Big Buddha Restaurant — Restaurant in Surprise

Don’t even know where to begin. I have not written a google review in so many years but after my experience here, I knew I had to give my input because I am truly amazed at how this place has so many positive reviews.

I’ll start with the positive aspects of our visit: The service here was friendly and attentive. My spouse and I went on a Saturday when it was packed, and they seemed to be handling things very well. We were treated with nothing but kindness and all servers were very attentive. My only gripe with service is that we came in at 7:30, waited 30-45 minutes for a table, and when we told our server we weren’t ready to order because we just had sat down, we were told we needed to order because the kitchen was closing. I completely understand the kitchen being closed at 8:30, but I feel like we could have been given a menu while waiting for a table and been informed that we would be expected to know what we wanted right when we sat down.

Regardless of the service, if I could give 0 stars, I would. We started with the crab rangoons, which were filled with liquid cream cheese, and extremely underwhelming and quite honestly, very disappointing simply because of the fact they were labeled on the menu as containing crab. Moving onto the main entrées, My partner ordered the chow mein and wow— I have NEVER ever had chow mein like what is served here. The pork was unseasoned and very wet, the vegetables soggy, and the chow mein noodles resembled the uncooked, hard, crunchy noodles that you commonly see on top of salad dishes you would see at any salad place— that’s the best I can describe them. They do NOT have traditional chow mein and I would AT ALL costs avoid ordering it here. To make matters worse, the bottom of the dish contained so much liquid that made the entire dish was soggy and wet. I ordered the vegetable low mein, and it was fine, but I would not order it again, because it lacked any flavor. Compared to the monstrosity my spouse was served though, it was... —well, it just WAS.

I wanted to complain so badly, which I NEVER do, but instead, we ate a quarter of our entrées, declined take-out boxes, and asked for the check. After spending $40 to pretty much sit and enjoy each others company—because we did NOT eat—my spouse and I were still hungry, so we decided to go to Panda Express and the food was GORMET compared to what was served here. And the fraction of the price. Bottom line: avoid this place at all costs. I used to come here all the time years ago and have enjoyed their food then but they have really gone downhill since. You couldn’t pay me...

My family came here on a Monday night we walked into a very busy lobby lots of people awkwardly standing around since the space was very small and there wasent much seating. We put our name down on the wait list but wasent given a time or anything. We waited and noticed 2 different groups of people took their name off the list I guess they waited too long. But after about 10 minutes the hostess came over to ask if we would like to sit outside, we didn't care we were just hungry. Another 5 minutes and we got seated. We had to wait for a server to come over to get a highchair and then she took our drink order and brought them out. We looked over the menu and waited for the waitress to come back so we could order. We did shortly after a man brought out an egg roll and a crab ragoon (pictured) I was kind of confused because I ordered the combo and was supposed to come out with soup so I waited. A bit later a lady brought out our food. Still no soup and we needed refills which we needed a good 10 minutes and extra plates so we could give food to our kids. A different lady came out saying she had forgotten the soup and about the refills. I said that we needed played as well and she asked how many I told her. She returned with refills and another lady with the incorrect number of plates. The egg drop soup was not good so I just left that. The crab ragoon tasted like it should. The egg roll was mostly carrots and and just didn't taste great. For my entree I order the shrimp with lobster sauce (pictured) when it came out I was shocked by it's appearance it didn't look like it's normally does at all other places across the United States. The sauce was brown, there was way too much egg mixed in, huge chunks of bell peppers, a few carrots, random black beans and not that many shrimp. The taste wasn't bad but nothing amazing just not what shrimp with lobster sauce is supposed to taste like. We finished eating and had to wait a bit for the check and I immediately put my card on top to be charged and that's when we had to wait a while we kept looking at different waitresses as they walked by inside and finally one came out. We decided to try this place after reading other reviews about how amazing this place is. The service needs work and so does the taste...

This was our first time eating at big Buddha, as we walked in, I asked people waiting to be seated how the food was, they proceeded to tell me it was good. So we ordered $68 worth of food. The sesame chicken was completely uninspiring & offputing & bland, lacked flavor, it's as if it was watered down plus it was chewy, the sweet and sour pork no flavors, no spices and extremely chewy again and dry, the sweet and sour wasn't sweet and sour, it was a hot fuchsia color not quite sure what kind of sauce that was but it didn't taste sweet and it didn't taste sour it just didn't taste. We got the barbecue pork thinking that was going to be the kind of barbecue pork that you dip into hot mustard and seeds, it wasn't so we gave it a try anyways, guess what.. completely dry and chewy, we threw it out. The egg rolls & dumplings of course, once again not juicy, flavorful nothing. The pork fried rice, was even an eventful, totally bland, I feel like I was eating at the hospital. How do you mess up pork fried rice? I have no idea. We will definitely never be back here, we ended up throwing everything out and wasting a lot of money. Very disappointed, a very costly sampling that I would have rather avoided. I will say this, everybody seemed nice enough and everything was packaged nicely. We've eaten these dishes at other restaurants and never had this experience. We will officially will never be back and cannot recommend this restaurant. P.s I will say this, the hot mustard was delicious and it wasn't watered down. I'm a guy and I do a lot of reviews, most of my reviews are exceptional, this is just not worthy of an...