Chinese Buffet Review: Tokyo & Mandarin (Does Halls Have It?)

We begin our journey to crown the best Knoxville Chinese buffet in Halls Crossroads, a suburb about 15 minutes north of downtown.

I'm joined by Kelly Grzasko of Sunkissed Stained Glass (her stuff is great - check it out: https://www.instagram.com/sunkissed_stained_glass/)

A sprawling landscape of strip malls and free range fast food joints, the area is named for the Hall family, one of the area's first settlers, and the area being the crossroads of Emory Rd and Maynardville Pike. Pretty exciting.

It is here that we find Tokyo & Mandarin, our Chinese buffet of the day, located inside an old bank next to a Food City grocery store.

The exterior of the building advertises the reasonably priced buffet on offer, with the door guarded by two lion statues.

Inside, we were greeted with the titular buffet, offering more than 60 items and a more traditional sushi bar, though I'm not sure it is actually open for ordering. We're here for the buffet.

APPETIZERS

The buffet offers several traditional Chinese restaurant appetizers (egg rolls, crab rangoons) and four soups.

The soup here was the real standout of the buffet, with the hot & sour being my favorite and the wonton soup Kelly's. (I think this was the only thing she had seconds of)

I wouldn't describe the flavor of the soups as particularly groundbreaking, but they were excellent versions of these classic staples.

As far as they other appetizers go, they were perfectly fine. Nothing special, but perfectly fine.

For what it's worth, the rangoons used a small amount of imitation crab meat, unlike some places that just use cream cheese.

ENTREES

Here we arrive at the meat of the buffet, and I'll let Kelly describe it best:

"Most of the meat was flaccid and questionably cold"

I'd say that's an accurate representation of the entree options available, some of the meats had an almost rubbery taste.

Kelly had something called the "seafood medley," and described the crab legs as having a texture reminiscent of soggy bread.

The true stand outs are the fried chicken Chinese restaurant staples (Sesame Chicken, General Tso, etc). Those were quite good.

The coconut chicken was good too.

SUSHI

Who doesn't love sushi? Imagine you can have all the sushi you can eat?

While technically these are sushi rolls, they mostly consist of imitation crab, cream cheese, and a veggie (cucumber or avocado).

The ones with sauce were the best, and two had some sort of crunchy fried thing.

Basically this is the sushi quality you'd get at a truck stop. Skip it.

DESSERT

The final offerings for our all you can eat desires were the desserts, which were mostly awful and unremarkable.

Kelly describing the cake:

"The opera cake had the texture of old socks that were released from the snowmelt and found their way too a sun bleached parking lot."

Beyond that, the Chinese donuts were a standout, I mean it's fried dough and was very fresh.

Another standout: the melon in spices, really delicious though I'm not sure it's a dessert.

The banana in sauce was a banana in sauce.

The ice cream I was not brave enough to try.

OVERALL

Well, if you're for a buffet with a wide variety of quality options, don't come here.

If you're craving Chinese restaurant staples like sesame chicken or hot & sour soup, you can't really go wrong to pig out for the price. Just skip everything else.

RANKING

By our quick estimates, there are ten restaurants in the area we are aware of, and here's where Tokyo & Mandarin lands at this time.

9. Tokyo & Mandarin