Crazy Buffet

We've passed Crazy Buffet many times, as it's on a major road that we take often. We've also talked about going multiple times, but it just hadn't happened. So, I was really in the mood for Chinese, and Jonathan was just hungry, so we set out to eat there on a Saturday night.

It's pretty poorly organized when you walk in... we thought we were in a line to put out name on the list. Five minutes later, we realized that wasn't the case. We probably only waited about 20 minutes total, but that's a long time for a buffet, LoL! The entire experience was mediocre, really.

The water was good, but refills consisted of a server taking away our cups and we didn't see them again for five minutes... with the salty nature of many Chinese dishes, this was a problem. There was fresh sushi and sashimi at one of the buffet lines, which looked great. The tuna and salmon were pretty good. The problem was that the plates were very hot, so by the time you were back to your seat, your raw fish was starting to get warm...not nearly as appetizing. Still, we each had a few pieces (plus whitefish, a spicy roll, and a few other non-descript items).

There was a heavy seafood emphasis, with crab legs, oysters, and clams all being out, plus salt-and-pepper shrimp, crawdads, and other crab items. The crawdads were okay, but I passed on the crab, clams, and oysters. There were frog legs, which I found to be decent (my first time having them, so I don't have any other background on them). The roasted duck was hit-or-miss: I had it on my first plate, and it was extraordinarily greasy; Jonathan tried it later and found it to be dry. The pork shu mai was pretty good, though the potstickers were kinda mushy. The spring rolls were average, the sweet-and-sour chicken was dry, and the vegetable-fried noodles were bland. Jonathan tried the prime rib, which he found to be okay. We both tried the pepper steak, which I found to be pretty good, but Jonathan found it to be mushy and fatty. The vegetables I had (celery, onion, peppers) were pretty good. As always, you can't completely remember each item you tried at a buffet, but I think that this is probably enough to note that it was an overall average place.

The Chinese donut was excellent (if I still had room, I would've had another), the soft-serve was fine (though they were often out of dishes), and the cantaloupe was fairly fresh. The jello, however, was very tough. Overall, the place was a little overpriced for us (though if you like all-you-can-eat crab legs, salt-and-pepper shrimp, and oysters, you probably would have found $14.99/person to be a steal). We probably made up for the cost by having the sushi, though. We also had a 10% off coupon that we found in a paper - I'd recommend doing that. Oh, and as a final note, you might want to avoid Saturdays simply because of the number of birthdays being celebrated - we heard the birthday song over the loudspeaker 4-5 times while we were there... and it's a very long version. Of course, maybe it was just a fluke on the night we went..