City Buffet — Restaurant in Nampa

We eat here pretty often, usually on special occasions, especially in the past year, and the food is always really excellent as far as buffets go. We’ve always been very satisfied with the selection and choices, the cleanliness, the freshness, and the variety. I can’t say enough good things about the food and the maintenance and cleanliness of the facility. Usually the service is pretty good, but tonight we did have a really strange experience. Wait staff asking us every 5-10 minutes when the rest of our party would be there (2 out of the 6 of us were 20 minutes late) and then about 40 minutes later a waitress brought the check. She left the table for maybe a minute? and then came back and told us to pay on the spot. My partner pulled out his card to pay, she took the card, brought us back a receipt. The card was covered in something when she brought it back but that wasn’t really a big deal. What was really strange though-we had put $0.00 on the tip section of the receipt because we planned to leave cash. The waitress picked up the receipt, turned heel about half way back, approached my partner’s mom, put the receipt down in front of her, and was pretty aggressive when telling her that her son didn’t tip and why didn’t he leave a tip. He was in the restroom and his mom didn’t know what to say, I told the waitress he was planning to leave cash, she took the receipt and left. It was just really peculiar, we’re polite patrons, we weren’t there for an excessive amount of time and we certainly weren’t sitting there without eating, we’ve been many times before without that type of service and it just rubbed me the wrong way. I’m sure we may return but it didn’t feel the same as in the past so hopefully if we do decide to try again we may see things more similar to previous visits without demanding and...

So buffets around here are all basically the same when it comes to quality and cleanliness except for a few older ones that will definitely have sticky floors and smears on the walls and curtains... this is one of the best! They are always well staffed so no lag in getting plates cleared or refills and always friendly. Always clean at tables, the buffet itself and the bathrooms. Even around the chocolate fountain is very clean with all those people that make such huge messes with it. The food is EXTREMELY consistent. We have never had something we know we like that wasn't delicious and it always taste the same as last time. They have an amazing seafood spread! A beautiful fresh bar with fruits and salad and the like. TONS of deserts, sushi, and different dishes! The only thing I've ever had there that I didn't like was the fried scallop and that was prolly just cause I've never had scallops and maybe just don't care for them. They do a very tasty "Cajun boil" for dinner on the weekend and it's actually really good. Crawfish, mussels, clams, corn and potatoes in a nice sauce. I rarely get a sandy shellfish. Very rarely. For instance I ate 4 whole plates of the boil and didn't have 1 single gritty piece. My kids and I love this place. We prefer it over Golden Corral, Chuck-o-rama and any of the other Asian buffets. Jade garden has some items on their menu that are really tasty but they almost always have sticky floors and food that's been sitting too long and dry because of less traffic.. I 100% recommend this buffet over any other in the area. My daughter says the only negative thing she could possibly think of is that the tables are kinda close together so it's a little difficult getting up and down without bumping chairs with...

The place is very clean. We arrived at 11:30 today Monday 1/6/2025. The food has a great visual appeal. Very neat and as mentioned - deliberately clean and orderly.

The food is reasonably priced but some dishes lacked flavor and that usual Chinese food "punch" of deep rich yummyness that I've grown to love.

Some items are decidedly not real and the faux counterpart is a let down because you have an expectation of it being one thing only to find it's Krab (that's intended with a 'k')...fried scallops and fried crab legs that were major knockoffs and not having a dip to go with... left you with a feeling that was anticlimactic.

The sushi was good but not great. The rice was missing the rice wine vinegar su dressing that gives sushi and nigiri that signature taste. The spicy mayo was very thick and lacked sesame oil, Sriracha and a sweet element. It was as thick as regular mayonnaise where it should be thinner and spicier and reddish pink.

These were my only food related comments. It was decent and the servers were attentive.

My critical food service inspection eye caught the sushi maker leaving large slabs of raw salmon up on the counter - uncovered and at room temperature - for a full hour. This is a major health code violation. He was training another cook and may have been preoccupied.

I read a review mentioning food poisoning and now seeing how the raw salmon was handled...it made sense.

Well we'll see what happens in 8 hours...but for now I give it a Chef's thumbs up and an "E" for effort.

We live in Boise and made the journey for other purposes. I wouldn't drive that far just for this place. As a local though it fully filled us and was meticulously clean from our perspective......