Peking duck, snow crab legs, spicy tuna rolls, prime rib, and crème brûlée usually belong to five completely different dinner plans. At Dynasty Buffet in Saddle Brook, they can all wind up on the same table before anyone has even decided what kind of meal they are having.
That is the fun of this sprawling Market Street buffet. The selection jumps from Chinese-American comfort food to sushi, raw shellfish, grilled meats, seafood, soups, salads, and desserts without asking diners to commit to any particular direction.
One plate might look carefully planned. The next could contain a short rib, three pieces of sushi, a stuffed crab, and a mozzarella stick because restraint disappeared somewhere near the seafood station.
Located at 383 Market Street in Bergen County, Dynasty is an old-school all-you-can-eat experience with enough variety to turn dinner into a strategy session. Come hungry, but more importantly, come prepared to pace yourself.
Dynasty Buffet Turns Dinner Into a Choose-Your-Own Feast
The first challenge at Dynasty is not finding something you want to eat. It is figuring out what deserves valuable plate space.
The restaurant’s menu stretches across seafood, sushi, grilled meats, Chinese favorites, soups, salads, familiar American comfort food, and desserts, making the sensible one-plate approach nearly impossible. Someone can start with miso soup and a California roll while the person across the table heads straight for prime rib and short ribs, and neither one is doing the buffet incorrectly.
That freedom is what separates a big buffet from merely a big pile of food. Dynasty has enough range that different people at the same table can essentially eat at different restaurants.
The sushi eater has rolls and fish. The seafood person can focus on shellfish and salmon.
Someone craving recognizable Chinese-American standards can load up on sesame chicken, lo mein, fried rice, dumplings, and shrimp with lobster sauce. Even the diner who wants something simple can find roast chicken, pot roast, fries, chicken fingers, or pasta vodka.
There are also plenty of little detours that make a first lap dangerous. Dim sum, shu mai, sesame balls, stuffed mushrooms, fried calamari, crab Rangoon, sweet potatoes, kielbasa, and spinach au gratin all appear among the broader lineup.
This is the kind of place where grabbing “just one” appetizer can quietly turn into half a plate. Dynasty is open for both lunch and dinner at its Saddle Brook location, with the restaurant currently listing hours until 9:30 p.m. most operating days and 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.
Tuesday is the regular closing day. The bigger practical lesson, though, is simpler: do not fill up during the reconnaissance lap.
The Seafood Spread Goes Well Beyond the Usual Buffet Line
There is a moment at plenty of buffets when the seafood section reveals itself to be little more than fried shrimp and a lonely tray of baked fish. Dynasty goes considerably further.
Its seafood lineup includes snow crab legs, raw clams, oysters on the half shell, mussels, chilled cocktail shrimp, stuffed crabs, baked scallops, salmon, baked red snapper, fried flounder, and several shrimp preparations. That makes it entirely possible to build a first plate without touching rice, noodles, or chicken at all.
Start cold with oysters, clams, and shrimp, then move toward the hot trays for baked salmon, scallops, or mussels. Salt-and-pepper shrimp adds a crisp, savory option, while walnut shrimp heads in a sweeter direction.
There is even shrimp with lobster sauce for anyone who wants to steer the plate back toward Chinese-American territory. The snow crab legs are the obvious attention-grabber.
They are exactly the sort of buffet item that can cause a small crowd whenever a fresh batch appears, and they make Dynasty feel less like a quick weekday lunch stop and more like a place where people arrive intending to get their money’s worth. Availability can vary, though, and the restaurant notes that menu items may change with seasonality and supply.
That caveat is worth remembering with any seafood buffet. The full spread is not necessarily identical during every service, particularly when moving between lunch, dinner, weekdays, and weekends.
Still, the range is unusually broad. A diner who loves seafood could ignore half the room and still assemble several completely different plates, moving from raw shellfish to crab, shrimp, salmon, and scallops without repeating much.
At a buffet built around excess choice, the seafood section could almost function as its own restaurant.
Fresh Sushi and Sashimi Give the Buffet a Serious Upgrade
Before committing to another spoonful of sesame chicken, take a look at the sushi counter. Dynasty says its sushi chef prepares more than 17 kinds of sushi and rolls each day, which is enough variety to make the counter more than an obligatory buffet afterthought.
The roll selection covers familiar territory without staying there. California rolls provide an easy starting point, while spicy tuna, spicy salmon, eel, Philadelphia, Alaska, salmon skin, spicy crab meat, dragon, cucumber, avocado-cucumber, and vegetable rolls give diners room to build a fairly substantial sushi plate.
The menu also lists individual fish options including salmon, tuna, mackerel, red snapper, and squid. The smartest approach here is restraint, at least initially.
Sushi is one of those buffet foods that occupies deceptively little visual space while filling you up quickly, especially once rice-heavy rolls enter the picture. Taking two or three favorites, wandering through the rest of the buffet, and returning later makes far more sense than building a miniature sushi boat on round one.
It also creates a completely different rhythm from the hot-food stations. One minute you are eating cool salmon or a spicy tuna roll; five minutes later you might be cutting into steak or cracking a crab leg.
That collision of options is basically Dynasty’s personality in edible form. Vegetarians are not limited to picking cucumber out of a California roll, either.
Cucumber, vegetable, and avocado-cucumber rolls join vegetable spring rolls, salads, rice, noodles, and various vegetable dishes elsewhere in the buffet. For groups, the sushi selection solves a familiar problem.
Not everyone hears “buffet” and immediately wants fried food or heavy entrées. Having a dedicated counter with multiple rolls and fish options gives lighter eaters somewhere to begin before the Peking duck inevitably complicates their plans.
Peking Duck Prime Rib and Grilled Meats Bring the Heavy Hitters
Somewhere between the sushi counter and dessert, Dynasty stops feeling like a typical Chinese buffet and begins behaving like several dinner concepts that have been squeezed into one room. Prime rib appears on the same menu as Peking duck.
Steak shares space with short ribs. Barbecue spare ribs, country ribs, turkey, pot roast, roast chicken, honey roast chicken, and teriyaki chicken make the meat selection almost aggressively broad.
Peking duck is the item that immediately changes expectations. It is not something diners automatically assume they will find beside buffet standards, and its presence makes it easy to build a plate that feels much more ambitious than the usual fried rice and chicken combination.
Add a few slices alongside vegetables, then come back later for steak or short ribs rather than trying to sample every premium meat at once. The grill side of the operation is equally dangerous for anyone who arrived claiming they would “just have a light dinner.” Steak, short ribs, and spare ribs introduce the smoky, savory flavors that make a second plate feel entirely different from the first.
Prime rib adds another carve-and-return temptation, particularly for diners who would normally choose a steakhouse over a buffet. Then there are the quieter choices.
Pot roast and roast chicken bring home-style familiarity. Turkey makes an appearance.
Kielbasa sits among the broader assortment like someone invited a backyard cookout to join dinner. Even hamburger steak is listed.
That variety is useful because not every diner wants to chase the most expensive-looking item in the room. One person may be here for duck and prime rib while another is perfectly happy with roast chicken, vegetables, and potatoes.
The result is a buffet where the meat station is not simply filler between seafood and Chinese entrées. It is one of the main reasons a supposedly organized meal can unravel into several unrelated but very enjoyable courses.
Chinese Favorites Make It Easy to Build a Second or Third Plate
After the crab legs, sushi, and Peking duck get all the attention, the familiar Chinese dishes quietly do some of the most important work. They are the foods that make Dynasty feel comforting rather than purely extravagant, and they give repeat visits something to fall back on when nobody feels like engineering the perfect buffet plate.
Sesame chicken is there, naturally, along with chicken with broccoli, pepper steak, vegetable lo mein, vegetable fried rice, boneless spare ribs, chicken on the stick, shrimp with lobster sauce, and pork egg rolls. Dumpling territory includes shu mai and shrimp-and-pork dumplings, while vegetable spring rolls and crab Rangoon handle the crisp, grab-one-on-the-way-past category.
There are a few less predictable options mixed in, too. Seafood rice noodles, mustard greens, salted string beans, mini clams with black bean sauce, tripe, Shanghai vegetables, and teriyaki salmon create enough range that adventurous eaters do not have to spend the whole meal circling the most familiar trays.
Soup deserves a little consideration before everyone becomes obsessed with the hot line. Dynasty lists wonton, hot-and-sour, egg drop, miso, shrimp chowder, chicken escarole, and cream of broccoli.
That is an unusually broad soup lineup for a buffet, and a small bowl can be a smarter opening move than immediately stacking a plate three inches high. This is also where mixed groups tend to do well.
A cautious eater can stick with fried rice, noodles, chicken, and an egg roll. Someone more curious can try tripe or clams in black bean sauce.
Kids who reject both plans still have options such as fries, mozzarella sticks, chicken fingers, and corn. By the second or third trip to the buffet, those familiar dishes become especially appealing.
After bouncing between oysters, sushi, steak, and duck, a scoop of lo mein and a couple of dumplings can feel almost remarkably sensible.
Crème Brûlée, Cheesecake, and Soft Serve Make Saving Room Worth It
The dessert station contains the final trap. Just when a diner has decided there is absolutely no physical space left, Dynasty presents crème brûlée, cheesecake, tiramisu, coconut cake, carrot cake, chocolate cake, cream puffs, cookies, fresh fruit, and soft-serve ice cream.
Crème brûlée is the standout simply because it is not standard buffet equipment. Seeing the custard dessert after several rounds of crab legs and Peking duck feels slightly absurd in the best possible way.
It also gives the meal a more polished finish than grabbing a cookie on the way out, though there is nothing wrong with doing both. Anyone who prefers classic dessert-counter choices has plenty of backup.
Cheesecake and chocolate cake bring the richness, while tiramisu and coconut cake offer different directions. Cream puffs are small enough to justify the dangerous phrase “I’ll just try one.” Soft serve, meanwhile, remains undefeated when a table includes children or adults who become children around an ice cream machine.
Fresh fruit provides an escape hatch from all that sugar. Watermelon, honeydew, cantaloupe, pineapple, kiwi, grapes, and oranges are listed among the choices, making it possible to finish with something lighter after a meal that may have involved three proteins and several kinds of shellfish.
Dynasty’s location at 383 Market Street keeps the whole production firmly in Saddle Brook rather than inside a casino or enormous resort complex, which makes the scale of the menu feel even more unexpected. It is simply a Bergen County buffet where a dinner can begin with oysters, wander through sushi and Peking duck, detour into prime rib, and somehow conclude with crème brûlée.
By dessert, the only thing tying the meal together may be the fact that everything fit on plates from the same restaurant. That is precisely the point.
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