Union Buffet

I served one deployment in Iraq and lived in a chemical plant that the previous tenants used as a bathroom, and this is the worst place I’ve ever been in my life. I thought maybe I was on some prank show and a camera crew was gonna pop out and say it was all just a big joke.

I found this place the other night. I came in on a Monday night and it was pretty dead… meaning I was the only one in there. I felt kind of bad for the place. It was a good size buffet and not badly priced. It was $ 13 if you want to eat there. For a to go box it is $ 6 and they charge you by what it weights.
The buffet had a big variety that had sushi, crab legs, several types of chicken, fish, shrimp, several types of rice, beef, salad, desserts and more. The food looked a little old, but it was the end of the day and as I stated no one was there, so maybe that’s why.
The food tasted ok, nothing special but not horrible. I was starving so I just wanted to eat. The restaurant isn’t super clean but didn’t look necessarily dirty. I probably wouldn’t have chosen this place if I had more time and wasn’t starving! However the customer service was good and owners seemed very nice. I hope business gets better for them.

Food here isn’t the worst I’ve encountered but the REAL problem is they don’t replenish items on the buffet unless it’s packed on the weekends. Don’t EVER come here on the weekdays because when it’s dead, so is the buffet. Please see some of the latter pictures for references. Only visit this restaurant on weekends only and obviously come during peak lunch and dinner hours.

Here’s the thing. Union Buffet is a guilty pleasure of mine. It is pretty trashy Chinese food. It is «Mall food court» tier. If you’re looking for authentic Chinese cuisine, this ain’t it. If you’re look for east coast style Americanized Chinese cuisine, this ain’t it.
However, if you don’t have a refined palette and just want a quick fix of beef and broccoli with a side of fried rice, this is your place.
It’s not as cheap as it should be, but the options are pretty plentiful (when they keep refilling the trays).
Honestly, this place is a crap shoot. Some days their selection sucks, some days their selection is pretty good. I’d only go to this place if you’re desperate for some kind of… any kind of Chinese food.

Not the greatest food in the world. But seriously, if you expect that kind of food for only 10 usd in LA plus all you can eat then you should be traveling or eating out.
Service is ok and tasty food

DO NOT GO TO THIS PLACE!!! Theres roaches all around the restaurant! Food is nasty. I called the waitres to point out a roach i saw and while she tried killing it theres 3 more coming out! I told her i was not gonna pay after this incident she legit kicked me out and told me to leave! When we got there nothing was set up, food tasted like left overs from the day before. If i could rate this place zero stars trust me will go for it.

I walked by the place yesterday. It is shutdown and the inside looks like it’s being torn apart and fumigated. There is a white sign on the door from the Dept of Health that reads «Vermin Infestation».
Same deal with the Vietnamese place next door. It was mysteriously shut down one day for «remodeling». Now has re-​opened under a different name.
I would stay away from both places. You really can’t get rid of cockroaches once they appear.

This place now is closed, department of health came over on the 27^th of Aug and found it is unsafe to be operated, don’t know what this is going to turn in to, but looks like some Unilocalers here got the bugs in their meals maybe that’s why!

Today, I had to buy new shoes for my son. We went to New Balance down the street and I decided we would eat Phở at Pho99. It was closed. so, we tried the buffet next door.
My son is 2, and so I thought a buffet would be a great decision. He could pick whatever he wanted to eat.
I took him around, he picked some noodles and corn, but the food was old. Almost everything look as if it was around 2 days old. The broccoli was turning yellow. The meat was sparse and looked dry.
We picked up the few items that looked decent enough to eat.
As we sat down to eat, a cockroach walked across the table…
I had eaten some food already, and so had my son.
I felt like I was going to barf and nearly did. and I felt like worst mother of the year asking my son to eat.
We walked out.

I normally don’t review restaurants, but the quality of this place was too abhorrent not to say anything. The food isn’t terrible, and the service is fine, it’s just that the place looks so rundown and dirty. Tables look unwiped and greasy, the seats and booths are all ripped or worn, and the food looks like it sits under the lights for a very long time. Flies buzz around and land on the meat, and to top it all off, I found a cockroach crawling on the counter right under my hand when I was serving myself food! If there are cockroaches out in the open by food, I don’t want to know what’s hidden in the rest of the restaurant.
I don’t know why they have an A rating posted in the window. Unless there is a health inspection or a renovation, this place is definitely a hazard!

Came here on a weeknight… place was dead. Maybe one other group of diners.
Clearly, you come here for the crab legs they have, and that’s about it. With so few other diners the kitchen clearly wasn’t bothering to make more food, and the dishes out all looked pretty sad.
The «sushi» in particular had the tiniest slices of «fish» I’d seen atop big, heavy, waterlogged-​looking sacks of rice in a long time. I braved a California roll or two as those looked edible, we’ll see if i regret this decision later or not.
The rest of the hot dishes were pretty sad looking; the green bean pan had started to burn on the bottom, the pepper beef, orange chicken, and a few other dishes had all suffered in their trays way too long, although the skewered chicken actually wasn’t too bad considering how long it’d been sitting out.
The salad bar was pretty sad, the jello wasn’t much better– but the jello, to my surprise, was edible.
No one’s died from food poisoning a few hours later and the service was actually decent, so 1.5 stars– they do get an extra half star for that.

I came for a family dinner on the weekend of 4^th of July however the food seemed like it was made in the morning and they were DRY and almost empty.
I told the employee that the foods were dry and there is absolutely nothing to eat. She asks «which ones» and I told her «ALL» she goes by and other worker comes out from the kitchen and starts pouring hot water to make it look less dry.
Such an aweful experience. Do not go to this place
It’s soooo horrible :(

No
It wasn’t cool here
The food at the buffet was old and flavorless and cheaply made

Oh Chinese buffet… sigh. Is it really necessary to eat buffet anything? At any rate, the choices here are not the greatest. The food is often lukewarm to cold and pretty flavorless. In the end, it’s 9.99 to have a big, greasy lunch. At least it isn’t overpriced. But I wouldn’t take anyone I cared about to eat here, let’s put it that way.

I am a fatass and I eat a lot. I love it when food is cheap and in quantities. Union Buffet satisfies my cravings whenever I want to stuff myself… Quantity over quality! For about $ 10, you get to have a food baby during lunctime.
My favorite items here are the mussels, eggplant (when they have it) and the dumplings. Everything else is what you can find at your typical Chinese buffet: Chicken, beef, broccoli, shrimp, fries, chicken wings, stir fry veggies, etc. They also have a salad and dessert bar. They also have a Mongolian BBQ section (I’ve never actually tried it). The best part here is the ice cream and the cookies!!!

I used to come here before but no more. The good part is the servers. The bad part is the food is either old, cold or stale. The new batches of food are way too oily and tasteless. The chairs are in need of new upholstery and the booths look like a war zone. will not be back here anymore. 2 thumbs down.

If I could give this place zero stars, I definitely would. My standards for cheap buffets are pretty low, and this place couldn’t even make them.
What ever happened to this place?! I used to really like this place when I went for the first time about a year ago, because I lived so close to it and it was so cheap. I decided to try it again during a late lunch time (around 2pm) last week. Almost all the dishes were already gone. The ones that are left tasted like they were day old and were re-​microwaved.
–The sushi fish was tiny and discolored and the rice under neath it was so sour that it tasted rotten. The ginger was also just as sour as if it’s been sitting there for days
–The chow mein was hard and not chew-​able because it was so old
–The canned longans were out for so long that they were also soaked in the water and sour
These were just some of the dishes that I actually tried. It was so bad that I didn’t want to touch anything else and didn’t finish my lunch.
Never coming here again.

The price for lunch on the weekdays is $ 10 ’til 4pm and then the dinner hours kick in for a $ 14 rate after that. The dinner menu or offerings does include the now common staple amongst Asian AYCE joints, Snow Crab Legs. The legs here or today were a bit skimpier than what I get in the South Bay buffets, but I’m not always sold on the snow crab legs as a menu item all of the time anyway.
The food here, as previous comments mentioned seemed to be good but not great, and I can see where people can say «hit or miss» in inconsistency.
The one thing they have that no other Asian Buffet has that I know of is fresh Ice Cream for desert, none of that ghetto ice milk or soft serve stuff. This is I think Blue Bonnet brand and they have the Neapolitan choices of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry.
The egg drop soup and what looks to be ma po tofu are good, as is these scalloped black pepper potatoes and their pot stickers.
For the area in Santa Monica it’s a pretty good value for the price, and if you go out in a group and have a mixture of people who don’t want to spend a lot or always are in those awkward situations of splitting bills when some ordered more, others ordered less, it’s a great place for office co-​workers to go to, whether celebrating a birthday or just to hang out. It’s all the same price (add a soft drink for about $ 2) and it’s self service, so you can be in and out of there quickly.
Parking can be hit/​miss in that area and even the underground parking isn’t plentiful since this restaurant shares space with several businesses — — oh and if you’re a guy who enjoys eye candy, grab a seat next to the front entry window and you’ll see the finest girls going in and out of their yoga classes toting their mats and parading their fit bodies…

— Yuck — Yuck — Yuck — Yuck — Yuck —
This place has become a waste of a bookmark…
At one point they were one of the best, but they no longer care and it shows in the food quality, the service and the recent extreme decline in customers!
The photos they have posted are a total fraud… the food may have looked like that at one time but, i assure it looks nothing like that now! I tried to post photos of what the food actually looks like and they requested that Unilocal remove the truth. They were proud enough to charge me. $ 30.00 for two people but, that pride was gone once the true images of their food was posted! Lol!!!
Also, they allow food to sit out for hours with out changing them. Dishes with gravy or eggs were disgustingly covered in film and I brought it to the managers attention she added water and stirred. I felt food poison in the air! Will not ever go back and cannot recommend it to my fellow Unilocalers!
Thanks to that horrid visit we discovered a jewel of a buffet! We are now regulars at Vegas Buffet!!! It cost more but unlike Union Buffet that food is edible and the food quality is incredible!

Omfg what on earth are you guys rating this more than 1 star? Food is super bland gross and stale. On top of that waitress really going at it while picking her nose! In front of me and front door…
Stay away! For a much better buffet (if you must), try «vegas buffet» in Hollywood.