China Wok Buffet & Grill — Restaurant in Nevada

I want to qualify this review by saying that I lived in Vegas for about 6 years before moving to Pahrump, and I got spoiled to having every type of every flavor close to hand at all hours. That's not the way Pahrump is. There's not much choice. Almost every restaurant in town is mediocre at best, with a blessed few exceptions. China Wok, specifically, offers a buffet of typical NY-style Chinese dishes, along with a small sushi station and a Korean BBQ section that was mostly unmanned when we were there around 3:30pm. Maybe it starts at 4:00? I'm not sure. Anyway, the food was hot and tasted decent, for what it is. I found the green beans to be too salty; my boyfriend said they were his favorite part of the meal (YIKES). We took small portions of each of the following, to sample the offerings: general tso's chicken, kung pao chicken, sweet & sour chicken, chicken-on-a-stick, green beans, salad, and some other stuff I've already forgotten. We were afraid to try the sushi, because goodness knows where it came from, and it IS the desert.... The kung pao chicken was nicely spicy and was my favorite thing, though the sauce was very watery. The general tso's was just sweet, no kick. Again, watery sauce, though not as bad as the kung pao. The pieces I chose of the S&S chicken (I prefer smaller pieces) were very dry, despite being freshly-refilled. The S&S sauce was a nice thickness, but slightly cloudy, which threw me off a little, and oddly tasteless. The chicken-on-a-stick was inedible. It tasted absolutely gross. I was expecting teriyaki; instead, it tasted... Not good. Dry meat with something rancid cooked into it. Gross. I spit out the small bite I took. (To be fair, I watched a lady pile her first plate high with many, many sticks and proceed to plow through them with the gusto of a shark attack, so my opinion of the taste obviously isn't the only one out there. I'm just saying that the taste most closely reminds me of vomit.) The salad was average; the salad bar is small and typical of this type of restaurant. Same with the desserts: mass-produced little cream puffs, cookies, teeny cups of artificially-pink mousse, and about 6 or 8 flavors of ice cream in giant, rock-hard buckets. (People were letting their kids do whatever with that ice cream. Just sayin'....) I tried the mousse and liked the flavor and smooth texture. Got butter pecan ice cream because the kids didn't put their hands in it, which was standard flavor. You gotta work HARD to get those tiny scoops, so enjoy it! There were some soups on the bar as well that we did not sample. The waitress kept our cups refilled and took away our plates expeditiously, though she looked momentously bored. I was extra-nice to her, because I can't imagine how mind-numbing her job actually is... The tables were neatly wiped, and no one cared that we sat way in the back, so we could people-watch. Anyway, the total bill was roughly $30 for 2 buffets, tap water, and a pink lemonade. The overall verdict is... MEH. It wasn't horrible, but there's nothing to make me say, "Hey, let's go to China Wok for some kung pao chicken and...

The bad: The food quality has dropped significantly. The chow mein noodles were soft and mushy.

Nothing was actually fresh or above luke warm temperature.

This will eventually get someone sick if it hasn't already!

They could prepare smaller portions to keep it fresh constantly but I guess that would require the buffet runner to put down their phone more often. Can't have that.

The good😃👍 : I'm a huge sushi fan! The sushi WAS constantly fresh and delicious. Only 2 types to choose from but whoever made the sushi made a really good roll! For buffet sushi, it saved the day. The waitress was very nice and was on top of things.

The waitress was outstanding, very "on the spot."

The waitress and the great sushi were the only reason I didn't give 1 star.

The hot side of the buffet has gone WAY downhill when it comes to LACK OF QUALITY!!!

This is not a "covid" issue either, it's a LAZY issue.

The food used to be hot and right at one time but those times seem to be long gone because it's been the same issue the last few times I've been there.

They do have the ability to have fresher food all the time without the potential for waste. Just put much smaller portions more often on the buffet.

$10 per person for 33% less choices. On the bright side, that equals no less than 33% less waste at the end of the day.

For the cost and the lack of quality they should at least include the beverage...

Ick, we will not be coming back again. The only thing that was even partly good was the sweet and sour chicken and the cream cheese wontons. The wontons had a pretty good flavor but the outsides were very hard. Most of the food was bland. Not much seasoning to my taste. And I'm not even fussy. The egg drop soup was so nasty that my husband spit it back out in the bowl. Honestly everything we tried was horrible. And how can you even ruin green beans? They were limp and rubbery. General Tso chicken was flavorless and the chicken itself tasted very old. The chicken on a stick was hard as a rock. They had some shrimp and the eyeballs were all looking at me and made me kind of gag. Besides the food being horrible, I tried to complain to the server and she just smiled and walked away. This must happen all the time. We paid like $32 for dinner for the two of us and my husband did say that the ice cream was good. He tried a little tiny piece of what looked like tiramisu and spit that out also. There was a tiny bit of lettuce in the salad bar, probably enough for three people and the whole while we were there it never got replenished. We really wanted it to be good because we were in the mood for Chinese food. I guess the next trip will be China a go-go. That...