Chinese Buffet Suck.

[ralerin]

On those buffets it's usually edible oil product, a.k.a. whipped topping, a.k.a. Cool Whip. Real whipped cream doesn't do as well when it sits out for a long time.

The whipped cream was real whipped cream in those pressurized canisters, on ice, fairly fresh ice so it was cold. They're good at keeping cold things cold there, but not at keeping hot things hot so you get accustomed to eating lukewarm . What place is good at keeping steaming hot pans of food...well...steaming hot? But still, if a typical can can hold 2-3 bowls of whipped cream, that's about 8-10 bowls of whipped cream for all 4 canisters. And he had to have eaten at least that. These are rather large soup bowls, too.

The place used to have a full sushi bar, pans heaping full of green beans, trays of Alaskan King crab legs, mounds of shrimp and pounds of mussels. Sushi bar is gone, crab legs are gone, green beans are gone, and mussels and shrimp are greatly diminished. It's starting to taste more like cheap Chinese mall food, really.

*WARNING, GROSSNESS BELOW, HIGHLIGHT TO READ*

@ Impri: There's a dish called "3 Ti" that a Chinese exchange student was telling my History professor about that the student enjoyed. It's called "3 Ti" because of the sounds it makes: A baby mouse squeaks when you pick it with your chopsticks, squeaks when you hold it in boiling water until it's cooked and squeaks when you crunch it between your teeth.

Another dish she enjoyed? Monkey in cage below a special table with a hole. The cage rises, the monkey's skull fits in the hole. They cut off the top of the monkey's head and pour boiling oil in, letting the monkey scream and thrash about and die before picking it out with chopsticks.

It just goes to show you that one man's stomach churner is another man's delicacy.

[Andara Bledin]

The place used to have a full sushi bar, pans heaping full of green beans, trays of Alaskan King crab legs, mounds of shrimp and pounds of mussels.

There's a Hokkaido Seafood Buffet near my place that has all of that. Plus a lot of Chinese buffet standards. And some Mongolian barbecue as well. It's a bit more expensive than your standard buffet, but they've got quite a selection.

And their hot dishes are kept hot just fine.

^-.-^

[PepperElf]

yum yum
and now Mr. Socks (the sock monkey) is hiding in the corner.

kinda reminds me of "Temple of Doom" and the yummy food they had O_o

[Captain Trips]

There's a fairly popular Chinese Buffet in my city that I guess recently went under new management.

1. The music used to be soft rock or instrumental versions of top 40 songs from the past 40 years played quietly...now we're talking about the most ear splitting techno I've ever heard. I like dance music and techno, but not when it's almost all I can hear. *OOMCHA OOMCHA OOOOMCHA BRRRRT OOOMCHA OOMCHA OOOMCHA BRRRRT*

2. I was picking up my plate to get some food (black pepper chicken om nom nom nom) when my hand went "squish" into something on the bottom of the plate. It was a wad of whipped cream. The next four plates underneath were dirty. I'm talking whipped cream, bits of dried on vegetable, sauce, that sort of thing. When I was picking up plates from the buffet after that, I had to check. 3 out of 4 plates after that were dirty.

3. Parenting suck! One kid, must've been around 9 ish, would pick up bowls and FILL them full of whipped cream. Out of the 4 canisters of cream, he emptied them all. Bowl after bowl after bowl of whipped cream, eaten with a spoon. Why didn't his mom tell him to leave some whipped cream for the other customers? Oh, right, because he's her special snowflake.

#1 is reason to never return
#2 is reason to call the health department
#3 should be (but probably isn't) reason to call CPS.

But, hey, that's just my opinion.

[Aut]

except that the plates weren't just dirty from the whipped cream
they also had dried on sauces...

Sounds like my 10 year old washed the dishes there.

[Flying Grype]

ralerin, unless you heard that from the student, I think your professor is distributing a racist little urban legend.

[zzapp the witch]

Lived down the street from a Mexican family a few years ago. We had block BBQ's on weekends, had a deal going with them, I supply the chocolate chip cookies, they supply me with OMG tamales. Three of the brothers worked in the kitchen at the (new) Chinese Buffet, I asked them how it was, they said they would never eat there.

And so I haven't either.

[Ben_Who]

Chinese buffet opens down the road from us. Very elegant place. The hostess wears a silken dress with a high collar and has an ivory comb in her hair. There's a fountain in the center with huge goldfish paddling friskily about. The place seats about a thousand. The food is exceptional, and I always feel underdressed there. I can sit and read the Sunday paper for an hour if I like, without feeling at all rushed. Very relaxed.

The clientele and the restaurant started galloping downhill at the same rate.

Today, the hostess wears a T-shirt and blue jeans. The fountain in the center is full of a greenish sludge with a few sad-looking goldfish still wandering aimlessly under the surface. The seats are breaking - probably because the average customer weighs about four hundred pounds. The food ranks slightly below the frozen foods section at the Save-A-Lot. The servers are all so tired that they can hardly stand up, and glare at you balefully as they address you across the grill. Customers graze the buffet aisles, piling their plates with mountainous heaps of chicken wings and crab rangoons. Children scamper thither and yon, unattended and sometimes shirtless. And every once in a while, frenzied yelling breaks out in the kitchen area, usually immediately before or after the clank of a pot or the crash of dishes hitting the floor.

The temptation is to see the place as a victim of its own success. Despite the early atmospheric touches, the inexpensive food attracted a certain breed of bargain hunter, and they essentially broke the place. However, I also understand that they've cultivated something of a history of treating their staff like crap, as well, forcing them to work fourteen-hour days and bribing them out of the bulk of their tips. I figure it's only a matter of time before the place is over.

Love, Who?

[ralerin]

Flying Gripe: Said professor hosts exchange students for the semester. So she heard it from one of the exchange students and talked about it as part of her lecture for that day. I don't know if it is an urban legend or not, maybe it is and the student was having fun with the professor, but I only heard it second hand.

[Ironclad Alibi]

ralerin, unless you heard that from the student, I think your professor is distributing a racist little urban legend.

I don't know about it being racist, but it is an urban legend according to an article in Wikipedia which says:

That the eating of the brains from living monkeys is part of some restaurants' menus is one well-known example of an urban legend.

[Amwhere]

Both of Chinese buffets around here are pretty good. I went to one once and I swear it was playing an orchestral version of a Final Fantasy 6 song.

There is an Indian food buffet here too that I tried once. While eating, some church member came to my table and offered my information on their church.... and the staff did nothing. Also, I had to keep shooing flies away. I haven't been back since.