Critic's Review
I felt like doing a buffet, and Koijin didn't interest me, so I took a ride up to Shinju in Coral Springs. I had some other business along the way, so it worked out ok.
Shunju's are the nicest of the buffets, at least in terms of decor and service. They're well run operations. They seated me at a booth (good) right behind the service station (bad), so I got to hear lots of chinese banter while I ate.
I got here at 2pm; they serve until 3pm at this location. Some of there locations serve lunch until 3:30.
I ordered an iced tea and started with a hot and sour soup, as I always do with Chinese soup. Hot and Sour soup is like pizza; I almost never like what I get, but I keep trying. This stuff looked nice, but was neither hot nor sour. Pepper couldn't save it, luckily at a buffet I don't feel compelled to eat it.
Of course the good thing about a buffet is that lemon is on the buffet, so I don't have to ask for it from the server. You don't really have a server here; the host took my tea order and nobody said a word to me during my entire time here.
The hot buffet is smallish; about 8 hot items and 8 "dough" deep fried items. The hot stuff was pretty good quality. Just the one section for hot food.
My first plate was everything I wanted to try from the hot food selection.
Some sort of seafood medley, stir fries steak, baked mushrooms. green beans, "cheesy crab" and lo Mein. All but the cheesy crab was good. I didn't detect much cheese in the crab.
Usually I can get 2 plates of hot food, but not here today. They put out some bourbon chicken, which was tough and contrived. Steamed fried rice is never good. A good, well-done chicken wing and some sushi. They also didn't have much sushi to my liking. No sashimi, and some whitefish that looked too gray for me to try. I had to go back to get some pickled ginger.
I also grabbed some wonton soup, with was kind of tricky. It was a big bowl of broth with about 3 wontons in the bowl; getting them out was like bogging for apples. They probably were good at one point, but by now the noodles were so overcooked that they were losers.
Random nothingness on the TVs. Chinese people never watch the news, and I guess they don't own stocks.
Still hungry, I went back grazing to see what I could find. The only hot item I hadn't tried as the spicy chicken with broccoli, but the broccoli looked old. Some cold calamari rings; probably the result of 2:30 at a lunch buffet. A badly overdone fried dumpling. Uncleaned, unsalted boiled shrimp and some more steak which was now too well done. You've got to get to a buffet earlier.
I didn't eat much of plate 3. I had to get some ice cream to finish off. Red bean and chocolate.
The girl was right behind me but I still had trouble conveying that I wanted my bill.
Conclusion
I thought the food was better at the Davie and Boca locations, but I haven't been to those in a while. At 11.95 for lunch and $18.95 for dinner, you can certainly get your money's worth, particularly if you like sushi. Considering that you're getting ripped-off with $10 sandwiches just about everywhere now, the buffets continue to be a good value.