Thomas Super Buffet

After 8, u have to ask them to make food. The «sea food buffet» is a joke and not worth the 12 dollars I spent.

Standard Chinese buffet. Is it better than the mom and pop you’ve been going to for 10 years? No. Is it better than the Chinese fast food place that packages everything in one tidy styrofoam container? Definitely. The interior leaves a lot to be desired, but what were you expecting for $ 10?

Went there the other day and it was CLOSED. New restaurant to soon open in its place.

++good for hungry males.
+price is reasonable.
+hey, there’s ice cream! (and other desserts)
–food selection is average.
–seafood wasn’t too fresh.

The Bad:
1. Bland, lifeless food (except «The Good» below)
2. Raw oysters on the half-​shell — their being «off» is the norm and is putting it mildly
3. Grim, surly, unsmiling waitstaff who toss silverware on the table and are slow to refill drinks
4. A general atmosphere of banality and mediocrity
The Good:
1. Squid salads, pickled veggies, and the «Mongolian» grill area
2. Small selection of shu-​mai, steamed buns, and sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves
3. Candied bananas
4. Boiled crawfish

This is, by far, the worst buffet of any kind that I have found in Austin.
I tried a little bit of almost everything, and none of it tasted completely correct for the label. All of it tasted just a little bit weird, like there was something undefinable wrong with it, and some of it tasted downright wrong.
Weirdly, almost all of it was also cold. Buffets tables usually consist of containers that sit in warm water, so the food stays consistently warm, even if it’s not necessarily «fresh». I’m guessing their tables are just plain broken.
The interior of the building is old and musty, and most of the seating is the «throw everyone in one room, and also some tables» type setup. Stick an elbow out and push your chair back, and you could easily hit two strangers from two different tables.
The only redeeming factors were the sushi, which was unusually good for a buffet (think HEB quality), and the waitstaff was very friendly.
I can’t even give it a two star, though, because the wasabi was extremely weak (has anyone ever actually said that? How does one make wasabi weak?) and the price was weirdly high for the quality of the food. Three buffets and one drink (two of us had water) was $ 34. Compared to China Buffet nearby on Burnet, which has vastly superior food and $ 7 buffets all day, that’s robbery. Even going by Unilocal’s standards, that puts it at «moderate» instead of «cheap», and there is absolutely nothing here to justify anything but cheap.
I suppose the Mongolian BBQ might be okay, but I didn’t try it. Old building, musty smell, and broken buffet tables didn’t give me a whole lot of faith in the raw food that’s been sitting out for who knows how long.

You know, I really used to love this place, much to the dismay of some of my friends. I’ve been coming here for a few years and I’ve always liked their selections, sushi and Mongolian BBQ. Over time it seems like it’s going more and more downhill. The floors are super sticky? The bathrooms smell funny. Last time i was there the staff seemed more like they were having social hour than serving their customers. The section I was seated in, tables were stacked with dirty plate. I’m sorry, that’s just completely unacceptable when there are 4 – 5 tables in the WHOLE place. I had to constantly ask my server for water refills when it was clearly empty and i was getting food. Working a buffet’s not something that requires a 4.0 GPA, please get with the program.

No, just no.
It tries to act cool by having a decent array of options (albeit small).
Mongolian BBQ– something is terribly wrong with the sauces. it recommends 2 scoops of the hot sauce. 1 scoop felt like 4 in terms of saltiness and in some cases spiciness. Standard otherwise.
This sums up 90% of everything else on the buffet: bland and mediocre. A few things worth noting: Best things I had all night were the fried cheese sticks and blue bell ice cream. A notch below that was the fried shrimp and the walnut shrimp. Pretty disappointed in the steamed salmon, the fake korean bbq, the sushi wasnt fresh, and the list goes on.
Go elsewhere, and save yourself the cash.

Good: hot and sour soup
Blah to mediocre: everything else on the buffet

The food here is awesomely mediocre. Nothing really stands out. The selection is pretty damn mediocre, the wait staff is mediocre. if their goal was to create a super mediocre Chinese buffet then Kudos to the owners! Alright, their selection is more than a normal Chinese restaurants lunch buffet. but those places have menus at dinner time. I have heard you can order a cake here thats pretty good, didn’t notice at the buffet. the food cools fast and gets stiff pretty quickly too. Hot and Sour soup along with Eggdrop soup both are pretty bland. Some dishes are tasty enough when hungry but nothing special. They have all the standard items such as sesame chicken, lo mien, etc and all taste like they should.
So if you are moderately hungry and not really picky, this is your place.
way to go thomas super mediocre buffet! Fill in stomachs with as little commotion as possible.

I actually liked TSB a lot better the 2^nd time I went, maybe because I was starving. The location is a bit far since I used to live downtown, but if you’re in the area, this isn’t a bad place to have lunch. They have a descent selection of cold dishes, like seasoned seaweeds, sweet & sour radishes, et al. I actually didn’t really like their main buffet line but they have a pretty good soup and sushi bar. Their fruits line was absolutely amazing, with the freshest grapes and hand sized strawberries. If you don’t except the best Chinese food in the world, TSB is definitely an acceptable buffet to hit.

Not much you can expect from Chinese buffet but definitely not the best.
I find the interior of the restaurant to be rather stale. Needs to be aired out or maybe some air fresheners? Feels greasy to me as well.
They have a good variety of food but the quality is poor. Chinese food, Japanese, American, Mongolian, and a salad bar. There is a chef who makes the sushi in person and another chef cooking the Mongolian cuisine. The food isn’t as fresh as it should be. The desserts are stale but they do have a blue bell cooler.
There is crab legs but now snow crab legs.

Reviews on this place would be alot higher if the word «SUPER» was removed from the name.
I’ve read the reviews on here and been here a couple of times myself and I always feel really torn. People complain about the service and food quality but let’s be honest guys, the food isn’t terrrrible — it’s not bad and gets the job done. The one thing that I look forward to eating here is the «Xiao Long Baos» which literally translates to Little Dragon Buns. These little delicious steam buns save this place from a 2-​star. Though they’re not as good as the ones I’ve had in China, they taste well enough just to remind me of the fond food memories that I’ve had in the Orient.
Pros: A great variety of foods, from sushi, a mongolian grill, soups, cold plates, seafood/​meats, and traditional real chinese food.
Cons: Though there’s a great variety, it really could do better if they narrowed their selection of food and made it into better quality. The one thing Thomas does poorly is finding an identity. It is Asian-​fusion (no), traditional chinese (no), japanese (no), mongolian (no), american (no)? When you’re serving such a variety of dishes, you’re bound to upset some people (and their stomaches) along the way.
At less than $ 10, it’s just good enough for me to crave a little Thomas every now and then (which means about once every season).
Bang for buck: ⁸⁄₁₀

Well bust my buttons and rip my gears!
My wife saw a TV spot for Thomas Super Buffet and wanted to go, we used to live near by before moving to RR. I remember we stopped going because I just didn’t care much for the food after in changed form Hometown Buffet to Thomas Super Buffet.
So we and a friend went on Friday night around 8pm. We entered and got a table quickly and noticed a lot of Asian people eating here. I am guessing that means they have a lot of Chinese weird food that they like. Looking around at all the types of food they offered there were a lot of seafood, shrimp, claims, etc and a Mongolian BBQ style buffet table.
Our friend really liked the claims and the fish and the tripe and had 3 plates of it. My wife liked the claims and had 2 plates; one of the plates was the Mongolian BBQ plate. I tried several items for standard fare and ate a few bites and didn’t finish anything else on the plate, I then tried a small sampling of the Mongolian BBQ and 3 or 4 bites later I stopped, the meat was to dry. The also had sushi and soups. OK now for desert they had about 5 or 6 flavors of Blue Bell Ice Cream including 3 flavor sherbet. I had two helpings the best part of my meal.
The wait staff kept out table clean of used plates and our tea filled and the place itself was nice and clean our cost for three people with tax was $ 35 tip not included.
When we left I felt a feeling of why did I eat here, my wife thought that it was OK and our friend liked it.
Would we (I) go back? It’s possible but it will be a long time for me.

A word of advice from an Asian who’s seen his share of Asian-​style buffets–
Just because there are a lot of Asians in the Asian restaurant, that does not mean it’s good. It just means that they probably have crab legs or mussels at the buffet.
You other Asians, you know what I’m talking about.
Everyone else, you’ve been warned.

I think I saw Soylent Green on the line here among many other food-​like substances.
Let’s level here. The objective of Thomas Super Buffet is to swamp your hunger beneath an avalanche of food. Quality is secondary or even tertiary, and the steam trays overfloweth.
The Asian items were passably edible, but I recommend steering clear of the other items. As other reviewers have mentioned, the space is large and kept nice and clean.
However, as the meal wore on, I began to regret my choice to dine here. Nothing made me sick, but I grew fearful of being sick some time in the future.
I recommend this place mainly for aguesians. There are better options out there.

it seems weird to pay 10 $ a person at lunch for a buffet, but maybe they saw the size of my fiancé and charged us the dinner price.
I’ve never seen new food put out, which worries me. The sugar buns are pretty good, the tables and bathrooms are very clean.
One gross thing is that they’ll handle your glasses and plates while having a dirty rag in the other hand. They’re pretty confusing about where you pay, they leave the check on your table but never come around again to give you change, and usually there’s no one at the median to try and pay there either.
For a buffet, they’re okay. Then again, I expect food poisoning from the average buffet and haven’t experienced it yet from this place.

Once again, you have to know what you’re getting when you eat here. For weekday lunches, it’s all you can eat sushi for $ 7.00. Think about that. Do you expect world-​class sushi for that price? A wide range of friends agree that it’s not terrible, and are amazed at the price. Get there close to 11:00 when they open, and it’s all fresh.
I admit that I’m pretty happy at buffets in general, even the Golden Corral variety. Anyone should be able to eat more than enough food here, though. Even their salad bar and fruit should satisfy a health conscious person. That alone easily beats Souper Salad.
Besides sushi, they include a Mongolian Grille style area where you pile up a plate of food and someone cooks it up for you. Then there’s a wide range of basic dishes. Yes, not the best stuff, and foodies will be disappointed. For an inexpensive buffet, though, it’s pretty amazing.
They even have a dessert bar with a selection of pastries and real ice cream.

If it’s the quantity of starch and carbs you’re looking for as opposed to quality, then Thomas Super Duper Buffet is your oasis in the middle of the desert. I’m sorry to say that I’ve been there twice so far — — yes, those were days I can’t say I look fondly upon. After all, we all make mistakes, right? We chew gum w/​our mouths open. We date the wrong people for too long. We say inappropriate things in front of grandma. And we make rash decisions on an empty stomach.
I was in the neighborhood, starving, and sick of the usual. Each visit got progressively worse. And don’t even think about going late close to closing time, because by then the sushi will be scarce, some items will not be replenished, and quality control has left the building. On my last (and final) visit the sushi was few and far btwn, the cook was more interested in talking on his bluetooth ear piece as opposed to making more sushi. They ran out of ice tea (WTF — you’re kidding me!), some of the meats (duck, beef, fish) didn’t look like duck, beef, or fish anymore, and the wonton soup should have been labeled as «chicken stock» because it was out of wontons.
Two other things about this place — — it smells like tires, or the Sears Auto Department (it may have been a Discount Tire before?) and the water tastes horrible — — no joke, really bad. I mixed some in my lemonade (since it was so sweet) and it ended up ruining my lemonade.
Positives? Well, compared to Buffet Palace, they offer a more diverse menu (dim sum, pastry w/​sweet beans, tea leaf wrapped rice). There’s also a Mongolian Grill where you can make your own stir fry (never tried it) and they usually have other Americanized foods as well (corn on the cob, hot dogs, fried shrimp). The cantelop and honey dew melon was refreshing too. The Buffet Palace’s menu (in comparison) seems to always be the same stuff, and that can get quite old and boring for the career Buffe-​teers.
But if you’re looking for quantity, mediocre quality, a different menu, the ambience similar to Sears Auto Shop which smells like rubber tires, and horrid tap water, just put on your best mechanic outfit and come chow down at the Thomas Buffet.

I went for the dinner buffet recently and was pleasantly surprised! They had a lot of hot dishes, enough patrons to make the restaurant look busy (including lots of Asians), a wide variety of dishes (including some traditional Chinese food you wouldn’t expect to see here), generally acceptable or good flavors, and waitresses who stop by your table frequently. It’s easy to overeat, so try not to come alone.
This restaurant is located in the Fry’s-Roomstore shopping center on the Northeast corner of Mopac and Parmer. It occupies a space in one of those separate little shopping center «block buildings» in the front right side of Fry’s 10 yards from the Mopac access road. I can’t believe I’ve driven past this place for so many years and ignored it due to its cheesy name, «Thomas Super Buffet.»