Return to BUFFET DES CONTINENTS - Gatineau QC

"We bring the four corners of the world to your plate."

Many years ago LJ & I ventured across the river into Quebec, Gatineau specifically, to try Buffet des Continents (BDC), a buffet of the continents. It sounded interesting - food from all over the world in one all-you-can-eat extravaganza. It was ... not good. We did not enjoy the food and we did not go back. Well, it had been about 10 years and one evening we were out and could not decide on what to eat. The idea of going back and trying BDC was floated, and we decided, let's give them another chance.

It was a Friday night and we thought it was going to be crazy busy; the last time we were there there was lines out the door to get in. No such lines on this evening.

The place is, well at least 10 years old, but it still looks pretty new inside. It's huge with lots of seating. The place is decorated like different parts of the world: faux buildings from Italy, China, Greece etc. There is seating upstairs overlooking the buffet, on the main floor, and some overfill areas in other rooms off the side. Even when it's not at full capacity, it's loud, but there's lots to look at.

You come in and the hostess seats you. Dinner ranges from $17.99-24.50 depending on the night of the week and your age. Drinks are not included, and if you get a pop like I did, there is only 1 free refill. Then it's all-you-can-eat. Our waiter was good at letting us know what was going on, refilling drinks and clearing our used plates. However I have another service story I'll talk about at the end*

 I think you want 3 things in a buffet:

1. Lots of Selection
2. Everything fresh
3. Everything tasty

This place has the selection. You've got Italian food, Asian food, seafood, grilled items, carved meats, pizza's, salad's, North American cuisine and much much more. The menu also changes depending on the meal and the night of the week. The items also seemed to be refilled fairly regularly and with good size crowds, they have to, so the food stays pretty fresh without sitting around forever. So check on #2. 

This was my first plate:

• Caesar Salad
• Sausage
• Meat Balls
• Chicken Wings
• Onion Rings
• Montreal Smoked Meat

I really like the variation of food here, in theory at least. Most buffet's around here are Chinese, so having a change of pace is good (even though you can get bastardized Chinese food here). Actually all the food here is bastardized, so don't expect any authenticity.

So how was Plate #1?

• Caesar Salad = not bad; creamy, fresh but nothing fancy
• Sausage = ok, but pretty flavourless. 
• Meat Balls = pass. Big pass. Had a sour taste to the sauce & did not enjoy.
• Onion Rings = crispy, hot - really decent onion rings
• Montreal Smoked Meat = really good! Really moist and tender, and tasty!

I'll talk about the wings later on.

Plate # 2

I decided to do some more world traveling:

• Shrimp = Nope. Super fishy and did not enjoy. Was luke warm too.
• General Tao Chicken - Pass. The chicken was kind of mushy & the sauce tasted like no General Tao I've ever had before.
• Egg Roll = Eastern Ontario/Quebec style made with cabbage not bean sprouts. It was ok but any Chinese restaurant does it better.
• Chicken Ball = little chewy batter, chewy chicken. It was meh. The sauce was not red sauce but cherry sauce which wasn't for me. 
• Shawarma = they actually carved this from a spit! It was good but nothing like a real Shawarma. Just realized I didn't get a good photo of the actual wrap.

Plate #3

• Pizza = pepperoni. Where is the pep you ask? It's under the cheese. And it's more like salami than pepperoni. I liked the cheese and the floppiness of the slice, but the sauce and crust was a pass.
• Fried Potato = fried nope. Just over cooked and not seasoned enough.

Plate #4

• Fries
• Montreal Smoked Meat

The smoked meat was so good I went back for more. This time I grabbed a roll, split it, added some mustard and mayo, and filled it with that great meat.  Added some fries on the side (crispy but nothing special). This was tasty.

So I've left the wings for last, but you've seen in the photos I've been getting them all along. The wings were found in the "Cuisine NORD-AMERICAINE" or North American Cuisine. This is where you find fries, onion rings, fried potatoes, steamed veggies etc. I found the wings, and that was the most important thing in this particular tray.

Each of the buffet items had a description of the dishes, in both French and then in smaller letters, in English. At this station, this was the 'Ailes de Poulet' description:

CHICKEN WINGS

Chicken Wings, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, chili powder, tobasco, ketchup, vinegar, brown sugar

This is an interesting recipe. It's almost like someone at home who has never made chicken wings before and mixed these ingredients together. Ketchup and Tobasco, hmmmmm.

Obviously this is AYCE, so there is no specific number in an order, you have as much as you want. It's also equal split of flats and drums. What was great was that they kept it refilled pretty frequently.

The wings were not big - pretty small actually. But, they were relatively meaty. Well the wingette's were not that meaty, but some of the drummette's were. The meat itself was tender and pulled away from the bone.

As for crispiness, I think these wings might be baked in the marinade. I suppose they could be fried and tossed in the sauce, but there isn't a lot of sauce and it seems to have permeated into the wing. So I don't know what the texture is from cooking, only that the wings have a crisp, but also not crisp. They are kind of saucy in that you get sauce on your fingers, but there isn't really visible sauce on the wings.

The flavour on these wings were ... surprisingly good. I was kind of addicted. They are sweet, sour, slightly sour, slightly spicy. It made me feel this nostalgia for this spare ribs recipe my family used to make many years ago that was made with ketchup and brown sugar and a little spice.

I like it, and it's got this generic goodness to it. Wing and spice connoisseurs would not. You might not. But there was something about it that I enjoyed. I didn't love them, but I did like them. You get me?

FINAL SCORE:

This buffet is really hit and miss. Some of the items are bland and others are just no. Some items are good. The carving stations are the best; loved my smoked meat. For me, the wings were worth second and third trips for. They are all over the place in flavour while being safe and generic, but they were good.

Now the photos from this review and the story was from our first visit. The service was great. Then *we went back and brought the father-in-law like two weeks after, and it did not go as well. Shawarma was gone, as were some other dishes, but they had others (but nothing special to write about it). Our waitress started out friendly, but then she was gone. Once checked in to refill waters but that was it. Now she was busy looking after a few big groups and other tables. But once it was time to go, she was just gone. We waited and waited. LJ & her dad went to the car and I said I would take care of it. But she was no where to be seen. I eventually asked another waitress and she said ours would be back soon. But she wasn't. Then I saw our waitress who was back helping one of the groups pay out, and the other waitress let her know about us waiting. She said she would be with me shortly, but she disappeared again. LJ came back to get me wondering what was going on. We gave up and went to the front desk to pay out. Our waitress ended up there but ignored us so we had to get someone else to pay our bill. In the end, it was almost 45 minutes AFTER our meal that we finally left. Unbelievable. The wings were ok, but we aren't heading back anytime soon. 7/14

Buffet des Continents
4 Impasse de la Gare Talon, Gatineau, QC
lebuffetdescontinents.com

MANDARIN - Ottawa ON

So Chinese New Year was last month, and so was this review. Better late than never right?

I've been wanting to do a review of Mandarin for years. Years. But I've often been to nervous to take public photos, or haven't had a camera, or whatever. But having had a cell camera now for a few years changed the game. Then I just didn't want to because when I went I just wanted to eat, short of a photo here and there. Well back in February, I finally made the effort. It was during Chinese New Year and Mandarin was hosting their Dumpling Festival.

Not familiar with Mandarin? It's a Canadian chain of Chinese Buffets that has only recently expanded into the Ottawa region. When I moved to Ottawa for the first time, I was aghast at how bad not only the buffets were, but how bad the Chinese food in general was. I should also point out that this is Canadian Chinese food, not authentic Chinese food. I have lived in Toronto for many years and had access to Chinatown(s) and great Chinese food all around. Mandarin has always been the best Chinese buffet I have been to; that being said, it's not the best Chinese food. But living in Ottawa, having it here has fulfilled my buffet needs.

What is crappy is that the Mandarin's here are $1 more than all the others (and Brampton?). That's B.S. man, total B.S..

Every Mandarin I have been to all look the same, short of very different floor plans. You enter and there are wishing ponds with goldfish, an army of servers at the front welcoming you to the line-up (there's always a line-up) or passing out after-diner mints to those leaving. The ceiling is painted like the sky, the buffet is in the middle with many different stations, with separate dining rooms all around the buffet.

There's lots of North American Chinese food to choose from; lemon chicken, fried noodles, kung pao chicken, general tao chicken, spicy beef, stir fried vegetables, chicken balls, egg rolls, torpedo shrimp, hot & sour soup, and on and on and on. But you can also get sushi. But then there's a bunch of North American food like fries, onion rings, pizza, salads, roast beef, mashed potatoes etc.  Some of it's good, some of it's ok, and some of it is sad. There's one thing though that I can always count on, chicken wings.

It's nothing fancy, but it's an oasis in the chaos.

In many things I am not a creature of habit, but when I go to Mandarin, I almost always start with the above plate. It wasn't until I made the above photo that I realized how half my plate is North American. But dang the onion rings, garlic bread, and dill pickles are so good! The pickle may seem weird, but it adds a zing and a balance to a lot of the fried and sweet food on the plate. Plus it's a vegetable.

Round 2 will be more wings usually, and some mix of some of the same of plate one, or some things that were missed out. On this particular trip since it was the dumpling festival, so I tried one of their special dumplings that is doctored up by a chef on site.

This particular dumpling was pretty blah inside (pork) and was topped with peanuts, green onions and a sauce mixed with soy, sesame, chili oil and a few other things. Even with a request for extra chili oil it was pretty blah. Not bad, but I didn't get another.

Then again, there were lots of wings, why would I?

In general, Mandarin has one kind of chicken wing - crispy fried wings. On some occasions (random as far as I can tell) they have different flavours. I've seen honey garlic a few times, and at one location they had sriracha wings (that was a treat). Mandarin also does take-out too but they don't indicate how many wings come in an order.

Okay, so the wings are small. Sometimes they reach a medium, but generally they are a small wing. Length, width, everything, they are small. They are battered and deep fried, and remind me of every Jar Doo chicken wings on the menu of every Canadian Chinese restaurant I have ever gotten wings.
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The skin is very crispy. The batter is not thick, so it and the skin make for a very nice crispness. The meat is often really tender too. Because they are a popular buffet item, they empty quickly which means they are replenished pretty quick, meaning freshly fried. I have been known to wait around for a fresh batch until I discovered the touch pad on the wall that the buffet attendants use to order more and could see how long a new batch was coming. If only I could use that to send refills to my table.

There's no sauce on these, although you could add various sauces like sriracha or chili sauce or even say red sauce or lemon sauce from other dishes that you want. No these wings are just crispy, salty goodness. These are one of the only wings that I'm down to eat without any sauce. If you like crispy, and you like salty, then these are for you too.



FINAL SCORE:

Every time I go to Mandarin, I start wanting to eat so many plates and 'get my money's worth' but by the end, I don't want to eat Mandarin ever again (although now that I'm older and wiser, I do stop 1-2 plates earlier so as not to feel like puking), and then the next day I'm craving Mandarin again. The highlight for me is always the chicken wings. They aren't big, but they are crispy, hot, tender, and salty good. On the whole, the food is good but it's all about quantity not quality. Except compared to any other Chinese restaurant in the city. I do go mostly for the variety though. And occasionally for desert they have Spicy Chocolate Firecracker ice cream ...  7.5/14

Mandarin Chinese Buffet 
290 West Hunt Club Road, Ottawa (Nepean) ON
mandarinrestaurant.com

PONDEROSA STEAKHOUSE ~ Watertown NY

MARCH 2013

LJ and I took a brief jaunt to Watertown New York for a little day trip, some shopping etc. For dinner we wanted to try somewhere different, and we ended up at Ponderosa.

I had not been to a Ponderosa since I was a kid. All I remember was waiting in lines to get in, a massive salad bar, and the smell of grilled steaks. Would it be the same.

We walked in and the first thing we came across was the giant menu. We did not know what to make of it. All we could tell was that there were a lot of meat choices, it was cheap, and the buffet could be added for change. There was also a big poster for their wings, which seems like a good idea.

We were coming in after the main dinner hour, so there were no line-ups and we could ask the host how this place worked. He mentioned that you look at the big visual menu, pick what you wanted, add the buffet if you wanted, sit and enjoy.

This place was much larger in size than I had remember other members of the chain to be. There were all sorts of stations from salad fare, soups, meats, veggies etc. LJ and I had both ordered an entre and added the buffet because, well it was ridiculously cheap.

Our waitress (name not recorded) was friendly, attentive, but was busy with a lot of tables. But when I wanted a refill on a drink, I had it.

LJ ordered the 6oz Sirloin and Potato ($5) and `loaded' the potato ($0.99) and added the buffet which made it $11 in total. The steak was actually amazing. It looked good, it smelled good, and it tasted good. I sampled a piece or two and agreed with was one of the best steaks I had ever had. I was shocked. SHOCKED.

I ordered the Sirloin Tips ($7.99) with loaded potato ($0.99) and the buffet brought my plate to $11.99.

The tips were mostly tender, and the fried onions were good, but I wasn't crazy about the dish. It was a bit blah. After tasting LJ's steak, I was totally envious.

And there was still a buffet. Actually we had buffet while we waited for our main dishes. As with any buffet, there was the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Above we had some bland macaroni salad, stuffing, and cold/stale hush puppy balls with cheese sauce. There were some faux chinese dishes that were not so bad. There was also some wings and fried chicken.

There were two types of chicken wings: their breaded wings, and the wings that were in with the other fried chicken pieces.

It's a buffet, so you have as much as you want. I was excited, then I was not.

The top wing in the above picture is the fried chicken, which had an almost light batter on it that was not so much crispy as tired chewy. The bottom wing was what I call SUPER breaded. The wing was large, and most of it was coating. It was like a thick shell, keeping predators away from the meaty inside.

I strongly disliked the Super Breaded wing. The breading was just too much, and no flavour. It definetely made a craching sound when you bit in, but these definetly came from a bag in the freezer and I just did not care for them. LJ liked the breading, but I just couldn't.

The wings do not come with any sauces, so I improvised. I asked for some hot sauce for the table. Franks. I like Frank's, but it didn't help the wings.

In the salad dressing station there was honey mustard dressing. It didn't help the wings either.

I also tried it with Blue Cheese dressing. This was chunky and creamy, but also did not help the wings.

FINAL SCORE: WING FAIL. Do you know how hard it is for a Wing King to not take advantage of a buffet with chicken wings on it? Crappy, over-protective breading that was blah in taste and terrible in texture. The fried chicken wing was ok, but really, stick to the steaks. That's where the magic is. 4/10

Ponderosa Steakhouses
1290 Arsenal St, Watertown NY (and other locations)
ponderosasteakhouses.com

Circus Circus Buffet ~ Las Vegas NV

OCTOBER 2012

On Hallowe'en, LJ and I took a trip to Las Vegas. Neither of us had ever been, we had time, so we just went. We were worried about our trip not happening as this was the time of Hurricane Sandy that was shutting down flights all over the place. Turns out we got there without any issues. 

photo I took later that night

We arrived on the Wednesday and  headed straight to our hotel: Circus Circus. The place had it's pro's and con's and I won't get into the interesting stories about the place here on the blog, but ask me sometime. Anyways, we were starved and headed to one of the restaurants advertised at the hotel. But when we got there, it was closed (like many things we found in Vegas). So we headed to the hotel buffet instead.

Our time zones were off, so the place was dead inside. A lot of the stations were not running, and not a lot of things were being refilled because, well, no one was eating it. There was a mix of options from Tex-Mex to seafood to all day breakfast. Not the best buffet options I have seen, but not terrible either.

The atmosphere and decor were nothing special. Clean though.

I was very excited to see they had fountain Wild Cherry Pepsi! It's hard to get cherry pop back in Ontario, so I took full advantage of the self serve. The orange pop was awesome too.

I enjoyed the Tex-Mex: made myself a soft shell taco (although you could have hard shell) with rice and beef and nacho cheese and jalapenos. The bacon was, well, I just couldn't resist a strip of bacon.

So not really a wing review, but they did have fried chicken. They also had fried shrimp, and some nice roasted potatoes.

The fried chicken was decent. Breaded, slightly crispy. It was ok. The shrimp was ok. The whole buffet was ok. But I had no desire to go back. Well, maybe for Cherry Pepsi. But not the food. Not really.

Circus Circus Buffet
2880 S Las Vegas Boulevard, Las Vegas Nevada USA
circuscircus.com