Panda Buffet in Westland, Michigan

Panda Buffet, located at 36101 Warren Road, is an all you can eat Chinese buffet restaurant featuring over 100 daily items which has opened within the past year. Along with Chinese cuisine, also offered are a Mongolian Bar, Diam Sum, Peking Sushi, various seafood items, and some American fare.

An adult lunch costs $6.99 Monday through Friday from 11:00AM-4:00PM, and an adult dinner costs $8.99 Monday through Thursday from 4:00PM-9:30PM. There is an all day Sunday special of $8.99. Crab legs are offered for $2.50 a pound on top of the regular buffet price. Drinks are extra, but there are free refills on fountain drinks.

Having gone for both lunch and dinner, there are some differences in what is offered. Items such as spring rolls, egg rolls, dumplings, vegetable lo mien, vegetable fried rice, General Tso's Chicken, chicken on a stick, green beans, pizza, French fries, stuffed mushrooms, crab Rangoons, seafood delight, Thai flavored chicken, chicken and broccoli, sweet and sour chicken, and several others are generally offered always (along with the Mongolian Bar and Sushi).

The times I have been there for dinner, additional dishes have included: crayfish, peppered shrimp, fried shrimp, crab cakes, potato skins, and a few others. There isn't really much offered which I don't enjoy, and I have pretty much tried everything. The food is always warm and fresh. Staff members are constantly stirring the trays to keep things evenly heated and fresher. None of the dishes are overly salty and I don't believe they use MSG (monosodium glutamate), as I never have been overly thirsty hours later after usually eating three to four full plates of food. The one dish I wouldn't recommend is the seafood bake, which might be the saltiest of all the dishes as there is a LOT of cheese in it.

My top three highly recommended dishes would include the peppered shrimp, General Tsao's Chicken, and the seafood delight, which consists of shrimp, imitation crab meat, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, and a few other vegetables in a white sauce. When you first arrive you pre-pay for your dinner before you are seated.

After being seated you are free to begin helping yourself and a staff member brings your drinks to your table. Upon finishing your dishes, staff members are very prompt and polite in removing dirty dishes from your table. They also do a great job of keeping the entire facility clean, as there are employees constantly wiping and cleaning around the actual buffet area.

They also have readily available hand sanitizer pumps all around the buffet area. I don't see this at many buffet places and think it is a great touch! Never do you then have to worry about whether someone before you coughed in their hands before using the serving spoons in the buffet. After serving up your plate, you have the ability to pump some sanitizer in your hands to cleanse them before resuming eating. No having to make three or four trips to the bathroom! Overall, I would highly recommend Panda Buffet if you are looking for a reasonably priced, good quality, clean, Chinese based buffet to spend a dinner out with friends, family, or co-workers.