Delicious, busy buffet at Crystal Bay

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/12/2015 (3766 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

At 1100 Waverley St., Crystal Bay Chinese Restaurant is right smack in the middle of a bustling business/industrial zone.

There are very few options in this particular area of Waverley and McGillivray. With winter driving conditions upon us, it is handy to know where you can purchase an affordable lunch without having to go too far.

Once dubbed the Crystal Bay Steakhouse, I understand that they served half steakhouse fare and half Chinese cuisine. As their Chinese menu became increasingly popular they did away with the steakhouse options.

On the day we visited for lunch, the place was full of hungry lunchers with some solo guests sitting all at one long communal table. Whenever a restaurant is offering the choice to order off of the menu or a buffet, it is a good idea to look around and check out what other diners are doing. In this case, everyone was going up to the buffet, so we followed suit.

The busier a buffet restaurant is, the better, as it means that food has to be continuously prepared and put into the holding table, ensuring the freshness of the product. An unusual feature of this buffet is that you could choose to have it “to go”, with a proviso that you limited the inclusion of their tasty chicken wings to 10, which is very generous because the entire buffet only costs $8.95.

Also included at the buffet table was a “law horn” vegetarian dish, Cantonese lo mein, dry fried mushrooms, black pepper with pork, salt and pepper pork chop, dry breaded veal, fried rice, stir fried broccoli, spring rolls and a choice of soup. No wonder everyone goes for the buffet.

I personally favour a greater variety of stir-fried items than deep-fried ones, but the tables sitting around us had their plates heaped with the sizzled items. I stuck to the tasty meats and veggies and certainly got my money’s worth.

Kathryne Grisim is a local food and travel writer and blogger: foodmusings.ca. She believes food = love.