Best Buffet for Your Buck

For Chinese food in Charlottesville, where can the consumer go for choice, portion size, and affordability? While there are a few answers to this, the answer today is East Garden Buffet on Pantops. With friendly waitresses, a clean environment and a diverse assortment of foods, students big on hunger and light on wallets can get their fill for a reasonable price.

The lunch buffet rests at just over $7 before tax and the dinner price is $9. Like many establishments, they put out some of their more costly options in the evening.

East Garden hosts the standard assortment of Chinese food such as General Tso, Wonton soup, Lo Mein, Dumplings, and the list goes on. East Garden has items that will both please fans of the more obscure, such as frog legs, and fans of Japanese treats like sushi. The teriyaki eel is fabulous.

The waitresses  are friendly and courteous. They check in with you often to make sure things are going well. As buffet staff really only have to take empty plates away and check beverage levels, the standard for tipping drastically changes as you receive little service. The staff at East Garden, however, do not disappoint. Not once I have to deal with empty plates for longer than it took me to set my chopsticks down.

The food is not the most amazing thing, but when looking at buffets, food may not be the most  important standard. Buffets should be measured by the quality of food and affordability.  In both of these standards East Garden passes. The food is good enough to want to come back and cheap enough to not hurt financially.