Imperial Buffet — Restaurant in Summit Township

The best Chinese buffet in Erie hands down. Duke, the owner is very attentive and nice. I usually find that a lot of Chinese buffets have a great many options but only a few things are actually good; however, here, nearly everything is a home run.

Pros: The vermicelli, chicken on a stick, crab rangoon, crab meat casserole, egg tart, broccoli with baby corn, coconut shrimp, sesame rolls (when fresh), the steak (when still pink), fried fish, the complementary oolong tea are my favorites! Also, surprisingly, their American options like the mac and cheese are really delicious! Staples like the brown fried rice and wonton soup are great.

Cons: While delicious and one of my absolute favorite things on the buffet, sometimes the shrimp isn't deveined properly so you have to be careful when serving yourself.

There is a hibachi option, but I haven't had much luck with finding a sauce that I like so the whole plate pretty much gets ruined by the awful sauce seasoning. Granted it's been awhile since I've tried it so next time I go I'll see if it's improved.

I also think that their dumpling could be improved - there's something up with the flavor of the oil or the filling that makes it taste old and gives an unpleasant aftertaste.

Do not get the salmon. Salmon does NOT keep and having it on that warming plate just results in something extremely powdery and dry and white and cakey that tastes overcooked and vaguely chemical. Unless salmon is quality and made to order (hibachi) or raw (like a poke bowl or in sushi), it won't taste good - this is the one item that really shouldn't be in the buffet on a warming plate but moved to a made to order station.

Wish they had: Udon or soba noodles, clear soup, shumai. Even though the restaurant is geared toward Chinese and Mongolian food, they do serve sushi and have a hibachi grill so there is some Japanese influence. It would be nice if they ran with that more.

More seafood like squid or scallops.

Some eclectic treats like fried frog legs or duck.

I also wish there more veggie options (like water chestnuts, charred shishito peppers, shitake mushrooms, seasoned cabbage) that were steamed or grilled or other light healthy preparations of proteins (most meat items here are fried or slathered in a sticky sauce).

Back at the old restaurant location, the ice cream they had was a soft serve with a pull crank - it was amazingly delicious and sometimes in summer I would go there just for that ice cream which was sort of like ice milk and totally different from anything you can get anywhere else in Erie; I really dislike the ice cream they serve now which is those giant tubs in a low freezer that children always end up double-dipping and cross-contaminating with the rainbow cotton candy flavor so everything ends up tasting like that... not that the flavor was very good to begin with. I hope someday they switch back to the old soft serve ice cream!

I think it would be cool if the sushi bar offered small tastings like a poke bowl with seasoned, marinated, and diced salmon or ahi tuna.

It would be nice to see some new items on the menu and some of the existing unpopular or superfluous options winnowed down. Comment cards or conversation with guests can let the owner know which items to discontinue.

ATMOSPHERE:

So this restaurant is at the location of the Old County Buffet and in many ways it still looks like the restaurant I remember. The vibe isn't as good as at the old Imperial Buffet location. It could use some more Asian influence. For example, S&S buffet in Erie is undisputably the most beautiful Asian buffet in town but with arguably the most vile tasting food of any of them, so don't be fooled by appearances! Though the decor may lack, this is the absolute number one spot on town for Chinese and...

I took family members to the newly located IMPERIAL BUFFET (where the Olde Country Buffet was off upper peach st by I90) because my husband and I loved the food at the old location (across from St George's church on peach st). Having waited since before the fire, I was greatly anticipating getting to eat good food again. Unfortunately, my expectations did not match the actual experience. The flavor of the Mongolian grill freshly made dish was so disappointing!!! I don't know what they put into their brown sauce but I couldn't even eat the foods I had carefully selected!!! It was unlike any brown sauce I've ever eated!!! TOTALLY BAD - MADE ME WANT TO PUKE!!! I was so embarrassed because I has praised this restaurant as having exceptional food. The guy manning the grill was no one I recognized from the old location. And he was not pleasant - yelled at me because I had informed him previously that there was no more frozen beef slices on the selection table. Speaking of selections, the offering was sparse. Did not have snow peas to enjoy!!! What kind of Chinese restaurant does not offer snow peas??? Obviously the bad kind!!! In addition to bad food, I need to mention the lack of cleanliness. The buffet offering tables were so filthy. People were just slopping the food around and I saw the grill guy take pieces that had fallen onto other surfaces of the tables and PUT THEM BACK INTO THE CONTAINERS!!!! Again, I wanted to puke!!! I should have left that place right then but I didn't want to even try and explain why we were leaving to my guests who were already eating their selections. After seeing how the employees failed to maintain even a decorum of cleanliness, I wouldn't have been shocked to learn that the cola tasted funny because of mold in the dispensers!!! And the cola did taste off/strange/not like cola!!! ALL I CAN SAY IS DO NOT GO TO THE IMPERIAL BUFFET!!! SPEND YOUR MONEY AT A DIFFERENT CHINESE RESTAURANT. Now I'm going to have to find another Chinese restaurant myself. If you know of one that you think is good, please respond to...

I used to love this place, it had the best Chinese buffet in Erie. I had not been there for a while and I heard the old Chef left to another Buffet across town; but I wanted to take my 12 year old son out there to fathers day. He told me that the food there wasn't good anymore, but we tried it.

I could barely eat my food. Twice I had to spit out the food into my napkin, it was so horrid. It was all overly greasy in a nasty tasting oil. It tasted like vegetable oil that had been burnt with another odd flavor. Items that I usually love were putrid. The Teriyaki Chicken tasted flavorless and like it had been setting out for a while. The Crab Rangoons filling was very salty but no sweetness whatsoever, the pork dumplings tasted like they were made with spoiled ingredients and even The Happy Family tasted like it had some rancid tint. The only things that I truly liked at all was the sushi bar (although some of the sushi was warm when it should have been cold) and of course the soft serve ice cream.

This is not one of those hit and run reviews; I was truly sad to see the state of this Buffet since it used to be so good in the past. It went from the best in Erie to one of the worst in a short time. The food is disgusting and I will never eat there again.

Gave it a try again. Sad that I can get General Tsao's in Walmart's frozen section that tastes fresher than...