Mandarin Restaurant – Rexdale

The Rexdale location of Mandarin gets only an «average» rating from me since the food here tends more often than not (in my experience) to lack the freshness Mandarin is known for. I have seen edges of sushi pieces that looked either freezer-​burned or otherwise «off» and buffet items can be drier here than a Mandarin regular might be used to.
The food is generally good and more or less in line with other Mandarin locations, but if you have the choice between this location and (preferably) one of the Brampton ones, you’d be much better off in Brampton. In a pinch though Rexdale’s not bad, just not as good as others.

I will be very hard pressed to come back. The food is not enough to overcome the unsavoury clientele that always appears to be present at this location. I suppose the old adage location, location, location truly applies here. If it’s not college students wanting to fight middle aged people, or very visible thugs trying to get out of their bills by complaining about absolutely everything (how can you possibly complain about the water not being filled quick enough at a Mandarin?!? As soon as you put the glass to your mouth, you can see a server running to get the water pitcher!) I will not come back. Not even a «free» visit would entice me. If eating in uncomfortable environments is your thing, then this is the restaurant for you! Not for my family or I.

Went here today with a bunch of other colleagues. My first time ever experiencing a buffet of this variety, and was happy to be there. Available are a huge variety of Asian foods, and worse they had western foods like french fries, chicken wings, and penne. The sushi was one of the biggest let downs. Displayed are gorgeous rows of sliced fish behind a glass case, none of the which are actually used in the sushi. Available was a seaweed roll, California rolls, and two other chicken sushi rolls; One fried and one flavoured with maple. The word here was DISGUSTING. Everything else seemed pretty standard until the dessert. Again they had a huge variety which I won’t get into, but none of them tasted fresh, I am sorry to say. The cream puffs tasted freezer burnt, and the chocolate squares were nothing to scream about.
The WORST thing about this place is… THE SERVICE. Our drinks took 45 minutes to come to the table, and was another 45 minutes before we had to track someone down to fill our water glasses. Guess they don’t like keeping track of orders here because my colleagues were made to pay for their warm drinks (alcoholic and non alcoholic) up front before paying for their meals.
I am sorry, but I find this ruins the whole experience having to pay for a part of your meal throughout the service, and were also told it was cash only for the beverages. Sounds a little sketchy to me…
On top of that, the waiter expected us all to pay on one bill. I argued with him considering we are all adults, have work and families to go to, and were respectively leaving at different times, and some of us were not even finished our meals.
He then demanded that we all pay either at that moment or at the end of the meal.
This did not make us happy. AT ALL.
Who pays halfway through their meal?
Several of us paid in cash, which he took several twenty dollar bills away in a basket (after tax came to 16.94/ person), and never returned with their change. When I managed to find him to pay for my plate, I demanded my change and receipt immediately as I noticed he had not giving anyone their change or a receipt. He briskly walked away from me, and did not return for 10 minutes. I handed him my cash, and he took another five minutes to come back with my change.
Food was okay, but the service totally ruined the experience for me. I will not recommend this particular location to anyone. The older staff are EXTREMELY rude, and dismissive.
Will NEVER be going back here again.

They did a wonderful job on the renovations! It’s beautiful inside. Great, friendly staff. My boyfriend and I go strictly for the crab legs! Amazing price for all you can eat crab!

Mandarin restaurant is great especially if you like seafoods. Thumb ups. But there’s alot of different food so we enjoyed dining here

As far as buffets go, Mandarin is pretty much the standard for Westernized Chinese buffets. You come to Mandarin with the expectation that you will be eating yourself to an early grave and on occasion, that is quite alright with me. This Mandarin, in particular, is very clean, spacious, and I find the service to be much friendlier than most buffets in general.
The soup and salad bars are actually impressive when you consider all the various options you have in front of you. There are a variety of salads, like seaweed and surimi, to go along with caesar’s and spring mixes. The soups are varied too and though they aren’t the greatest, I can’t help but grab some chowder with a dinner roll to start.
They have a strip where there is sushi (terrible sushi), japanese grilled items and a rotisserie section where they offer up carved meats such as Roast Beef or Skirt Steak. The japanese grilled items consists of standard grilled beef, chicken, or sausage.
For the hot foods, you’ll find all your Westernized favorites like General Tsos Chicken, Chow Mein, Beef with Broccoli, and the infamous Chicken Ball (of which my friend came here and demolished 24 of them — It was impressive, but disgusting). The hot foods are actually decent and the fried items are surprisingly not as greasy as you would think. They do well with some baked items too and I love the shrimp dumplings which singlehandedly saves the experience for me. Not the greatest «hargow» in the world, but not bad ones either for unlimited consumption.
Dessert bar has so many different cakes, puddings, fruits, and ice cream choices. They’ll have 8 different ice cream flavors that you can pair with waffles and specialty dessert items like marshmallows or apple pie.
If you’re in the mood for Mandarin, this one is way better than the one they have in North York on Dufferin. Lunch price is roughly $ 15 per person so it’s on the pricier end for lunch buffets. The quality isn’t the greatest, but it definitely is not as bad as many of the ones you’ll come across.

Mandarin Restaurant is great if you’re in the mood for a variety and can’t decide on one theme… Canadian-​Chinese dishes, prime rib, grilled meats, sushi bar, great salad bar and lots of deserts to drool over.
This location is much more guest-​friendly… I visited the North York location and had to wait to be seated in an empty restaurant… this location seats you quickly, the servers are ready to clear your table when done, bring your drinks quickly and always with a sincere smile.

Take-​Out Review: Bland
I’ve been ordering from this location for years, but I’ve come to realize just how incredibly bland all the food is, whether that’s just indicative of them changing their cooking style to coincide with more ‘Canadian’ diets and or my tastebuds have matured, it’s difficult to pinpoint when I started disliking their food. Generic brown sauce on meat, tasteless noodles mixed with plain vegetables, and generic deep-​fried everything. Where’s the spice or even some seasoning? Their take-​out menu is essentially full of marginally sweet or somewhat salty. There are literally no other tastes.
If you’re considering ordering:
+The Spicy Chicken is the best thing they have, but it’s more sweet than spicy.
+The Vege Spring Rolls are the second best thing.
+The Chicken Wings are alright.
+Ask for hot sauce packets. These make the meal more palatable and actually have a decent taste by themselves.
–Stay away from the Garlic Pepper Pork. I only ordered it once and it was the last time. It smells like the chemical cleaner they use in truck stop washrooms and is cooked to be as dry as possible.
–In fact, stay away from any of their pork dishes. They all smell, have tough pork, and really don’t last long as leftovers.
–Any of their fried rices use the same frozen mixed vegetables you can get at your local grocer, which means, hard pellets of tasteless peas and carrots.
–Never order their Mandarin Soft Noodles. Never. It’s like they took some of that sweet and sour red sauce, watered it down, and soaked the noodles in it. They have a neon orange colour and smells like Big Mac sauce… which is sickly when it doesn’t fit with any of their other foods.
–The Shrimp with ‘Lobster Sauce’ is as generic as you can get. Shrimp in diluted brown bean sauce that’s salty for no reason. Nothing savoury here. It’s as if it’s some sort of powder they use to make the sauce, like gravy powder.
They also have some strange reluctance giving their hot sauce packets while you’re ordering (manufactured by a different company). You’d think it would be complimentary, but you have to ask for it every time and they seem more than happy to exclude it and instead, jam in as many plum sauce packets as possible. No one in my family uses these 20 packets of useless plum sauce, but that’s as complimentary as you can get.
Restaurant Review: Decent if you like being around others stuffing their faces. At least the coffee ice cream is good, but I question the sanitary conditions when unsupervised kids are ramming their hands/​scoops into the buckets constantly. Interior is, again, generic Mandarin Buffet you see in every other Mandarin. It’s alright.
Feel like getting bloated and gassy? This might be the food for you.

Judging by the «Now Open» sign I saw out front, it looks like this place was recently renovated, and it looks great. Chairs, wall décor, and ceilings were nice and modern (not that Mandarin looked bad before but it looks better now in my opinion).
Walking in, we were greeted by three hostesses who welcomed us in unison. It was almost like a mini choir. What can I say, I’m easily amused.
We were seated in the «Fish room.» Aptly named with tasteful (no pun intended) fish décor on the wall plus an aquarium.
Food is pretty much what’d you find at any Mandarin location. No complaints.
Servers were very attentive. Almost a little too attentive at times with their peaking out from behind the server area to check on you. They mean well though.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad time at any Mandarin and this one was no exception.

Refused to be served at 3pm. The employees are racist. Don’t recommend at all. They are prejudice and refuse to serve people based on the color of there skin. Do not go there if your non Caucasian. Big joke.

Came here for lunch yesterday after a family event. It was a pretty big group of us, they had no problem finding us seating right away. The service was not bad. The food was… mandarin quality food:) although I found that at this location they had more variety like meatballs, and penne? First time Iv seen that at a mandarine.
They have one huge salad bar, 2 tables for hot food, and 2 very long dessert tables. Go figure. When it was time to pay there was no confusion with bills, it came up to $ 17 per person. Although we had to wait a little bit for our hot hand towels. I’m not sure if I’m the only one who notices that every time anybody eats mandarine they get the «itis»? They must put something in the food, I am convinced.

We have been to this location many times before. They are a decent Mandarin Buffet location. Today we were here for my youngest daughter’s birthday. I won’t rate the food. It was as good as this chain’s buffet locations usually are. Instead, I’ll rate the service. On service, they were 5 star today. They carefully checked out our 3 groups and who was paying for what, how many children, how many seniors. They saw we had a birthday cake, confirmed it was a birthday and whose, and offered to refrigerate the cake. No mistakes, no confusion. They brought the first two groups’ to arrive drinks, had to be reminded to take the 3^rd group’s drink orders. I give them a pass for that because the waiter wasn’t there when the 3^rd group arrived. All our emptied plates were quickly cleared away. I am fussy about my carved roast. They had the lunchtime flank steak at the carvery & there was hardly any left & the remainder looked dried out. So I asked the carver when the new flank steak would arrive. He promised to let me know and he actually came to my table to tell me! When we asked them to bring out the cake, they did with a lighted candle, brought out a *lucky* Chinese hat for the birthday girl to wear, then took a free group photo. The first photo, part of the birthday girl’s face was blocked, so they re-​took the photo, no extra charge. I cannot fault any of this Mandarin’s service, it was PERFECT.

I went for lunch for Mandarin with a few colleagues today. When we walked in, I did not realize that they had holiday buffet prices, which was $ 5.00 more. It was packed for a Monday, despite the busyness we were seated right away.
They had a descent salad bar and abundant amount of hot food. They have the Canadian Chinese food fare as well as pizza, a grill station and sushi! If you have a sweet tooth, save room for dessert — there are two sections!
Mandarin is great for groups with various palettes.

A mildly popular place. The food is average and it’s not a nice enough place to bother staying to eat there. The buffet is about what you’d expect from a chain restaurant so there is nothing special or particularly ethnic.