Hokkaido Seafood Buffet

Address:
2200 Bridgepointe Pkwy
San Mateo, CA 94404
(650) 212-2688

The two of us went there for lunch today. $10.99 per person.

The selection was good but the quality was very disappointing. The hot dishes are on par with Indulgence buffet in Belmont but the sushi at Indulgence buffet are better. Todai in Cupertino has better food. Here are some specifics:

Food that were okay:
- Hot and sour soup
- Tandoori chicken wings
- Buns with red bean and buns with yellow filling
- Cherry tomatoes
- Sticky rice with pork covered in lotus leaf
- Edamame (Japanese beans)

Disappointments:
- Any dish with shrimp - the shrimps were all soft and falling apart. Not sure whether they were overcooked/re-cooked or just spoiled. No taste either.
- Any sushi with fish - fish did not taste fresh at all - a little rubbery and with a strange taste
- Sushi with sea weed - we love sea weed but their sea weed had a weird taste and smell
- Mussels - smelled spoiled
- Deep-fried imitation scallops and crab claws - no taste of scallop or crab - they were deep-fried flour
- Jellyfish - similar to unchewable plastic bag
- Short ribs - no meat, just fat
- Broiled salmon - the meat was white so we weren't sure it was salmon; strangely enough, it was sour and tasteless at the same time
- Tofu - looked like tofu except it tasted like rectangular fish ball, only it tasted terrible
- "Tofu skin" roll - another tough-to-chew dish
- Melon - no taste; cantaloupe - too ripened
- I expected shrimp dumplings but I didn't see any. They would probably taste horrible anyway.

We went there because the TV commercial made the food look really delicious. During the meal and afterward, we regretted going here instead of going to the Korean BBQ in Santa Clara.

I don't know how much the restaurant paid for the ingredients - but it must be very, very little. We hate wasting food - that's why we always sample a small portion of only the dishes we want first. At this buffet, even with this approach, we ended up wasting quite a bit of food because the food was just that bad. We will never go there again.