Panda Garden Buffet

This is a place I’ve liked since I was a little girl. I came here a couple weeks ago with my boyfriend and on our first serving he found a black short wavy hair on his rice. When we complain about it the lady told us that it didn’t belong to her staff or the cook because they all wear their hair up that it must of been from a customer but that wasn’t the case because we grabbed the rice right after their staff put it there and the guy was not wearing anything on his head. He got up and left. What bugs me about this is that we still had to pay. I know ridiculous right. Anyway I don’t recommend this place.

This place is disgusting. The food tastes terrible. I didn’t eat that much and they made us pay. I don’t recommend it at all. Don’t go here trust me

Its good always been here but came in today n the food is cold as my coke idk if this is food from last night n they just keep there but dam never had a cold food plate from here everything else is greate but today this morning i would recommend not 2 come in the mornings maybe after 2 or 3 hrs when they for the food 2 be warm

Some of the women from my Friday church thought I’d like the food and the atmosphere at Hidden Panda. The women were wrong, big time! I LOVE the food, the service, and the atmosphere! I went alone, because my gal has the shingles (get the vaccine… seriously). Needless to say, I felt like the waitress and hostess were totally hot for me! They treated me like I was a king. A king over men and women. They helped me by gently guiding me through the menu items, highlighting their favorites and the dishes that make their own families happy. I had to think about their families and how unfair it would be to take them away from their precious children and indifferent husbands. Besides, my gal won’t have shingles forever (unless she’s one of the 5% that gets the peripheral nerve damage).
All that aside, great food and fantastic service!

Awful could hardly find anything worth putting in my mouth. Sushi was old hard and crunchy. Fish so salty. mussels hard and chewy.. My daughter liked the wanton soup and the soft serve ice cream. Service was pretty good.

Just came in today at 11 for lunch restaurant was hardly anyone there yep the lady who was at the front didn’t even see me just handed me my silverware want the way how rude and disrespectful food ok service sucks I won’t be back

It was ok. Didnt have a good selection, the food wasn’t that fresh and everything was half empty ,
The salad was ok. I don’t think my boyfriend and I will be going back.

Horrible went in today with my family and as soon as we sat to eat there were roaches crawling on the wall no time was waisted got up with my children and husband let the front server know we were leaving because of the roaches and she started to yell at other servers in her language instead of offering some kind of apology or something uughh so disgusted do not recommend at all!

Horrible horrible horrible. I would give zero stars, even negative stars if i could. Really bad service and food. One, we came here for my aunts birthday and outside the restaurant says a sign that you get a free birthday dinner with a party of 6 people… we came in and told the cashier and she laughed and said «this is a buffet, what birthday special?» Really? It says it outside their door! Why would we ask then. So ridiculous. And she pretended she didn’t understand us and that we were trying to be cheap or something for asking.
We went in to eat anyway and the food was disgusting. Sushi was not fresh just like almost all of the food there. I did not enjoy one entrée there and we really, really tried to force ourselves to keep eating. I pretty much tried a little bit of everything just to see if I could find one thing I liked. The egg drop soup was probably the only thing edible to me. I mean, how hard is it to mess up egg soup right?
Service was horrible, food was horrible. Definitely do not recommend. I feel like throwing this food up. Honestly, I feel like immediately working this stuff off at the gym and ordering pizza instead. Even Caesar’s Pizza would’ve been better than this. Felt like I was eating a bunch of fake food here.

Flys crawling on the food… No AC, which makes a perfect environment for bacteria and nasty bugs to hatch and grow, ewww, never coming back here again!

I went with my niece nephew, our first time in 11 years and I didn’t care for the food too much or the hostess/​cashier (server was good).
Of all four buffet like restaurants in the Montclair Plaza area this is my least favorite! The «hot» food wasn’t in the correct temperature and salad bar appeared ok.
Liked the soft serve ice cream though. Won’t be back anytime soon.

Just ate here with my mom. The food was okay, nothing special. I had the Tso’s chicken which was a little hard to chew but all right. The broccoli beef was pretty good, as well as the white rice. I stayed away from the seafood because buffet seafood is always a little sketchy.
I tried some of my mom’s baked chicken but that was nasty and full of bones! Yuck.
The place was nice, and they have a little pond with koi fish inside that was nice. However the outside looks really dingy. Oh, and the bathroom was disgusting! Pee on the toilet seats and generally dirty. Ugh.
The servers were polite, and the dining experience wasn’t that bad. Not a place worth returning too, though.

Thank goodness for the food being full of flavor and always fresh because the servers are rude AF.
Maybe its time to think about training there employess just a little better and to check there ATTITUDES…

I went today & it was clean, friendly workers & price was good.
I guess I got a tad too excited basing my «dinner» trip on the photos on Unilocal.We didn’t get crab legs, sushi, coconut shrimp as I wanted & saw .
There were other options and they were okay .
Nothing to go back for, but my experience wasent bad !

This place was gross and the food was disgusting there flies everywhere. We had a young gentleman as our waiter and he was ok until it was time to pay. I gave him my card and than he said «gimmie tip «and I didn’t understand him so I said come again and he was like «how was the service «and I said okay the food was not to good» and he proceeded to say «why did you eat than» I have never encountered anything like that. He was rude as fuck the food was bad and the manager doesn’t care about shit.

It smells terrible inside and the place was messy.
The food looked over heat lamped and the sushi was disgusting.
NEVER GOING BACK

Food was rubbery and old. The salad was bagged salad that was from like a week ago. The sushi looked fake and like you’d regret eating it the next day. For some reason they had pizza and managed to fuck that beyond recognition. Pretty hard to make a nasty looking cheese pizza. There was a turd in the toilet, may aswell have been served in the buffet.
If you wanna break up with someone you don’t like, do it here.
But other than that, place was ok I guess

The food was ok. I got some chicken nuggets for my kids they where nasty. They felt. Like they where microwave. The service was ok i had a hard time understanding their language.
I felt like the price was a little too high for rhe quality of food

Not bad for $ 7.99 during lunch time. There is a vast selection — and everything seems to be fresh. Believe it or not, the chicken wings are darn yummy — if they only provided buffalo sauce! My go-​to is always the sauteed green beans. Yummy and perfectly crunchy.
Although on slow days, I have noticed the slowing of the refills of some of the dishes.
This place is great if you like Chinese buffets. In fact, it’s one of the better ones. As for me, I feel like these will always be fairly greasy, no matter which route you attempt to pile your plate with: «healthy» or «General Tsao + Orange Chicken +Fried _​_​_​_​».

panda garden buffet has several great qualities over other Chinese buffets, and even many standard restaurants. I would like to address the negative comments others have left that honestly made me hesitant to stop in.
one person mentioned a smell suggesting the place was in need of a cleaning. panda garden has an indoor koi pond near the front. the smell they are talking about is from the pond, which is very clean, but as any other fan of fish and other marine life can tell you, the scent is that of an aquarium. just sit on the far end of the place and you won’t smell it. on my second visit I did smell it but my senses adjusted and ignored that scent, which is a fishy smell of course. third time I only noticed it because I thought about the fish as I passed by the pond. you will notice the same thing.
some people mentioned that all they had to offer was greasy, fried Chinese food. they are wrong, even if fried foods is par for the course of Chinese buffet. these are the people that go to McDonald’s e expecting to find a high end steak house, but still have a dollar menu.
panda garden has a great selection of food. they are the only Chinese buffets where they offer a full salad bar that is equal to that of sizzlers or hometown buffet. they offer a few kinds of salads such as cucumber and tomatoes in Italian dressing that is great. they also feature a sushi bar where you can catch their chef preparing the various rolls, which if you have watched” Jiro dreams of sushi” on netflix You know preparing sushi is an art form. maybe you’ll never find yourself in a high end joint in Japan but you can catch a bit of that art near home.
if you like seafood they also offer shrimp that I believe is prepared in steam. a delicious tofu dish during lunch also rounds out the” not fried” offerings.
those that know what to expect at a buffet instead of trying their hand at being a gourmet food critic online will be happy. they offer the regulars such as fried rice, chow me in, always being replenished. won ton soup, egg drop, and hot and sour soup fill the back station. Orange chicken, beef n broccoli are great. the beef has the perfect color, texture and taste, something other places mess up by getting lower quality beef that ends up grey and rubbery.
sweet n sour pork and sweet n sour chicken seems to get rotated on the menu. I had the chicken and it was great with a nice amount of breading. an offering I love here is the cheese and spinach. it’s something others try but fail at hitting the mark. panda gets it right leaving me wanting to take home the tray it’s that good.
for those not into Chinese food they have the typical frozen style pizza. they offer Mac n cheese, bbq ribs and fries. the desserts are a mixture of cookies and sweets such as crème puffs, soft serve ice cream, and fruit salads and raw fruit such as melon, grapes and orange wedges.
the staff is very nice and tend to make rounds of the tables checking to see if you want a refill or plates removed. this is something most servers as restaurants will not do without having to tackle them.
another individual mentioned that it’s a low income place. seemed rather ignorant with racist undertones. the crowd is a mixture of people of different tax brackets. also there have been various size groups of people of Asian decent one that spoke Chinese, so the idea that they avoid this place is also nonsense.
the place is clean, it is not unusual to see the staff cleaning. the bathrooms could use fresh paint but that is due to idiots writing on the walls. the tables a. d floor are clean and there is not much wear and tear that would suggest that the place is not maintained. stuff happens but it’s nothing that will affect your visit.
hopefully people will take the time to read this review and decide to go decide for themselves. for around $ 10 – 12 which is jus a few dollars then some fast-​food combo meals you can take a chance at discovering a new favorite. that is just what I did and glad to give a local business a few more customers. I believe that is a positive thing we can do with out much effort.