buffet – Dating & Dining

Jason’s Take

The normal cycle for a Chinese restaurant runs something like this:

Restaurant opens.
The owners want to build a clientele, so they rock the food. Everything is awesome and the service is great.
The owners realize how slim the margins are when you run a restaurant, so they cut back on the food quality. Egg rolls are bought frozen, and taste suffers.
People quit coming.
Store closes, unless they are primarily a money-laundering operation.

Grand City Buffet in St. Louis Park ran through this cycle in about 6 years. Their replacement, Ichiban Asian Buffet, has skipped step two completely. They did a great remodel and the place looks wonderful. I walked in and saw the giant sushi bar with dedicated sushi chefs and was ready to be wowwed.

Unfortunately, the food doesn’t live up to the classy decor.

The Thai Chicken was good…until I found a feather.

The egg rolls were really good, which is pretty rare at a buffet, and one of my benchmark tests for new Chinese restaurants in general.

The sushi spread was impressive, but it all tasted the same.

I did find out today that cold squid rings are not worth eating, at least not when they are meant to be served warm. Really, the first thing a buffet restaurant needs to do is make sure the steam tables keep the food at a safe temperature.

All in all, I can’t give it a zero, because the atmosphere is nice and classy. The food was mostly bland or cold, though a few pieces were good.

Jason’s Rating: 1 out of 5, just for the quality remodel. I hope the next owners do something about the food.

Linda’s Take

Today we decided to go on a lunch date and bring our girls with us. I suggested we try a new Chinese buffet that opened about a month ago, thinking that there should be great new food there.

Boy was I wrong!

The place looks wonderful–great atmosphere–but 95% of the food was cold and not very flavorful. Everything looked pleasing to the eye, but not to the taste buds.

However, if you are looking for place to get a cheap lunch for the kids, it will do the trick. They do have a few good looking deserts and all of the fruit looked really fresh.

But I will not be going back to this place, even to take the kids if they are hungry. I would rather wait to get home.

Linda’s Rating: I give this place a 1 out of 5 pants off.
Total Rating

Linda’s Take

Well both thought it would be a good idea to expose our kids to different types of ethic foods. The first place that came to my mind was a little hole-in-the-wall place in a strip mall near by called Best of India. I like the idea of the buffet for the kids. That way they can look at the food to see what they want to try, then go back and try something else.

The lunch buffet wasn’t very expensive.

This is a small place. The staff was really nice and asked us a few times if the kids were having fun and liked items they were serving.

Just about everything that I tried was really good. I can’t complain about any of the food to much. Some of it was a little dry, but for the most part the manager made sure everything was fresh on the buffet.

However, the only thing that kinda turned me off to this place is that the buffer was located in the far back kinda in the kitchen/cleaning area,but understand that this is a small place. Also the buffet is very small; not a lot of items to choose from. However, the manager noticed that Jason got a couple of helpings of mango pudding and he said that he made it himself. I have to admit, the mango pudding was very tasty.

Overall I give this place only 2 out of 5 pants off.

I just wasn’t really impressed.

Jason’s Take

I dig Indian food. That probably comes from spending six years working for an Indian immigrant who liked to throw parties at his house and serve Indian food.

I also like forcing my kids to try new food.

That combination led us to Best of India in the TexaTonka neighborhood of St. Louis Park.

The place is small; it probably seats 25 people. With so little room, they set up the buffet in the kitchen, which is weird. And the buffet is small, though the food was good. The naan was great. The mango pudding was wonderful.

Side note: I love mango pudding, and the formerly-best-place-to-get-it started making it out of a box or something nasty, so I hadn’t had any in a while.

The food was good, and cheap. I like that combination. One of my kids was a brat and only ate naan, which was irritating.

No dancing girls, which was expected.

I give it 3 out of 5 pants off.

Total Score

2.5 out of 5 Pants Off