Mandarin Restaurant – Markham

LOVE this place and the service. Great food!

I went here tonight for a birthday party. Servers were attentive. My water glass never ran out. The staff are so polite and friendly. Probably the nicest servers I’ve had in a long time.
The food was delicious and there is a huge selection. Something for everyone. I like being able to try many different items. It was great for kids. Pizza & French fries were a hit for them. I am a healthy eater but I did indulge a bit. Try the sweet potato sushi roll. The garlic broccoli was good but I suspect it was slathered in butter. My cousin is a vegetarian and she was happy with the selection.
The prime rib looked good but I was too hungry to wait in line, so I gave into the chicken fingers (which were amazing) & a veggie spring roll. (Feeling guilty now for eating these). The salad bar was nice but the soup didn’t interest us. My cousin had the spicy & sour soup. She really didn’t like it and said it wasn’t spicy at all.
There’s sugar free cheesecake. It was good. Lots of fruit too.
I’d go back. It’s great for groups.

Good bang for your buck. Had a pretty good variety and food was pretty fresh. Only 2 of the many dishes I tried were not good. Waiters were very polite and prompt with refills and table clearing. They had quite a large selection in the dessert section with was very nice. The waffels were espessialy nive. Very crispy and fluffy.

I’ve been to many of these chain of restaurants and this is by far the best when it comes to service and food quality. The owners here do something right and usually walk around in weekends. I never have to ask for napkins or refills.

A lot better service comparing to the past as d a lot more friendly staff. Very lmpressive.

Here for the holiday brunch with big group.
Food and service are good today. They’re fully booked but still did an awesome job.
Pretty good value for $ 20pp. Seniors get discount and kids 5 – 12 years old cost $ 10.
I would give this 5* if chinese tea was free.
So full! Didn’t even make it to all stations and had to miss 3 stations so I can sample all my favorites.
They also have holiday drinks +/​-​alcohol.
Really festive ambiance and they’re offering turkey and ham on the bone. Yum!

The food was good. Lots of selection as expected. But I must say i was not impressed when they brought me hot hand towels to clean my hands before the meal and they stunk! They ended up making my hands smell and i had to go wash them before I ate.

The wifey and I were recently wanting to feast away to great Chinese food as we always had when we were kids.
So we came to Mandarin for just a night out. Haven’t been there in 5 years.
Décor has been updated. Looks more
Modern. And so has the price. Almost $ 32 a person. Nuts! The bill nearly came to $ 70-​$ 80 for 2 people! I’d much rather go to a high end a la carts restaurant and eat a touch less but walk out with happiness.
Service was great. Young/​energetic staff. Very prompt and quick to refill and clear plates. The man serving us in the west side room did a great job.
The food was horrible. A lot of the food is pre bought frozen stuff. And the stuff made in house is either undercooked, or dry or just plain nasty. Sushi rolls were odd and poorly done, salad station was just full of iceberg lettuce (super cheap) and a lot of dishes has recycled elements to it. From Spring roll sushi to bone dry pork smothered in sauce. Hygiene isn’t quite there either. People itching their eyes and then going back to making sushi. Nasty.
The dessert seems to be brought in. But that is also of low quality. Cheesecake is like wall paper (maybe too much Geletin or some sort of starch [which should not be in cheesecake]), to marshmallows dipped in chocolate (really? Where are the strawberrys?). Even the rice pudding was inedible. Under cooked rice pudding! Wtf.
And finally the ice cream… Didn’t go down well either. Don’t think it’s made with true dairy, and flavours are so artificial.
I sit here writing this review with my stomach grumbling. Not because I’m hungry but because my stomach is starting to get upset by the food. I’ll probably have diarrhea. If I get food poisoning, I’ll let you guys know.
Won’t ever in my lifetime return to Mandarin. Disgusting.
(Only the crab with garlic butter was good)

friendly staff, was what i expected going to mandarin
food was good desserts were lacking however

This is my first visit with relatives and food was great! Really good variety and quality, portions are just fine. Prices not bad at all. We came for lunch.

Good crab legs. It’s similar but a step above Imperial Buffet’s crab legs, but it’s also more expensive than Imperial (also imperial has coupons which makes it much cheaper).
Other food were typical. Roast beef were okay. Bacon wrapped tenderloin was decent. Sashimi and sushi were typical buffet quality, which means they were unremarkable.
The soup variety was okay. I sort of prefer imperial’s lobster bisque (which mandarin didn’t have). Other varieties were similar.
Service was also similar but a step above imperial.
I miss their lobster thermidor. I probably wouldn’t come back again unless they have the lobster thermidor. For me, that’s one of the only things that justifies the expensive price compared to Imperial.
Quality: 7.5÷10, Service: 8/​10, Value: 5.5÷10. Overall ⁷⁄₁₀ (not an average).

Just went for dinner tonight and I’m disappointed, I’ve been this location many times, looks like the management changed after the re-​opening.
Good things first, the crab leg still the best and most of the other foods are as normal. but one of the reason I went is for the Turkey and Peking Duck Wrap. Those two were disappointed us.
The turkey is like card board dry and the staff in that station just don’t know how to cut it out. make it so ugly then you don’t want to eat it.
The Peking duck wrap is the worse, I expected duck meat covered with crispy skin on top, but it is not, they cut /​pull it out as very small piece, look like pull pork and then wrap all for you. the kid make it in very very slow and make the wrap very ugly, it totally ruined the best traditional Chinese signature dish.
When my wife ask the Manager why they do that and why the kid do it so slow, She just keep say that is the way to be, you have to line up and wait for it. It is not a good customer service answer like it used to be in Mandarin — Markham.
The staff who give out the Sashimi don’t know any English, she just dump all the sashimi to your plate, even I just tell her I want only two pieces for each type of sashimi fish.
The quality of the sashimi is not good either.
In short, I properly won’t go back again.

Eat-​Eat-​Eaaaat
till your belly full and your bowels weak.
I dont think I even need to review mandarin. Like who hasnt been to mandarin?

Please reconsider of going to Mandarin unless you want massive diarrhea after, this is the worst buffet I have ever been to in my life, it’s not even real chinese food yet alone even edible food, I did not eat half of the food on my plate because honestly it’s garbage… they had chocolate covered bacon, like seriously is this CNE or something., oh yea and bacon lettuce tomato sushi, WTFFFFF is going on with this place and their made up creations
I can’t believe I paid $ 26 for this… the only thing good about this place is the service but almost all the cooks and servers did not speak English… we asked where the sour cream was and they pointed us to the whip cream… this place gives chinese food a bad rep.
You have been warned don’t be fooled by their stupid mandarin commercials!!!

I have some memories of going to Mandarin as a kid, my grandparents love this place so I would always come here for their birthdays. I hadn’t been here for at LEAST 10 years but…
Recently I was here for my gradnparents’ anniversary for lunch and it has somehow stayed the same as I remembered it. Tacky, dated décor like multiple fish tanks and off colour furniture isn’t the best ambience for a restaurant.
The Mandarin is a buffet (I’ve always hated buffets) that has primarily Asian inspired food like spicy chicken, pork and beef. There’s also American food like fries and onion rings, Caesar salad. The food was incredibly average, and inconsistent as with all buffets, some items were hotter than others. Mandarin has too much variety, and loses it’s theme as an Asian restaurant.
Mandarin has a full dessert bar too but nothing was great there, they had ice cream cotton candy, I’m sure to appeal to kids.
Mandarin has NO draught beer, all beer is in bottles. They have all the same beers a normal bar would have Canadian, Coors etc. The only Asian beer they had was Sapporo. This is pretty surprising, you would think at an Asian restaurant they would have some nice exotic Asian beers on tap. This seems like a missed opportunity. All they had was Sapporo in bottles which I had. It tasted flat to me.
The Mandarin is cheap lunch was $ 15 a person and even cheaper for seniors who get an additional 20% off (which is why my grandparents love this place so much).
The crowd is typically seniors and families with young children.
There is nothing appealing about Mandarin, with so many better Asian restaurants in the GTA.

The all you can eat buffet for 2 adults and 2 kids cost us less than $ 80. The food was fresh and the service was terrific. Totally stuffed. One of the better Mandarin locations.

1 of 2 mandarins in the city of Markham this location had been here for years. It’s known for its all toy can eat buffet, crab legs and prime ribs.
The overall atmosphere is nice with various rooms catered to its own design. Most importantly this place is super clean and that’s an A+ in my books.
The service was EXTREMELY friendly to a point where I thought our server they were brainwashed like robots like in that movie Stepford Wives haha. .
The food was about a 3/​5, which is what I typically give. The food wasn’t anything to be WOW’ed about. However it was nice to be able to have a mix of chinese, japanese and some western food options such as prime rib.
Overall experience was good… would I be back… probably not. even if ROB FORD invited me: P

We were starving and went for the buffett. The service was excellent, the food was great, and good amount of variety. The only downside was its kinda expensive at $ 18 each. I dont know if thats the normal price.
Would I go back again to this mandarin? Yes but not anytime soon. My wallet is getting thin.

Short version:
I can’t believe this place is still in business given that Star Walk buffet is just 6 km down the road. The difference in quantity and quality between the two places is absolutely immense.
Long version:
The only «premium» foods that Mandarin has that Star Walk does not have are prime rib (low quality) and crab legs. The premium foods that Star Walk has that Mandarin does not have are: sashimi (Mandarin has a sashimi Nazi that will give you a plate with 2 – 3 on it at a time), lobster, crispy skin roast pig, Peking duck. The reason this comparison is important is that the non-​premium foods are insufficient to justify the ~$ 27 price — if you go to a $ 27 buffet to just eat fried rice and sweet and sour pork, you’re an idiot.
The demographics of the clientele is also very telling. Star Walk has about 95% Asian clientele; Mandarin has about 60% Asian clientele. Why is this difference important? If you walked into a «Mexican restaurant» in an area with a huge Mexican population and almost half the clientele are gringos, what would your conclusion be? What if the Mexican restaurant down the street had only 5% gringos?
So unless your sole goal of going to a buffet is to eat as much crab legs as possible, go to the one 10 minutes down the street. You’ll thank me for it.

Well, believe it or not folks I have never… EVER been to the Mandarin before… for their all you can eat crab legs that is!
Haaaa see what I did there, you thought I was going to say the other thing, but seriously, If you’re reading this review and you’ve ACTUALLY never been to The Mandarin OR any Mandarin for that matter, I suggest you stop reading here, jump in your car/​bike/​public transportation and go eat at one of their locations…
Ok are you back? So while the MSG/​food coma over takes you, your eyes get heavy and you groan like so many of us «why the F%^& did I eat so much!!!» Fear not friend this feeling will soon pass (in about 20 – 30 min) and while it does listen to me recap the joys of the one special I truly fell in love with — Crab Legs!
Brief recap, Mandarin is consistently decent white chinese food. It’s never great BUT like going to a McDonalds, you always know what you’re gonna get, you always know what to expect and every so often the mention of this place will lead you to craving…
The all you can eat crab legs was well worth the $ 25.99, especially on the side of all the other food this place offers. The crab is perfectly cooked and even pre cracked for you to obtain easy access to the succulent meat within. BUT what’s better than these giant steamed legs is pouring yourself a big olé bowl of melted butter to dip the meant in.
I’m pretty sure that I ate more than my $ 26 worth in crab legs… technically if you think about how much you get at say the Keg for $ 35, you really only need to fill your plate up with crab legs alone once… I filled my plate up 3 times… plus had other food… and soup… annnnnd ice cream.
…hey hey hey now, no judgement, I exercised that day ha ha ha.
Crab legs come and go but mandarin will always remain the same :)