Imperial Buffet - Shrewsbury: A Culinary Journey Awaits

So many options. I love this buffet. The food was delicious. The baked haddock, mushrooms, mei fun, spring rolls and the mapo tofu were all my favorites. So many healthy choices available. The sushi is perfect I enjoyed the desserts too! Fresh fruit, cream puffs, macaroons! They have a lot of American food options as well. Clean place. Excellent service. Can't wait to go back!

It was .... "meh". Sushi was made on demand, you order based on a list of available sushi rolls - which were the basics. Raw Tuna wasn't too fishy tasting, but a very basic roll. No Green Onion's to top Soup or Sushi, even upon request. No fresh cucumbers. Bacon Wrapped Shrimp was a plus, so was the fried Calamari. Crab clusters were small, and barely had any meat. Chicken was fried appropriately, most chicken dishes were good. Beef Teriyaki was exceptional as well. Crab Ragoons were chrispy. Service was prompt and friendly. Koi pond was cool.

Expectations impact impressions and thereby affect ratings even if I try to not let it. I am human, after all (sorta). We were driving home on a Friday evening, about to go past Boston, so we looked for a good place to eat that was easy and delicious. The ideal place for us would have been something like the now closed Minado's. Because of the misleading AI summary, we thought that was what this place was. Our expectations were definitely not met. This place is a typical Chinese buffet like 90 percent of the restaurants of this type. Describing the food here would be like describing a particular McDonald's restaurant as compared to the other McDonald's restaurants. In other words, basically the same selections, similar tastes, definitely nothing special. It's not bad, not great, but ok within the context of a run of the mill Chinese buffet restaurant. One " incident" that is more a commentary of the crazy US Tipping culture: I paid with a credit card, and we were rummaging our pockets for cash when the server took the signed credit card slip back to the cashier, so we were planning to leave the cash on the table. Cost was $47, I only had $20 bills in my wallet, so we were looking for loose cash of around $10 (which is fairly generous for a $47 bill, even under US standards). In the meantime, the manager came by, ready for battle, asking what was wrong, since there was no tip. We explained and everything was fine, but interestingly, this would never have happened in China or any place in Asia, as there, as in the rest of the world, Tipping is optional additional gratuity for additional service, NOT a culturally mandated subsidy of underpaid workers' basic salary...