Critic's Review
Some low-life posted my picture of Ichiban on Yelp 2 years ago, and it's been a point of irritation for me for quite a while. Someone with a Yelp account please inform Steve S that stealing pictures is a copyright violation please.
This place is quite a trek for lunch, but how bad can an all you can eat buffet for $6.50 really be? I made good time for some reason at 1:30 and arrived promptly at 2:05. They have the obligatory rock formation at the entrance; there were some people here but the buffets looked well stocked.
I was seated in a rear booth. A handsome if not particularly inspiring.
I ordered an iced tea and hit the buffet. The hot food looked reasonably fresh; first order is to get lemons for the tea and to fill a plate with stuff that looked decent.
I realized I had no chopsticks. Why do these places all have servers instead of just a beverage station? Now I have to find a server to get chopsticks.
Black pepper chicken, General Tso's, fried rice, broccoli, green beans, mushrooms in oyster sauce and a dumpling.
Decent for fuel, but only the dumpling gets a plus rating here. The beans were ICE cold. Does anyone make a decent General Tso's down here? Fried rice is never good from a steam table, because it's not fried. Maybe it was fried 3 hours ago.
Time for another plate. The dim sum selection was weak; I just got a sad looking shrimp dumpling. Another regular dumpling, an egg roll, a chicken dim sum, chinese pork sausage and egg foo young.
The sausage was hopelessly dried out; some other meat on the carving board was too gross to even consider. The egg roll was fried cabbage; The egg foo young was tasty but coldish; I would have liked to get it when they first put it out.
Time to make another run.
Lo Mein, shrimp with lobster sauce, pork with broccoli and salmon.
More ok fuel, but nothing really good. I'm not sure how the tofu discs fit with the shrimp; The salmon was waterlogged junk; why not just broil some salmon and put it out rather than soak it in some tasteless liquid? Taste is not a big thing here.
Time for some sushi.
The sushi selection is very limited, and not very well stocked. I grabbed a couple of rolls and some nigiri No sashimi available.
The rolls were, but the sushi was garbage. Cheap or old fish. I'm glad I loaded up on other stuff. They also were just putting out some freshly made teriyaki chicken skewers; while it was hot, it was over done and overly sweet and sticky.
Time for some dessert. I went straight for the ice cream.
Chocolate and pistachio. No green tea or red bean for me today. A bit of sweet to end the feast.
I asked for my check and my serve drops a cookie on the table. The full Chinatown experience.
Good news. I can just wait for babes to hit on me now.
The check is amazingly low. They apparently only charge $1.25 for the tea.
Can't complain about the price.
Conclusion
Cheap lunch and dinner is available in Pompano Beach. While the dopey Millenials complain on Yelp about the lack of sushi, what can you seriously expect for $6.50? These are the same people who rave about their $15 hamburgers. You have to think of this as a Chinese buffet; there's enough Chinese food (plus the Hibachi) to make this place worthwhile. If you want Sushi you can pay $11 at Miyako up the road.
It's too bad the food isn't better. If you ordered any of these from a Chinese restaurant or take out you'd never order from them again. But for a buffet, you can likely find enough nibblings to justify the price of admission.
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