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Last Update: Aug 19th, 2018
Miyako Buffet Fort Lauderdale

Miyako Buffet & Sushi

1157 S Federal Hwy
Pompano Beach FL, 33062
(954) 716-7908
Overall Rating
2.5
Food
Service
Ambiance
Value
Last Review
08/17/2018

Details

Hours: 11am-10pm
Attire: Casual
Parking: Private Lot
CC: Yes
Alcohol: No
Prices: M-F Lunch Buffet: 12.99 Dinner Buffet: 20.99 Sat-Sun $2 more
Outside Dining: No

Pros

Lots of Shrimp
Lots of Sushi Rolls
Food is Kept Fresh

Cons

No Dim Sum
Annoying Servers
No Sashimi
Poor Selection of Hot Food

Critic's Review

I had an errand to run out this way, so I decided to re-visit Miyako. I didn't expect anything different, but doing a buffet will always get you enough food to fuel you for the rest of the day.

Inside there's a hostess who'll show you to your table.

Miyako buffet entrance

I was hoping I wouldn't be seated at some inside table, and luckily I got a booth. The have swarming servers here who don't really do anything; I ordered an iced tea and hit the buffet.

Miyako buffet dining room

Starting off with soup and salad. They have 1 unmarked dressing; looked like either ginger or peanut. Didn't want that. Then they had a bottle of ranch, and oil and vinegar. If you're going to put out ranch, which not a couple of other choices? They all cost the same. I don't like ranch. I threw on some oil and vinegar and hit the soups.

The hot and sour looked good today, so I grabbed some of that.

Miyako buffet hot and sour soup

When I got back my tea was on the table.

Miyako buffet booth

I had some salad and some soup and some shrimp; they don't even partially clean the shrimp; they just cook them with the legs on and everything. Kind of a pain but the cocktail sauce was pretty good. The "chicken stick" wasn't too bad either. The cold asparagus was cooked properly but there was nothing to dress it with; no hollandaise sauce at the buffet.

Miyako buffet soup and salad

Hard to eat salad when there's a room full of hot food and sushi awaiting. The hot food is limited here; a lot of not so good looking stuff.

Miyako buffet hot buffet

I grabbed some crazy beef (pepper steak), teriyaki chicken, potstickers, fried rice and lo mein. Fried rice always stinks at a buffet, because it's really just steamed rice. Fried rice need to go right from the wok into the box or onto a plate.

Miyako buffet hot food plate

The pepper steak was ok; dumplings were a bit papery on the edges and the teriyaki beef, while it looked good, didn't taste like teriyaki and the chicken was kind of stringy. The best was the fried shrimp with the cocktail sauce I had leftover from the peel and eats.

I also got some mussels but they were pretty bland.

Miyako buffet mussels

Time for some sushi. They have lots of rolls. but I don't like the rolls with the sauce all over them.

Miyako buffet rolls

Limited sushi and no sashimi.

Miyako buffet sushi selection

I didn't really want much sushi; I grabbed some more of the shrimp as well. A bit of seaweed and a quail egg. You'd think a quail egg would just taste like a hard boiled egg, but it really tasted bad.

Miyako buffet sushi plate

The rolls were poorly constructed; they didn't stay together and the rice was too sticky.

Miyako buffet sushi plate

I wasn't really hungry at this point but I have to get ice cream at a Chinese buffet. Red bean and chocolate.

Miyako buffet ice cream

With all of the servers swarming, it would be nice if they picked up the plates when you made a run at the buffet. I also wasn't offered a refill until I asked for my check. The glass should have been filled while I was getting food. That's how these buffets should operate: You go to get food, you come back to a clean table with a topped off drink.

Miyako buffet slow service

I got my check, gave a generous 10% tip and was out the door $18 later.

Conclusion

As I was driving home I was thinking about whether this was worth $18. While you can certainly get your money's worth in terms of quantity, there was nothing that I really liked. For $18 i should get something I like.

Review 7/21/17

I went to Miyako when they first opened, and haven't been back since. There are some coupons floating that expired last year, but nothing current that I could use. Coupons are also cash only (they probably pocket it), so that wouldn't work for me anyway.

On a miserable rainy day where the cloud cover was so thick that my satellite radio couldn't get a signal for most of the trip over there, there were no spots close to the restaurant. If you've never been in this lot before you don't understand how ridiculous the layout is; everything is one way and there are all of these meandering turns. It's downright dangerous in this geriatric area of town.

I circled around a few times and finally saw someone pulling our right in front of the restaurant.

Miyako Entrance

I expected the place to be crowded, but at 2pm is was rather empty; not sure where all of the people parked outside were going. In an empty room the hostess put me way in the back corner, as far as I could be from the buffet. There's no good seating here so no need to complain.

Miyako Buffet Interior

Time to hit the buffet and see what they've got. There's a long counter in the back with hot food. They don't like people taking pictures at these buffets and I don't want some guy yelling at me in Chinese, so I refrain.

Miyako Buffet Counter

The hot and sour looked a big gloopy, so I went with the wonton soup., and I grabbed a plate of hot food. One issue with buffets is that everyone fishes out the wontons, so there's often just a pot of broth with a bunch of broken pasta in it. Today I nabbed a full dumpling.

Miyako wonton

As I sat down I realized there are no chopsticks on any of the tables. The one time I need a server none is around. I see one and make the chopsticks hand signal, and she brings them over. Everyone is using chopsticks (even those that don't know how), so why not just make them part of the setting? They're in paper, so if someone doesn't open them you can use them again.

Ho-hum, not great not bad. I got lemons for the tea, cocktail sauce for the 2 kinds of fried shrimp, a mozzarella stick (very Asian), mushrooms, teriyaki chicken, zucchini tempura, broccoli, a mussel and a chicken wing. The fried shrimp were good; everything else just served as calories and protein.

Miyako Buffet Plate 1

The teriyaki has more of a gas char taste than teriyaki, and the cheese pastry was completely useless.

Miyako Buffet Food

Music here leans house; nothing I could make out but it sounded more electronic than human. I asked one of the server girls about the wifi:

Me: "Do you know the WiFi Password?"
Her: "Behind the Hibachi"
Me: Confused face. "What?"
Her: "Behind Hibachi, Turn left".
Me: "The Wireless password" Holds up Phone.
Her: "Ohh", followed by somthing way to complicated to understand.
Me, giving up: "Ok, thank you".

LTE would have to do. Time for another plate.

Miyako Buffet Shrimp

Shrimp with lobster sauce, peel and eat shrimp, a crawfish, "Crazy Beef" aka Pepper Steak and some more puffy fried shrimp. The pepper steak was bad; the shrimp in the lobster sauce were nicely poached. The peel and eat shrimp at these buffets always fail, because they don't clean the shrimp.

Miyako Buffet Uncleaned Shrimp

Who wants to eat that Poo? They clean the shrimp for the fried and lobster sauce shrimp, why not clean the peel and eat shrimp too? It's even more noticeable and offensive when they're cold.

The servers are WAY too omnipresent, taking things you don't want them to take and constantly asking if everything is ok.

Time for the sushi bar.

Miyako Sushi

They have a large selection of rolls; lots of gloopy sauce that I don't care for. The point of sushi to me is that it's lean food. I brought a spattering of stuff back to the table.

Miyako Buffet Sushi

Very good tuna, "Escolar" that was probably something else, and ho-hum salmon. Rolls were fine. By now I'm not that hungry, but I have to get some ice cream. Red bean and chocolate.

Miyako Buffet Ice Cream

All the buffets likely have the same supplier for this stuff, so no surprised here. While I like the red bean ice cream, I don't care for the red beans. Not sure how the stuff is made.

$15.36 plus tax and tip. No bargain; one of the most expensive lunch buffets in town.

Conclusion

As with most of these Chinese sushi buffets, the value is in the sushi. The hot dishes are pedestrian, but you can certainly get your money's worth, particularly when you're comparing with the places with the $15 salads with chicken. A must-do once in a while; if you don't like shrimp or sushi then you should go somewhere else for lunch.

Review 4/23/15

A new sushi buffet opened up quietly in the Pompano Center where Carrabba's and the Walmart Supermarket reside; I don't follow Pompano too closely as there are a lot of little, inconsequential "restaurants" and many of them just aren't worth finding out about. This place is a bigger deal. The owner used to own a place called Wong's in Coral Springs.

There's a lot of useless stores in this center; places I've never been to like Beals and Woodcraft. I walked in to a festival of color; the place has a large buffet, along with the seemingly required indoor landscaping with moving water.

Miyako Water Scene

2 hostesses exchanged some words in a foreign tongue, and then one of them let me to a table. There are little sectioned-off areas with tables away from the buffet. The USA network with sub-titles on the TV. Better than Soccer I guess.

Miyako Dining Room

This is a copycat model from the waterfall to the unnecessary servers who want an 18% tip to bring you a beverage. I ordered an ice tea and hit the buffet; the first stop was the soups.

Miyako Soups

Like most "Sushi" buffets with Japanese names, the hot food is largely Chinese. Hot and Sour and Wonton Soup; the hot and sour was loaded with mushrooms and tofu; I grabbed a bowl of that.

Miyako Hot and Sour Soup

Lots of stuff in the soup, but not hot or sour. I couldn't save it; a couple of spoonfuls and off for another plate.

This time I hit the hot buffet, which consists of two table with serving dishes of stuff. I grabbed some teriyaki beef, grilled skewered chicken, green beens, salt encrusted shrimp, calamari and a dumpling.

Miyako Buffet Hot Food

The beef was much better than you usually find on a buffet; probably flank steak. I didn't like the shrimp, but everything else was well prepared. Their cocktail sauce has too much sugar and not enough horseradish; it's more like ketchup. But the calamari was still pretty good.

Miyako Buffet: Teriyaki Beef, Beans, Calamari, dumpling, Skewered Chicken and Shrimp

Off for another plate. My "server" was an annoyance. LEAVE ME ALONE. When my glass is empty, fill it. Otherwise stay away.

Off to the hot buffet again. Fried rice, lo mein, "Crazy" Beef and chicken with broccoli. As usual, I saw 0 people approach the hibachi. However this place has some hibachi grilled stuff on the buffet. I grabbed a piece of sausage.

Miyako Buffet: Fried Rice, Lo Mein, Chicken Broccoli, Hibachi Sausage, Crazy Beef

Everything on the place was good. Nothing "crazy" about the beef; was it supposed to be spicy? No, not really. I'm not a lo mein guy, but this stuff had some flavor. At 1:45 everything was still hot and nothing on the buffet looked old.

They also had breaded, butterflied fried shrimp, and the uncleaned, un deveined peel and eat shrimp. Again with the too-sweet cocktail sauce.

Miyako Shrimp and Cocktail Sauce

Off for some sushi. They had a WIDE selection of rolls. I don't like rolls with goop on them, so that eliminated half of them. Not much nigiri or sashimi. But if you like sushi rolls you'll find plenty that you like here.

Miyako Sushi Buffet Area

Good, fresh stuff. I peeled off tuna and salmon form the nigiri ; the tuna practically melted in my mouth.

Miyako Sushi Buffet Sushi

I wasn't really very hungry at this point, but had to do dessert at a buffet. I got what looked like a mini creme brulee, and what I though was red bean ice cream.

Miyako Dessert

A big NO on the creme brulee; it tasted like a bad pudding. The ice cream had no red beans; it may have been something else. Oh well, I wasn't that hungry anyway.

Conclusion

There's a new buffet on US1, and this one is worth the trip to the obscure neighborhood between Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton. This is an extensive buffet with well prepared food; while I didn't like everything, there was quite a bit that I did like. Lots of quality stuff, no nickel and diming; at least not yet. I say try the place before they become jaded and start cutting back on quality, as all buffets seem to do.

I'm still waiting for a buffet with a beverage station so I don't have to leave a tip; someone will break the ancient mold eventually.

Comment Policy Add Comment
J Clements
Reply
I have eaten at this buffet 4-5 times and enjoyed it each time. I have found the hot food to be good, not great, however always happy with it. I am at a loss on how these others found the food not at least OK.
Administrator
Reply
I don't see that anyone said the food was bad or terrible. People have different bars for what is "OK". If you've had good Chinese food you'd know this isn't it. Most people in SFL have never had good Chinese food.
Administrator
Reply
Looks like they either lowered their dinner price or the previous comment was in error
john
Reply
I've been a couple of times and it is pretty good.

BUT they have raised the price of the Dinner Buffet now from $ 18.95 to $ 24.95 without beverage so if you're not really hungry or have the time to eat multiple plates it's kinda expensive.

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