98 Pounds Restaurant

824 W 98th St
Bloomington, MN
952-881-1088
http://www.98poundsbuffet.com/

Category: Chinese, Japanese, Buffet

Rating (Scale 1-10, with 10 being the highest):
Food: 5
Service: 7
Ambience: 8

Recommendation: Average. If you’re really hungry, on a tight budget, and want to sample various cuisines, 98 Pounds will work well for you. Personally, we’d rather have a smaller selection of better than average food over the gargantuan buffet.

Over the lunch hour a few weeks back, my (Nick) coworkers convinced me to join them at 98 pounds. I had heard about this place and seen countless ads on the local buses and wasn’t enthused. The idea of all you can eat Chinese and Sushi for $8 isn’t very appealing (I drive by the Atlantic buffet in Bloomington a few times a week and till now have brushed off offers to eat lunch there). With 98 Pounds I decided to be a trooper and relented to their cries. When we entered, we were greeted by a long line out the front door (you have to pay first when you enter and this made the process a little unwieldy). The space itself is quite impressive – its clean and in good shape. It’s a large restaurant and there are several buffet tables that adorn the space. The rich wood motif, latticework, and decorative accents caught me by surprise – 98 Pounds exudes a relatively upscale tone (compared to most ethnic restaurants).

The buffet spread is where things are a little out of control with plenty of Chinese, Sushi and Continental selections, not to mention the fruit spread which rivals some grocery stores. I wanted to stick to the Chinese food, but in the interest of providing a holistic review, ventured into the other cuisines. The Chinese selections were actually pretty good with the zesty Pepper Chicken and creamy Coconut Shrimp deserving special mention. The Sushi buffet table had a large selection and although nothing was memorable, it wasn’t disgusting or fishy either (you could tell from the loosely rolled sushi that it wasn’t rolled meticulously). Between the salmon, tuna, eel, vegetable, crab and shrimp selections you have a choice of about 20 sushi rolls. If you’re not in the mood for Chinese or Japanese, you can try the continental food which consists of salads, shrimp and chicken options and pizza. For dessert, you can go with the fruit bar (which includes mango) or make your own sundae with hot fudge or the bananas in a hot pink strawberry sauce.

$. This buffet-only restaurant charged $7.99 for the lunch buffet and $12.49 for the dinner buffet. You can also do carryout for $4.29/lb.