First off, this story is a bit long but if you’re planning a visit to Campbell River and hope to find a good Chinese buffet lunch or dinner, PLEASE read this first before going to Chan’s.

After having eaten at buffets that offer more than 100 items, I didn’t expect the same standards from this restaurant with its somewhat meager selection of 17-20 items. Given that it’s in a small town, having a Chinese buffet in the first place is impressive. That being said, I believe I have found an all-time low for a buffet-style restaurant. My party arrived at noon (when restaurants should be running full-swing for lunch) and we were greeted by a surly Chinese man who turned out to be the manager, waiter, dishwasher, and chef. There were about 4 other small parties besides us already in the restaurant.

The food: The selection, granted that this restaurant is located in the relatively small town of Campbell River, was full of somewhat standard dishes (fried rice, chow mein, ginger beef, teriyaki chicken, some mixed vegetables, and eggrolls). Most of the food was either cold or just plain un-chewable due to being left out too long.

A bunch of us asked the manager for some more chow mein since there wasn’t any left. He mentioned that he was out of chow mein (what happened to the buffet-all you can eat?) So…we asked him to make some more potstickers, to which he replied that we would have to wait a long time. We said fine (after some pause) and proceeded to wait about 15 minutes for the potstickers to arrive. When he finally did bring the potstickers out, he brought a grand total of 8 potstickers (gee, I guess everyone in the restaurant is supposed to share one-half of each potsticker?) A couple near us asked him for some more eggrolls and was told that “it was coming…”. Well, 10 minutes later, he brought out 4 eggrolls. That’s right, 4 eggrolls for a restaurant with 16 customers.

We had a good laugh but decided to forgo asking the manager again for more food to be brought out since it was clearly a sore point for the manager to have to cook up something and bring it out. We proceeded to pay the bill except the manager accidentally rung up one person as an adult rather than at the senior price. Instead of fixing it, he told us that since he had already rung up our bill, he couldn’t go back and change it. So…I said fine, just charge the full amount to my credit card and give us a cash refund of the difference. To this, he replied that he couldn’t do that because he had rung up the full amount in his cash register. Well, at this point, I was thinking that this guy was clearly lying so I told him, I’d only pay him the appropriate bill since he advertised a senior price at the front door and was making some nonsense excuse of not being able to void a transaction. Well, after about 5 minutes of back and forth useless arguing, he grudgingly took my cash payment (with the senior price accounted for). Then, he quickly ignored us and headed straight into the kitchen.

Needless to say, we will never be going back to Chan’s. I would have given this restaurant half a star but the lowest possible seems to be one star. Save your money and enjoy a nice lunch/dinner elsewhere. If by some unforeseen reason you are forced to eat at Chan’s, make sure you tell him if you have seniors in your party before he seats you otherwise be prepared for a fight.