China Inn Buffet — Restaurant in Moline

This was my favorite place to grab lunch with co-workers until yesterday. I am a frequent customer. Yesterday my co-worker and I were enjoying our buffet lunch. I went to pick up a piece of chicken and there was a black hair entwined in the chicken. Not laying on top, entwined. We called the waitress over and showed her the hair wrapped chicken and she took it to who I think is the owner. I understand that accidents can and do happen. However the response I was given is that it's not their hair, a customer must have dropped a hair in the food and that all of their men have short hair and caps. As this was being told to me, a man walked out of the back with longer hair and was touching his hair while looking at the food that needed to be filled on the buffet. They then asked if we were going to eat more and my co-worker explained that finding the hair made us lose our appetite and the (I believe) owner just laughed. We paid the bill, which they did give a whooping $2 discount and that was that. Because I understand that accidents happen what I would have expected from them is to just to take some accountability and say "I'm so sorry that happened, we aren't sure how, let us take care of your buffet". I am more bothered about how they acted like it was no big deal, blamed it on a customer and laughed. This leads me believe that you don't care as much about being sanitary as I do. Nobody wants to eat a...

Food - You can eat at the buffet or order food fresh. I tried the buffet, and it was a disappointment. Most of the food was barely warm, but the food that was warm was good, especially the fried rice and peanut chicken.

Service - The staff were friendly and attentive, but some of them were sitting in the dining area on their phones. One even looked like they were trying to sleep. I understand that I was there at a slower time, but it's not a good look for employees to be doing that, especially where customers can see.

I would give this restaurant another chance, but I would skip the buffet and try a meal made to order.

UPDATE 5/29/25: I ordered the peanut chicken and fried rice for delivery. You can choose whether you want your food delivered by the restaurant or Doordash. I chose to have it delivered by the restaurant. It was delivered on time, but everything smelled like cigarettes. The fried rice was tasteless this time, and the peanut chicken was good, but I needed to warm it up a bit more in...

Always order the fried rice and egg foo young which is usually good. It was pretty good today as well. Although there's a weird texture now in the egg foo young.

Today I also tried the Mei fun.. it was truly terrible Tasteless plain, unseasoned noodles with a few pieces of chicken. No veggies at all except 2 slivers of carrot. Worst dish ever. Won't try anything new here again. So disappointed 12.00 in the garbage.

12/ 29 tried again with delivery. Someone that prepared or delivered food was wearing heavy cologne that permeated the food I was delivered, bag and contents of bag. This made what I was trying to eat taste like cologne.. I called restaurant to explain what occurred and I think she understood but said nothing and did not offer anything. For the money I spent to try this place again, and then called after trying to eat cologne tasting food, I would have thought there would have been a...