Orange Grove Bistro

To my opinion, I’d say Orange Grove Bistro is one of CSUN’s finest fancy restaurant. Great place to have a romantic date with someone or have formal meetings.
They have both orderings & buffet. I prefer the buffet especially their Friday’s International Buffet during school semesters.
They do have dinner service, but sadly only during events at the VPAC & the dinner service can be quite pricey than normal lunch. I do recommend maybe have dinner service like normal.
Place is small, though it can be bigger if they include more outdoor seating or use conference room nextdoor to the actual restaurant for more restaurant space.
Overall, I still like this restaurant. The problems I describe above are relatively minor but I do suggest please follow my suggestions above for further improvement. But, like I said, it’s relatively minor. Therefore, you earn a total score of a Perfect 5 stars out of 5 from me. Congratulations CSUN Orange Grove Bistro.

Took my fiancéé to lunch on a nice Friday afternoon and we elected to sit outside. There were several full tables around us, many of them filled with Italian speaking students which made for a nice atmosphere. However it seemed as though there was only one waitress for our section and service was incredibly slow. It took about 20 minutes before we were asked for drink orders. Refills on water were about 20 minutes apart as well, it did not help that the waitress was socializing with other tables and the disappearing for some time. Perhaps the restaurant is understaffed so I will let that go.
When we ordered food we specified for no tomatoes on my fiancéé’s food because she is deathly allergic. We also asked for some ranch for her fries since you know, ketchup is made from tomatoes, etc. The food came and was ok however my fiancéé’s sandwich had tomatoes so we had to have it remade. It finally came back after we had eaten most of my meal and there wasn’t any ranch for her fries. We asked and the waitress apologized profusely and promised to bring a little cup of it. The ranch never saw the light of day nor did it ever see us. We gave up on it.
20 minutes later when the waitress returned to fill our water, she handed us our check before we had the chance to order dessert. We paid and in the 15 minutes it took to write this review, have yet to get our check. I suspect we have 5 more minutes to wait.
Wouldn’t eat here again, unless asked to come by a friend. As my fiancéé put «Red Robins pricing for food truck service»

I tend to visit this place a lot since it is located in the one of the areas most peaceful to campus.
First of all the place has been remodeled and has a great ambiance as the range of students going is very diverse.
I go there plenty since they have student specials and their food there is delicious. It is calm and a great place to have lunch with friends. The sun hits beautifully and it has been remodeled. There buffet changes and varies and is one of my favorite things to get there. There menu has a great variety of choices. My favorite being the South Western Salad!
If you are a student and you bring your MataMoney card you can get the discount there too! I would recommend EVERYONE to go there specially while visiting the campus. Also, I know that we have big performances or TV/​Movies being tapes on campus (which is OFTEN) they tend to visit this place.
Overall this place is great! Specially when you go with friends, which I will be doing once the semester starts!
–Happy Eating Everyone

uhhh soo ya…
not quite sure what to say about this place
first, it is full of old people and preppy college kids, the plates are all dirty and scratched, the table cloths are worn and tethered, and the décor is horrendous
–2 star for the ambiance
then comes the menu. for it being this pricey and this «fancy» or casual, whatever the setting is, hamburgers and salads are the last i expected
–1
the buffet seemed like a good choice, and since we came on a friday, they had an ethnic twist or style of buffet. this friday happened to be El Salvadorian cuisine
–10 stars, but Unilocal only lets me put a minimum of 1 star
so, the buffet consisted of a salad bar, with the only thing «worth while» was the chicken salad… everything else was nothing special or different
the soup looked old, over heated and blah
then the «ethnic» side… a tray of pupusas which the sign said had cheese in them… had no cheese, only beans in a burnt, poorly prepared pupusa dough
next was some sort of chicken, with a heavy curry taste, dry meat, and the sauce was not really sauce… just chunks of dried whatever it was
then comes the «bistek» as they called it, which was over cooked, tough, flavorless meat.
on the positive side, they managed not to ruin the plain white rice…
then there was also a cabbage salad/​cole slaw concoction… won’t discuss that.
and finally the dessert bar tasted worse than those cheap desserts you buy at a gas station when someone is either depressed or have no clue in the world what good food tastes like.

We normally take people visiting campus here as it’s the nicest place to eat in campus. It’s right next to the orange grove and the duck pond. Very beautiful area on campus. I’ve never been for the buffet, but the small basic menu they have is great. Staff is always friendly. And you can always get a table. Food is pretty good. I always get the Chicken gouda melt. So far, I haven’t heard any complaints about any of the dishes.

This is a great place to take visitors for lunch when they come to campus. The lunch buffet is delicious — lots of variety. They had a potato-​cauliflower curry that I crave. Try the international buffet on Fridays!
Small — make a reservation.