Buffet City — Restaurant in Tuscaloosa

The restaurant itself is actually pretty nice and probably one of the cleanest & most sanitary Chinese restaurants I've ever been in if im being honest and although the food wasn't all that great to me- I cant say it was horrible either. It was okay. However, the service at this place is absolutely awful and the way they overcharge and downright rob their customers is disgusting in my opinion. Everything on the menu is nearly double the prices that I've seen Anywhere else. Also the option to take your leftovers (THAT YOU'VE ALREADY PAID FOR JUST TO BE CLEAR and for whatever reason was unable to finish) home with you so obviously you can finish your PAID FOR MEAL for later-commonly known as a to-go-plate to basically anyone living on planet earth..except for the manager (or whomever is responsible for) making customers pay 14.99, FULL PRICE just to be clear in order to take just your leftovers home with you.. Also another 2.49, full price plus tax, if you'd like to take the remainder of your drink/soda.. Meaning Nothing extra.. Just leftovers that you've already paid for.. will cost full price again if you take them with you. In my case i had my 2 year old, that had been riding several hours prior to stopping, that was grumpy and fussy & clearly needed a nap that i was attempting to feed what food he didn't throw while trying to eat myself. I failed miserably. Finally i decided to get to go boxes since we barely touched our food and i spent most of my time trying to keep him calm however possible so he didn't pitch a fit and bother everyone else at least until my husband was finished so we could go. I knew once we got settled in our hotel we could successfully finish our dinner then. Boy was i wrong.. I asked our waitress for to go boxes knowing she was fully aware of the fact that neither my son nor myself had eaten 3 bites combined and wasn't there longer than 20 minutes altogether.. She saw exactly how grumpy he was & me doing everything i could to keep him calm for everyone else while we waited on his dad. Point being she knew damn well we hadn't eaten and out of respect for other customers i decided to eat later so that they could eat in peace while there.. So to tell me to pay 14.99 for my food plus 10.99 for my babys plus taxes for both meals, ONCE AGAIN, when less than 10 minutes ago she was literally just handing us the receipt and our change from paying for the exact same plate of food. Not a single grain of rice extra. We paid for buffet but i only asked for the food from our first and only plate.. No desert. No salads. No fruits or veggies.. No extra chicken, shrimp, crab legs, crawfish, or oysters.. Nothing. Like seriously what if someone had an emergency as soon as they sat down to eat and had already paid for everything etc but absolutely had to go before eating or drinking anything whatsoever would seriously be charged twice for the same single plate of plain, dry, below average food? These people are disgusting and full of greed.. They literally watch you the entire time you're there and never so much as smile. Also pay attention when paying with a debit card.. After trying to recharge me for the same exact food TWICE they also tried adding nearly 10 dollars onto my bill.. Basically we ended up paying 40 dollars for my husband one plate of food. Never would i go back there and definitely wouldn't recommend those rude, money hungry, selfish, disgusting individuals to anyone else. Trust me you dont want to give them your money or fund their...

Last night I went with my mom and everything was all good and dandy at first then it ALL slowly went downhill. The food was not fresh when we got there and most things were barely lukewarm. I asked the host at the front if they were going to be putting out more food and he told me to just let him know if there was anything I wanted that wasn’t out, that was probably the best treatment we got all night. Our waitress was pretty good about refilling our water but she was very rude at the end of the night. She basically all but helped us get our coats on to leave when the restaurant wasn’t supposed to close for another 40 minutes. We used to go here all the time but the management has changed several times and it is pretty horrible now. The food selection was very limited. We got there at 8 and they were already cleaning up and putting the fruit with the salad stuff. They had the cold shrimp sitting on top of the mussels which offended my mother greatly. There was fish but it didn’t have a name on it and we had NO IDEA what kind it was. Then the fried crab legs smelled like bleach or some kind of cleaning product. My mom tried to get the host to smell them and he wouldn’t. They supposedly closed at 10:30 but our waitress came over to our table at about 9:50 and basically told us that we needed to leave because they were cleaning up and we were like don’t you guys close at 10:30 and she said yeah but when we don’t have any customers we close at 10. Our point was that WE WERE CUSTOMERS and we were eating so why are you kicking us out and being rude. Then we tried to tell the guy up front when we were leaving and he barely answered us when we asked what time they closed. He ignored us when we tried to tell him about our waitress forcing us to leave. My favorite childhood restaurant is officially the worst place in town. If you even bothered to read all this my opinion is that you should NOT waste your money here. PLEASE DO...

AVOID. Went in for the lunch buffet today with an empty stomach. At $6.99, I wasn't expecting a real gourmet dining experience, but I had heard that this was a decent place to fill up from some native Tuscaloosans who are generally cash money, so I figured I'd give it a try. I won't spend much time talking about the derelict fixtures or dingy vinyl booths. You don't go to Buffet City for the ambience.

The main selling point here is the selection--six buffet islands and a sushi bar. I don't think it would be stretch to say they offer 100+ different items on their lunch buffet, though a big number of these selections are the same ultra low grade meat battered with a slightly different sauce (e.g. General Tsos/Honey/Orange/Bourbon Chicken). Grease, salt, and sugar (and a lot of 'em) are the common themes here.

Particular items to avoid: -"crab" rangoons: Undercooked and soft, without a single shred of crab -egg custard: Didn't even know you could mess these up... -SUSHI BAR: lowest quality rice possible, just a very unpleasant taste and texture to everything. Pickled ginger was just fine, but just stay away from the sushi bar -stuffed shrimp: a tiny frozen shrimp stuffed inside a McNugget-sized pink-grey blob of pressed meat (pork?) -General Tso's Chicken (and derivatives): Mushy beyond belief. Corn syrup is the predominant flavor.

To their credit, the buffet did have a reasonable spread of fruits and desserts. Also, the service was prompt, and I never had to wait for a drink refill.

FINAL THOUGHTS: This is the lowest quality food I have ever eaten in my life. I wish I were exaggerating. A lot of European countries probably have laws against serving food like this. This was the first time I did not feel full after leaving a buffet. Instead, I felt queasy for the next 3-4 hours. Extremely disappointing. Do yourself a favor and go anywhere else.

Service: 4/5 Atmosphere: 1/5 Selection: 1.5/5 Food Quality:...