Mandarin Restaurant Menu With Prices in Canada

Most restaurant menus price a plate. Mandarin's busiest section prices a seat. Buffet Dine-In runs 16 lines and not one of them names a dish — they name days of the week and dates on the calendar, and the difference between the cheapest and the most expensive of them is $14.

The buffet is priced by when you walk in

Two tiers, each split between weekdays and weekends. The lower tier is $25.99 Monday to Thursday and $29.99 Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The upper tier is $35.99 Monday to Thursday and $39.99 Friday to Sunday. Which tier applies depends on the sitting, not the food.

Then the calendar takes over. Fourteen named holidays are listed with their own prices. Family Day, Good Friday, Victoria Day and Canada Day are $29.99. Civic Holiday, Labour Day, Thanksgiving Day, Boxing Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day and Christmas Day are $39.99 — weekend money regardless of what day of the week they land on. New Year's Day appears in the list with no price attached to it.

Family dinners charge about the same per head

The five Special Family Dinners scale almost linearly. Dinner for Two is $38.99, for Three $53.99, for Four $73.99, for Five $95.99 and for Six $110.99 — the highest price on the menu. Divide those out and you get $19.50, $18.00, $18.50, $19.20 and $18.50 a person. There is no meaningful volume discount; the larger sets simply add dishes. Dinner for Six brings Black Pepper Steak, Cantonese Chow Mein and Peking Style Pork that the smaller sets do not.

For one person the equivalent is the Combo Platters section: a Vegetable Combo at $11.99, Combination A and Combination B at $15.49 each, and a Shrimp Combo at $16.99.

What à la carte actually costs

Only 34 of the 126 items come in under $10, and the 22 under $5 are almost entirely not food you would order as a meal — a Package of Sauce at $0.10 is the menu floor, then sauces at $2.90 to $4.99, soft drinks at $2.49, Dasani water at $1.99, an Egg Roll or two Vegetable Spring Rolls at $2.49, and most of the dessert list between $1.99 for Fortune Cookies and $5.99.

The mains sit in tight bands. Chicken runs $14.99 to $17.99 across thirteen dishes, with Chicken with Broccoli, Curry Chicken and Sweet & Sour Chicken Balls at the bottom and Teriyaki Chicken at the top. Beef is $15.99 to $17.99. Seafood spreads widest, from a $14.99 Golden Fried Fish Fillet to $19.99 Kung Pao Shrimp, the priciest single dish. Rice makes the starkest contrast: Steamed Rice is $4.49 and Chicken Fried Rice is $12.99.

Calories are printed on nearly everything

This menu is unusually complete on nutrition, which makes some comparisons possible that other pages here cannot support. Honey Garlic Spareribs are listed at 2,290 calories and Honey Garlic Chicken Wings at 2,120 — the two highest figures on the list. Sweet & Sour Chicken Balls come in at 1,790 for $14.99. At the other end, the four soups are all $5.99 and all between 120 and 310 calories.

Do prices vary across Canada?

Mandarin buffet pricing is the figure most likely to differ from what you see on the page, because it is set per location and because a restaurant can move a holiday date or a tier without republishing anything. Children's and seniors' rates are handled in-restaurant and are not part of the list above. All amounts are before tax, which is provincial. Use the day-of-week and holiday structure as the guide to how the charge is built rather than as the exact amount you will be billed.