa 1987. On to desserts. Lychees & mandarin slices came from a can. In contrast, the fresh fruit were represented by Jonathan apples floating in water, obviously unripe pineapple and orange wedges. Cantalope & honeydew were more ripe than usual, which was a relief. The frozen layer-cake petit-four were oddly appealing yet typical. The eclair-shaped cream puffs were unpleasant. I was pleased to discover flan & cheesecake but both completely lacked flavor. At the end there was a chocolate cake that had no chocolate flavor at all, apparently red velvet cake - essentially angelfood cake with red dye, and gloopy lemon chiffon pie that wasn't fully defrosted. As I approached the end of the meal I got a distinct sense of dread. To add insult to injury, the paid-for tea turned out to be two generic tea bags covered with hot water - apparently the proprietors do not understand what happens to tea as it sits in hot water. I'm never going back - to any of them. Still not sure if I won't get sick down the line. I'm often critical but this was...

When I first rated Flaming Grill, I had given it four stars. I think I found the experience a bit less than at other sorts of sit-down restaurants in the area. But I just changed my rating to five stars. Specifically, I think they have done an admirable job of achieving their intended purpose of providing a wide variety of good food at a very affordable price point.

Flaming Grill is an Asian/American buffet that really does achieve a 50/50 balance between east-Asian and traditional-American flavors. Whether you want "General Gao's Chicken" or "Mashed Potatoes and BBQ Ribs," you can get those here, along with literally dozens of other items, most of it self-serve, buffet style. In addition to the rows of buffet serving stations, there is a sushi bar with maki, a hibachi grill that will cook your ingredient selections while-you-wait, and an ice cream station with name-brand ice-cream cups. There is a salad bar, a raw bar for oysters, an excellent selection of fresh fruit, and a variety of cakes and pies for dessert. The salad dressing area also sports a variety of sauces you can add to your meat.

Of the food items that are really top-notch, the shellfish is probably the most popular.. Several varieties and styles of clams are served, along with crayfish, crab, shrimp and squid. For fish, they have salmon in a red sauce and a whitefish of some sort, cooked and served hot, along with tuna and sea bass at the sushi bar. I like the braised beef, bbq ribs and grilled chicken quite a bit; but the friend chicken is perhaps more popular with the locals. Green beans, broccoli and spinach with cheese are the main cooked veggies on offer, plus the salad bar of course.

There isn't a whole lot to say about Flaming Grill that is truly negative. Top of the list would be the labels that accompany each item in the buffet. Not only are the labels often misplaced, but even the Chinese descriptions are often poorly descriptive; for example, the unknown white fish is simply 白鱼 (bái yú, literally "white fish"). But it's almost always intuitively obvious what something is by looking at it. :-) Now, the sushi bar could use more variety; a carving station would be nice; and I do wish some of the flavors could be rotated. But none of those criticisms is worth knocking a star off the review, particularly when you consider that an all-you-can-eat dinner here costs less than a single lunch-menu sandwich at many upscale downtown eateries.

The front desk staff here are really quite nice! We've gotten to know them quite a bit since they first opened. While the table servers don't serve food, they do serve beverages, and clean your table each time you finish a plate; don't forget...

I always feel bad leaving bad reviews especially when I think about someone trying hard to support their family running a business but I seriously hope the owners take this review and make changes so they can turn things around. The salad bar was the best part of the entire buffet but that was only because the lettuce looked good. They did not have much at all to offer as far as what to put in your salad. The rest of the buffet was blah. The food was not hot and had no flavor. Everything was very bland. My kids did get excited about the chicken nuggets because they swear the restaurant bought them from Wendy's. The mashed potatoes were obviously instant potatoes that require you to just ad water. My kids went to get dessert and came back sad because they saw signs saying they had to pay $0.75 to get one. We found that hard to believe so we checked and apparently they are just telling you that if you leave the restaurant with an ice cream you will have to pay. The rest of the desserts were again very bland and dry. They had a Hibachi BBQ that was very disappointing. They had very little selection. Usually patrons at buffets ad their own sauces but not here, you have to tell the cook what you want and when I told him I wanted a the 4 sauces they had his eyes got all big and he rolled his eyes annoyance and gasped like I was asking for way to much. There were signs on the table reminding us to tip our servers but I wasn't sure for what. When we finally got refills on our drinks there was no ice in any of them. My son found a long hair in his food. I have never wasted food like I did here. I couldn't bring myself to eat even half of any of the food I tried. Our entire family felt queasy after leaving and fought about who got to use the toilet first when they got home :( Speaking of bathrooms... before leaving the buffet I took my daughter to the restroom and it was DISGUSTING. There was toilet paper and garbage everywhere. Toilets had not been flushed or cleaned. We had to peel toilet paper from our shoes before washing or hands and as we left the restaurant our shoes were sticking to the floors because of whatever was all over the floors in the bathrooms. I would hate to see what the food preparation areas look like. I hope they are inspected often. All in all this place will not be in business long. Quality of food truly matters and so does cleanliness. It seems that they are trying to save money by skimping on quality and they will need those saving I guess when they have to close...