This is a new buffet that we found in a way by happy accident. One of our regular readers emailed to let me know of the reopening of an Asian buffet in Baldwin, New York. The buffet that he told me about was renamed Island Buffet. I put that tip in the back of my head. A short time later in the local newspaper there were coupons for the grand opening of a new Asian buffet in Baldwin, NY. I just assumed that this was the buffet that our reader had told me about and we clipped the coupon and decided that we would give it a try when we had the opportunity. That opportunity came and with coupon in hand we went out on a Friday evening for dinner at the new buffet. We arrived at the location of the buffet that we knew and it seemed that the address on the restaurant that we passed quickly driving down a busy road to get to the parking lot on the next street that was behind the restaurant was wrong. We parked and walked around to the front and the address did not match the coupon that we had. The name of the restaurant that we could now clearly see did not match either. We were standing in front of Island Buffet. The ad and coupons were for Flaming Grill Buffet. At the time I did not remember the name that our reader had told me and we decided that this unknown buffet might be fine, we had no idea about the price and we set out looking for the address on the ad for Flaming Grill Buffet. As it turned out we had passed that about two streets down in a strip shopping center.
When we arrived at the parking lot for Flaming Grill Buffet there were large banners announcing its grand opening. We walked up to the restaurant and the windows in the front were blacked out. We could not see inside. There were people coming out and we went in. Inside was far more impressive than the plain storefront appearance of the outside. There was a very large and nicely decorated restaurant behind those blacked out windows. There was a short line to get in. Like the chain buffets you pay as you enter this buffet. The price is $10.99. There are two children's prices according to age. The lunch buffet is $7.99. Soft drinks (Pepsi products) with unlimited refills are $1.69. We had a coupon for $9.49 each. We paid at one of the two cash registers. When you pay you are asked what drink you are having and that is put down on your receipt. You then walk a few feet down to the host who you show your receipt to and you are seated. Everyone was extremely pleasant.
The buffet was crowded and at this excellent price it is no wonder. I am always skeptical in this area if a price seems too low, but this buffet proved to be both good in value and food. There is a dining room along the right side of the building with a view of the buffet and a narrower dining room on the left side of the building walled off from the buffet. There is also a party room in the rear. We were asked if we preferred a table or a booth and I asked for a table. We were escorted to the dining room on the right side. As we entered the dining room and were shown to our table I was uncertain. The room was on the dark side - though very nicely decorated but not as bright as the larger dining room on the other side. It looked as if the kitchen was located in the middle of this dining room but as it turned out it was just a large service area for drinks and a place for the servers to bring the used dishes. As I saw later on the rear side of that service area was another section of this same dining room. We went right up to the buffet to get started.
The buffet servers are numerous. There are eight large buffet servers all together in addition to a hibachi grill area and a large rectangle buffet server open in the middle with one side with sushi, a short side with oriental cold prepared salads, and the other long side with a large dessert buffet including full size layer cakes and a chocolate fountain. This chocolate fountain was encircled in a see through plexiglass case with a door that was open for access to the hot, flowing chocolate. There were employees in the middle, some preparing sushi and others putting out the cakes. The other short side had plates. We counted five hot buffet servers and three cold buffet servers in addition to the grill and sushi/dessert island. Almost a third of this large restaurant is the buffet. I should add that not only were the hot buffet tables steam tables but over each tray was a heating lamp. This kept everything at just the correct temperature.
We walked around the entire buffet before we found the soup which shared a hot server with other hot foods. There were four soups - wonton with the wontons in the soup and not in a steam server on their own, egg drop, hot and sour, and miso. I scooped a wonton out of the wonton soup, put it in my bowl and filled my bowl with egg drop soup. The soup was very good and the wonton was what a wonton should be - light, full of meat and tasting just like the wontons taste in a menu Chinese restaurant. This was the best wonton that I have had at a buffet. I bit into it and smiled. It was not what I expected. It was - in my opinion - a properly cooked, real Chinese restaurant wonton. This meal started off well!
I next went up for sushi - and my picky eater wife went up for dumplings. There were many different types of sushi rolls and there were four types of nigiri - raw fish on rice. I took salmon nigiri and tuna nigiri. There were two other types of fish - one with the skin on - that I did not recognize. The sushi bar did not have labels. Everything else in the buffet did. I went over to where there were other cold fish items and I saw that the cold, raw oysters were being refilled. A woman was emptying a tray of oysters onto a bed of ice. I am hesitant about eating raw oysters at a buffet unless I see that they are moist and fresh looking, that they have not been sitting, and that they are on a good layer of ice. These looked just that way and I took three. At the side was a server with cocktail sauce and I added a dollop to each. The sashimi was good - not fancy Japanese buffet good but fresh and good. The oysters were cold, wet, and fresh but each had some remnants of shell - not what a well opened oyster should have. I had to be very careful as I scooped the oyster into my mouth to find the bits of shell and not chew or swallow them. The oysters tasted good, but beware of the shell. Despite the shell this buffet was still going strong!
My wife had chosen a selection of the dumplings that they had, and on my next plate that is what I went for. There was a meat filled shu mai, a pan fried mixed meat and vegetable dumpling, and a steamed pork bun. There was dumpling sauce next to the pan fried dumplings. Shu mai is my least favorite dumpling and I usually do not take it. I wanted to see how this one stacked up against the dry ones I have often had at Chinese buffets. This one was light and moist. The meat may have been chicken, perhaps mixed with pork. The meat was light in color and very nice tasting. I was glad that I tried it. I then tasted the pan fried dumpling which had a mixture of pork and chopped greens inside. The dumping was light, thin and not doughy or chewy. It had a nice flavor. I saved the pork bun for last. This is a steamed round mound of light dough filled with chopped pork in the center. The dough was thick but properly cooked in the steamer and the pork center was tasty. Another very pleasing course!
I am not going to try to list all that was on the buffet. Things will certainly change from night to night. There was a lot of dishes. There were many hot appetizers, Asian entrees, vegetable dishes, seafood dishes, and side dishes. I will share what I had.
On my trip around the buffet looking at all that there was to choose from, I spotted a tray of spare ribs. These were not Chinese spareribs but more country spareribs. They were covered in a brown barbecue sauce that was not overly sweet or overwhelming. They were laid out on the tray in sections of three meaty ribs and there was a carving knife out to cut less if you did not want three. The ribs were moist and meaty. These are similar to other "country" style ribs that I have had at SOME other Asian buffets. They were good. Do not expect smoker ribs or real country ribs. But they tasted good, the meat came off the bone with little effort, and there was a lot of meat on each rib.
I tried stuffed scallops which were scallop shells halves filled with fresh tasting chopped scallops, some mayonnaise, and melted cheese cooked under a broiler. The taste was distinctly scallops - which is good. They were a pleasant change from the usual stuffed clams which in other buffets are all breading. There was little - if any breading in these. (They had stuffed clams as well but I did not try those.) I also tried half a stuffed blue crab. This was a half blue crab cooked in its shell with legs and claw. There was a very light breaded coating on the outside of the shell. There was little meat in the half crab but it was tasty. (There are on crab legs here.) There were also small, fried crab cakes which they called crab pastries. These were deep fried with a light crab and breadcrumb mixture inside. They were tasty. There was also fried talapia - thick chunks of talapia deep fried and breaded. That was tasty as well. I also tried shrimp and vegetables which was shrimp in a light white sauce with slices of carrots and chunks of zucchini. It was very good - the zucchini tasted very fresh. There was a light buttery taste to the sauce. My wife liked this also and took more when she went back.
In addition to egg rolls and spring rolls, they had a "house special" roll. This was a long thin rolled wrapper around chopped pork and vegetable and deep fried. This was a cross between a spring roll and an egg roll but longer than either of those. It was a little greasy but good.
There were many meat dishes all over the buffet. I tried chicken with black pepper which was good. I tried hibachi beef - not from the grill but from the buffet - which was very good. On one buffet there was a tray of a whole baked ham in pineapple sauce. Next to that was a tray of slices of roast beef. There was also steamed whole talapia in ginger sauce that was cut into pieces including the whole head if you cared to take that. I have never seen a whole talapia fish before. I like talapia, but talapia is a fish that gets bad write ups as far as being one of the least healthy fishes. I will not go into that here and if you want to learn more just Google talapia.
It was easy to find something to eat on any one of the five hot buffet servers. There is also the hibachi grill - with a line of about eight or so people most of this night. I was not sure if I wanted to keep sampling the buffet selections or go to the hibachi grill and create a plate. If I did I knew that there would be no room for anything else. I saved this for the end and before I was too full to enjoy it. There are a number of things on the hibachi cold selection to put on your plate to give to the chef at the grill to cook for you. There were some things that you don't often see - at least at buffets here - one of those was whole eggs in the shell. I have only seen this in Asian buffets in Virginia and at one of those I tried it. The egg is cracked and mixed into all the rest that you select when it goes on the grill. No one here that I saw tried this. I did not either - I might on a return trip as I liked it when I had it in Virginia. Anyway, there was also white rice to add to your mix. This made hibachi rice on the grill mixed into your other selections. (There is also ready made hibachi rice on the buffet.) There were peeled raw shrimp and Krab (not real crab). All of the meats were frozen - as they are at many Asian buffets. The chicken was in big pieces not thin slices. There were pieces of pork. There were also fairly large, but not thick steaks. As usual, you fill your plate with cold items and when it is your turn the grill chef takes it and cooks it on the solid grill. People were getting up to the chef who was asking them for their plate. As they handed it him they were giving him very detailed instructions - make it medium well, I want a lot of teriyaki sauce, do this, do that. He seemed to be half listening and cooking things as he wanted to. I purposely did not give him any instructions and he cooked everything just about the same. Some asked directly as they were watching theirs cooked to put more sauce on or add garlic or add hot pepper - which he did. But for the most part he cooked the meat well and added teriyaki sauce unless you told him not to. He cooked mine and scooped it onto a clean plate when it was ready and handed it to me. I choose a steak, bean sprouts, mushrooms, and zucchini. It tasted good. The steak was very tough. As in most of the Chinese buffets with hibachi grills in this price range what looks like steak is usually thick sliced beef cut into steaks (which is what steaks are) but these are not steak cuts of meat. The steak was cooked on the grill and laid whole over the vegetables when it was all done. I cut it up myself when I got back to the table and mixed it together. It was fine.
Dessert. There was an excellent assortment of desserts here - and not the little sheet cakes cut into squares. There were three whole layer cakes - slice yourself a slice - big or small. My wife tried the chocolate cake - all chocolate and it was good. There were a number of puddings, etc. and a lot of types of fresh fruits, as well as canned fruits. There was a freezer chest with ice cream bars, cups, and the like. There were lots of desserts here - and they looked and were good. Enough said.
The service was excellent. Everyone who worked here was Asian - they all spoke perfect English. Everyone was pleasant. Our server took dishes away as soon as they were finished. She came over several times to ask if we wanted drink refills - and got them quickly. She was at a nearby table talking to a couple and answering questions about dishes - and suggesting things to try. She was concerned that an older man was OK when he seemed a little unsteady. She also was taking pictures of the people at the table next to us with their phone - making sure to take two to get a good shot. This was way beyond any server at an Asian buffet that I have experienced. When she sees that you are done with the meal - and never rushed us or anyone - she came with a tip tray and fortune cookies. This is a gentle reminder that the tip is not included in the price - a problem often encountered by servers when one pays when entering. She deserved a tip and got one!
We will definitely go back. I have been getting tired of the local Asian buffets and we go often. This buffet will be on our list of go tos! I recommend that you try it.
The Flaming Grill and Supreme Buffet is located at 1773 Grand Avenue, Baldwin, New York 11510. The phone number is 516-544-2222. When I went looking for a website I found another buffet with the same name and an identical website located in East Rutherford, New Jersey. I assume - but do not know for certain that they are owned together. The website for the Baldwin buffet is linked at the side of this page. The hours are Sunday to Thursday from 11 am to 10 pm. On Friday and Saturday the hours are from 11 am to 10:30 pm. The price is the same for dinner every night. Sunday is dinner price all day.
Showing posts with label shell fish. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shell fish. Show all posts
Friday, May 16, 2014
Friday, August 16, 2013
Return to Ruby Buffet, Massapequa, New York
On my first visit to Ruby Buffet - a new buffet that had opened in Massapequa, New York on Long Island in the winter of 2013 I was disappointed. I had decided that I was not going back again. It took a $2.00 off coupon to get us to go back and try all of these months later. Our second experience there was much better than our first.
The buffet dinner here is priced at $14.99 per person with soda at $1.99. As I said in my first article this is in the upper price range of mid-priced buffets in this area and there are larger buffets with lower prices. The big issue last February was taste and value. And when I left I felt that I had gotten neither.
When we saw the coupon in a mailed coupon collection from various local businesses we discussed going back. We both felt that we should give it another chance as they have now had many months to break in, so to speak. This is part of a chain of Ruby Buffets and they are located in various parts of the US. A chain should not need any real break in period as it should be a turn key operation with recipes and selections already established in the other locations. This one has shown that over time it could improve and it did.
We went on a Friday night and it was fairly crowded. There was no wait to come in but the dining room was full and we were seated in a small dining room off to the side that has about six tables. I was not thrilled to be set off from the main dining room as one can often get lost and not receive the attention of the wait staff that you want in a buffet. I have to say that the service on this second visit was fine - it could have been better especially had we ordered soft drinks other than water as while dishes were cleared promptly, no one ever offered to refill our water glasses and I was seeing the same thing happen at tables around us who were paying for soft drinks. Refills are included in the $2 price for the soda.
I am going to list what we found on the main buffet servers - mostly focusing on the main entrees and accompanying dishes. There were the same four soups that we found on our first visit. There was wonton, egg drop, hot and sour, and seafood bisque. I took the seafood bisque and while it had a heavy pepper under taste, it was thick and rich. It was an orange red color and there were pieces of some type of fish, some small pieces of shrimp, and what must have been pieces of Krab legs (not real crab legs but the fish formed into Krab legs type). There were some small bits of shell in the soup and it took some picking out. The soup was good and throughout the meal I thought about getting more - which I did do at the end of the meal.
On the salad bar there was a seafood salad with lemon olive oil, crabmeat salad (that may have been real crabmeat), edame (soy beans), a cucumber and tomato salad with light Italian dressing on top, and lettuce with dressings. There was cold peel and eat shrimp, raw oysters, raw clams, and raw mussels.
The sushi bar had a good assortment of sushi and this was beyond the usual Chinese buffet sushi bar. Different from our first visit, this time the dishes were full of sushi and they kept replenishing them. If you like sushi and like more than the usual salmon and tuna, you will like this sushi bar. In addition to sushi on the sushi bar there was seaweed salad. My wife likes this and she said it was good. One thing that did concern her was that the tongs that were placed on plates as they are at most sushi bars along the counter, were getting soiled from one item and carrying that into other items on the bar - particularly the seaweed salad. To the credit of the restaurant, when the soiled tongs were seen they were taken away and replaced.
The hot buffet servers are a mix of Chinese appetizers, Chinese side dishes, and entrees. Over on the hot buffet there was steamed dim sum, steamed stuffed buns, steamed red bean buns, egg rolls, spring rolls, fried shrimp, chicken on a stick, ribs, chicken wings, curly fries, pizza, chicken teriyaki, New York Steak with a sauce on the side, crab legs, sweet and sour chicken, vegetable lo mein, vegetable fried rice, white rice, sauteed green beans, cabbage with hot red peppers, shrimp stuffed with crab, crab cakes, chicken with broccoli, pepper steak, fried wonton with cheese and crab, baby clams with black bean sauce, spicy shrimp and scallops with honey, seafood scampi, corn on the cob, stuffed seafood in clam shell with pork, shrimp, and vegetable, sweet cheese pie puffs, garlic bread, steak with teriyaki sauce, General Tso chicken, honey chicken, crispy duck, chicken and shrimp with black bean sauce, Texas fried fish, red snapper with fruit and dill, seafood cheese pasta, plantains, fried donuts, bourbon chicken, and boneless ribs.
I took a small amount of several things to try and some dishes stood out as particularly good. Of all things, the chicken in the chicken with broccoli was very good. It was lightly battered and the sauce for the dish was very light in flavor which made for a delicate taste and texture of this chicken. I did go back for more of this. The red snapper with fruit and dill was very good also. This was a white fish (red snapper) in a light clear sauce that was not sweet. There was no whole fruit of any kind but the fruit was in the sauce. This dish had a good flavor.
Of course, I had to try the ribs again that I had found so disappointing on the first visit. These are not in any way Chinese restaurant spare ribs or even Chinese buffet spare ribs. These are in a type of barbecue spareribs. They are sauced with a brown barbecue sauce. I first took two ribs on my plate. The first was meaty and soft. The taste was pretty good. The second rib that I took was overdone. More ribs came out and I took two more. These both were overdone. Before the end of the meal I took two more and these were like the first rib that I had - meaty and not overdone. So the ribs are hit and miss. The ones that were not so well done that they were almost just bone and char, were not good at all, but trays did come out with ribs that tasted good and ate well. So for pseudo-BBQ ribs they were OK.
Some of the dishes do not appear to be hot and spicy until you look closely for the peppers. The vegetable lo mein was a little on the greasy side. The fried rice was light and very good. I tried the seafood in clam shell with pork, shrimp, and vegetable. This looked like a stuffed baked clam and I am sure that if someone ignored the sign would think that they were taking stuffed baked clams. There was no clam in this other than the shell. The filling was dry and dense with little taste of pork, shrimp, or vegetables. The shrimp stuffed with crab on the other hand was very good - a broiled shrimp wrapped around clam and bread stuffing.
I went over to the raw shell fish and looked at the oysters. I hesitated because the oysters look slightly dry on the surface. With raw shell fish you want it to be continually being taken and replenished right there on the spot - so that it is absolutely fresh when you eat it. When it is stacked in advance on a bed of ice you have no idea how long it may have been sitting out. I found three small oysters that looked the freshest and that were moist all around. The first two had a good taste, the last was slightly off from the rest. I started to wonder if I had made a mistake that I was going to regret. I was fine later on - but I am not sure I would take the oysters again under the same conditions. The oyster was also not cut all the way from the shell which is not how they should be served. The shucking knife should go all around and break the muscle that holds the oyster to the shell. The raw shell fish is off to one end of the salad bar and it would have been much better if they were at the sushi bar where they could have been shucked on the spot.
There were two steak dishes - teriyaki steak and steak with teriyaki sauce on the side. Both dishes seemed to be using the same cut of steak and it was very, very tough - to the point of hard to chew. The sauce that was on the side was A1 sauce. The crab cakes has more crab in them this time and they were much better. The crab legs depended on how fast you got to the tray when they were brought out. People just fill their plates with crab legs and what is left are the small broken legs that are left behind. The crab legs were properly served at the correct temperature. They came out of the shells easily. What they are serving are two leg clusters with parts of the tops.
Desserts were your standard Chinese buffet desserts with the little squares cakes, almond cookies, soft serve ice cream with a few toppings and cones, assorted puddings, jellos, fresh fruit, and banana pudding.I tried the soft serve ice cream and it was not bad. It was not icy in texture though it was the type of soft serve that one would usually get icy. This may not have had a chance to get icy as it was popularly being taken by many on this hot night.
Items on the buffet never went empty. As soon as a tray was getting down to the bottom a new tray was brought out to replace it. The food was also served at all of the correct temperatures which is very important.
Service was just OK. All of our plates were gone almost each time that we went up for another plate and returned. It would have been nice if we were offered to refill our water glasses. They put a large wood bowl on the table for your crab leg shells and also a nut cracker. This bowl was never emptied and my shells remained with us for the rest of the meal in the bowl.
We had no problem in finding things to eat here on this visit and a lot has improved. I am glad that they put out this coupon as it enticed me to come back and try this buffet again. If another coupon comes we will go back again. At $14.99 I have to decide to come here or go to another $14.99 Chinese buffet that is further east on Long Island but has some particularly good selections. This buffet is not out of the running however - and it is likely we will come back.
I can recommend this buffet now. If you are on or are visiting Long Island, come and try Ruby Buffet in Massapequa on the outside of the mall building next to the food court of the Sunrise Mall shopping center.
Ruby Buffet is located at Westfield's Sunrise Mall in Massapequa, New York off of Sunrise Highway. The address is 1 Sunrise Mall Suite 2152, Massapequa, NY 11758. The phone number is (516) 882 - 0300. There is a website and it is linked at the side of this page. I have no idea if my meal at this location is any indication of the food at the other Ruby Buffet locations.
****
We went back to Ruby a couple of weeks later (again with a coupon) and the experience was the same. This time we were seated in the main dining room and the service was better. They have also given the seaweed salad its own set of tongs. The same items that were good the first time were good the next and those that were not so good have not changed - the two steak dishes are still extremely tough and I did not finish either of the two because it was not worth the chewing. I would still go back again. I am sure there will be more mailers with coupons.
The buffet dinner here is priced at $14.99 per person with soda at $1.99. As I said in my first article this is in the upper price range of mid-priced buffets in this area and there are larger buffets with lower prices. The big issue last February was taste and value. And when I left I felt that I had gotten neither.
When we saw the coupon in a mailed coupon collection from various local businesses we discussed going back. We both felt that we should give it another chance as they have now had many months to break in, so to speak. This is part of a chain of Ruby Buffets and they are located in various parts of the US. A chain should not need any real break in period as it should be a turn key operation with recipes and selections already established in the other locations. This one has shown that over time it could improve and it did.
We went on a Friday night and it was fairly crowded. There was no wait to come in but the dining room was full and we were seated in a small dining room off to the side that has about six tables. I was not thrilled to be set off from the main dining room as one can often get lost and not receive the attention of the wait staff that you want in a buffet. I have to say that the service on this second visit was fine - it could have been better especially had we ordered soft drinks other than water as while dishes were cleared promptly, no one ever offered to refill our water glasses and I was seeing the same thing happen at tables around us who were paying for soft drinks. Refills are included in the $2 price for the soda.
I am going to list what we found on the main buffet servers - mostly focusing on the main entrees and accompanying dishes. There were the same four soups that we found on our first visit. There was wonton, egg drop, hot and sour, and seafood bisque. I took the seafood bisque and while it had a heavy pepper under taste, it was thick and rich. It was an orange red color and there were pieces of some type of fish, some small pieces of shrimp, and what must have been pieces of Krab legs (not real crab legs but the fish formed into Krab legs type). There were some small bits of shell in the soup and it took some picking out. The soup was good and throughout the meal I thought about getting more - which I did do at the end of the meal.
On the salad bar there was a seafood salad with lemon olive oil, crabmeat salad (that may have been real crabmeat), edame (soy beans), a cucumber and tomato salad with light Italian dressing on top, and lettuce with dressings. There was cold peel and eat shrimp, raw oysters, raw clams, and raw mussels.
The sushi bar had a good assortment of sushi and this was beyond the usual Chinese buffet sushi bar. Different from our first visit, this time the dishes were full of sushi and they kept replenishing them. If you like sushi and like more than the usual salmon and tuna, you will like this sushi bar. In addition to sushi on the sushi bar there was seaweed salad. My wife likes this and she said it was good. One thing that did concern her was that the tongs that were placed on plates as they are at most sushi bars along the counter, were getting soiled from one item and carrying that into other items on the bar - particularly the seaweed salad. To the credit of the restaurant, when the soiled tongs were seen they were taken away and replaced.
The hot buffet servers are a mix of Chinese appetizers, Chinese side dishes, and entrees. Over on the hot buffet there was steamed dim sum, steamed stuffed buns, steamed red bean buns, egg rolls, spring rolls, fried shrimp, chicken on a stick, ribs, chicken wings, curly fries, pizza, chicken teriyaki, New York Steak with a sauce on the side, crab legs, sweet and sour chicken, vegetable lo mein, vegetable fried rice, white rice, sauteed green beans, cabbage with hot red peppers, shrimp stuffed with crab, crab cakes, chicken with broccoli, pepper steak, fried wonton with cheese and crab, baby clams with black bean sauce, spicy shrimp and scallops with honey, seafood scampi, corn on the cob, stuffed seafood in clam shell with pork, shrimp, and vegetable, sweet cheese pie puffs, garlic bread, steak with teriyaki sauce, General Tso chicken, honey chicken, crispy duck, chicken and shrimp with black bean sauce, Texas fried fish, red snapper with fruit and dill, seafood cheese pasta, plantains, fried donuts, bourbon chicken, and boneless ribs.
I took a small amount of several things to try and some dishes stood out as particularly good. Of all things, the chicken in the chicken with broccoli was very good. It was lightly battered and the sauce for the dish was very light in flavor which made for a delicate taste and texture of this chicken. I did go back for more of this. The red snapper with fruit and dill was very good also. This was a white fish (red snapper) in a light clear sauce that was not sweet. There was no whole fruit of any kind but the fruit was in the sauce. This dish had a good flavor.
Of course, I had to try the ribs again that I had found so disappointing on the first visit. These are not in any way Chinese restaurant spare ribs or even Chinese buffet spare ribs. These are in a type of barbecue spareribs. They are sauced with a brown barbecue sauce. I first took two ribs on my plate. The first was meaty and soft. The taste was pretty good. The second rib that I took was overdone. More ribs came out and I took two more. These both were overdone. Before the end of the meal I took two more and these were like the first rib that I had - meaty and not overdone. So the ribs are hit and miss. The ones that were not so well done that they were almost just bone and char, were not good at all, but trays did come out with ribs that tasted good and ate well. So for pseudo-BBQ ribs they were OK.
Some of the dishes do not appear to be hot and spicy until you look closely for the peppers. The vegetable lo mein was a little on the greasy side. The fried rice was light and very good. I tried the seafood in clam shell with pork, shrimp, and vegetable. This looked like a stuffed baked clam and I am sure that if someone ignored the sign would think that they were taking stuffed baked clams. There was no clam in this other than the shell. The filling was dry and dense with little taste of pork, shrimp, or vegetables. The shrimp stuffed with crab on the other hand was very good - a broiled shrimp wrapped around clam and bread stuffing.
I went over to the raw shell fish and looked at the oysters. I hesitated because the oysters look slightly dry on the surface. With raw shell fish you want it to be continually being taken and replenished right there on the spot - so that it is absolutely fresh when you eat it. When it is stacked in advance on a bed of ice you have no idea how long it may have been sitting out. I found three small oysters that looked the freshest and that were moist all around. The first two had a good taste, the last was slightly off from the rest. I started to wonder if I had made a mistake that I was going to regret. I was fine later on - but I am not sure I would take the oysters again under the same conditions. The oyster was also not cut all the way from the shell which is not how they should be served. The shucking knife should go all around and break the muscle that holds the oyster to the shell. The raw shell fish is off to one end of the salad bar and it would have been much better if they were at the sushi bar where they could have been shucked on the spot.
There were two steak dishes - teriyaki steak and steak with teriyaki sauce on the side. Both dishes seemed to be using the same cut of steak and it was very, very tough - to the point of hard to chew. The sauce that was on the side was A1 sauce. The crab cakes has more crab in them this time and they were much better. The crab legs depended on how fast you got to the tray when they were brought out. People just fill their plates with crab legs and what is left are the small broken legs that are left behind. The crab legs were properly served at the correct temperature. They came out of the shells easily. What they are serving are two leg clusters with parts of the tops.
Desserts were your standard Chinese buffet desserts with the little squares cakes, almond cookies, soft serve ice cream with a few toppings and cones, assorted puddings, jellos, fresh fruit, and banana pudding.I tried the soft serve ice cream and it was not bad. It was not icy in texture though it was the type of soft serve that one would usually get icy. This may not have had a chance to get icy as it was popularly being taken by many on this hot night.
Items on the buffet never went empty. As soon as a tray was getting down to the bottom a new tray was brought out to replace it. The food was also served at all of the correct temperatures which is very important.
Service was just OK. All of our plates were gone almost each time that we went up for another plate and returned. It would have been nice if we were offered to refill our water glasses. They put a large wood bowl on the table for your crab leg shells and also a nut cracker. This bowl was never emptied and my shells remained with us for the rest of the meal in the bowl.
We had no problem in finding things to eat here on this visit and a lot has improved. I am glad that they put out this coupon as it enticed me to come back and try this buffet again. If another coupon comes we will go back again. At $14.99 I have to decide to come here or go to another $14.99 Chinese buffet that is further east on Long Island but has some particularly good selections. This buffet is not out of the running however - and it is likely we will come back.
I can recommend this buffet now. If you are on or are visiting Long Island, come and try Ruby Buffet in Massapequa on the outside of the mall building next to the food court of the Sunrise Mall shopping center.
Ruby Buffet is located at Westfield's Sunrise Mall in Massapequa, New York off of Sunrise Highway. The address is 1 Sunrise Mall Suite 2152, Massapequa, NY 11758. The phone number is (516) 882 - 0300. There is a website and it is linked at the side of this page. I have no idea if my meal at this location is any indication of the food at the other Ruby Buffet locations.
****
We went back to Ruby a couple of weeks later (again with a coupon) and the experience was the same. This time we were seated in the main dining room and the service was better. They have also given the seaweed salad its own set of tongs. The same items that were good the first time were good the next and those that were not so good have not changed - the two steak dishes are still extremely tough and I did not finish either of the two because it was not worth the chewing. I would still go back again. I am sure there will be more mailers with coupons.
Friday, February 22, 2013
Ruby Buffet, Massapequa, New York
During the early summer of 2012 we saw signs in an indoor shopping mall not too far from our home about a new Chinese buffet "coming soon". The sign was posted next to the food court and we wondered where they would fit a buffet restaurant - and we were not sure if this would be a real sit down buffet restaurant or a counter buffet in the food court with per pound prices. Months and months went by with no sign of any buffet and no indication where it would be in the mall. In late October we saw the first signs of the buffet - construction outside the mall building but attached to it - next to the food court. There was a sign - "Ruby Buffet Coming Soon". It would be attached to the mall but not in the mall.
In late December we saw an advertisement in the newspaper for Ruby Buffet and a coupon for 20% off. We finally got to try the restaurant in mid-January. The day we were going to go, I did an internet search for Ruby Buffet and found a webpage and also discovered that this buffet was part of a chain of Ruby Buffets with three locations in Pennsylvania, one in New Jersey, one in Maryland, and this one in New York. Each location had a webpage and I went to see what I could find out about Ruby Buffet. The first thing that struck me was the price - $14.99 which is on the upper mid-range of buffet prices in this area. Children are $8.99 (6-10 - over 10 pay adult price) and $6.99 (2-5). Under two are free. Soda with refills is $1.99. For a family this meal can get expensive. Looking at the website, I was taken with the photos of the food being served. Platters of sushi and sashimi, whole prawns with the heads (which are common in other areas, but not in New York), large crab leg clusters, a nice looking carved steak, and a tray of wonderful looking spare ribs were featured in the photos. They described themselves as international in one spot, as a Japanese and Chinese seafood buffet in another spot, and under their name on the sign it says "Asian Buffet". From the photos on the website I was eager to go and try this buffet. I had been thinking prior to that day that I would love to have good Chinese spare ribs. Not the type that most buffets serve - small ribs with no meat covered in thick red sweet sauce - but rather real Chinese restaurant ribs which I know only one Chinese buffet serves - Good Taste Buffet in Commack,NY (which I have written about several times on this site and you can find the articles in the archives). When I saw the photo of the ribs at Ruby Buffet they looked just like those. I thought that if we go instead for the first time to Ruby Buffet I could have those ribs and also try a new buffet that we have been meaning to try. I also saw a photo of a very appealing steak that caught my eye as well. It was with much anticipation that we headed out to Ruby Buffet.
The buffet is located outside the food court in the rear of the mall, right off the parking lot and has its own entrance outside. There is no entrance to the restaurant from inside the mall - and this buffet is open much later than the mall is - to 10 pm on weeknights and to 11 pm on Fridays and Saturdays. We went on a Friday night. There were a lot of cars outside the entrance in the parking lot. It turns out that these were shoppers at the mall. When we went into the restaurant on a Friday evening it was almost empty. There were several tables tables filled out of many. This was a big surprise. Asian buffets in this area on a Friday night are packed. The weather was good. There were people in the mall. There was hardly anyone in the restaurant. My first thought was that at $14.99 this buffet was priced way too high for the location. This management was hoping that this buffet would hold its own as a stand alone restaurant without connection to the mall, but from appearances, that was not happening. Not far away is a larger Chinese buffet with a lower dinner price that has had lines to get in most nights - especailly on Friday and Saturday night - for the past year since it opened.
We went in and were seated. The dining room is very nicely decorated. There are booths around the walls and there are tables in the middle of the dining room. Along the walls there are four other small dining rooms. These rooms had about sic to eight tables along the walls in each. The rooms seemed too small for party rooms and they had no doors to separate them for a private party. It was just odd that such small rooms would be scattered about. A server came right over and asked for our beverage order and we went right up to the buffet. I looked quickly around the buffet servers and I was not seeing what I had seen in the photos - well, let me put it this way - similar items were there, but they did not look anyway near prepared as they were in the photos. There were three, double sided hot buffet servers in the middle of the buffet area which takes up the rear of the restaurant. We went up first for soup. There were Oriental in design, square soup bowls. There were four soups. One was the standard wonton soup, another was hot and sour, the third was Seafood Soup - a white thin soup with a mixture of egg and pieces of seafood (not uncommon at some buffets), and the fourth soup was Seafood Bisque - a thick, orange color soup with what appeared to be flat noodles but I believe more to be pieces of Krab broken up into the soup, chunks of potato, carrot, and a few small lumps of what could be real crab,shrimp, or other seafood (it was hard to tell). I took the Seafood Bisque. My wife took the wonton soup.
My wife commented to me how good the wonton soup broth was. She described it as light and not salty. (Based on this, I went back toward the end of the meal and took some - by now it was more salty - perhaps because it was added to or perhaps it had cooked down in the hour and became more concentrated.) The Seafood Bisque despite the unknown seafood content was very tasty. Bisque should have a little bite to it and this one was just right. I very much enjoyed the soup! Around the point that we were finishing our soup, the manager who had been hovering around various tables came over to ask how the food was - we said very good - as it this point it certainly was.
We moved on to our next course, and my wife went to the dumplings and I went to the sushi bar. The small platters of sushi somewhat resembled what they had in the photos. There were no labels on anything. There was an assortment of rolls, fish on rice and one small platter of just pieces of fish with seaweed salad on the side. This platter emptied quickly - with the few diners in the restaurant - and did not get replaced until we were leaving, despite the two sushi chefs behind the counter. I am not sure what they were making but it did not seem to be actively replacing what was missing from the platters on the ice covered counter. In fact, later in the meal we observed one moving out empty platters and rearranging those left to look as if nothing was missing. The quality of the fish was just less than average for other buffets or equal or less cost. It was not bad but not full of flavor.
I next went up to try the dumplings and saw on the end of a long cold buffet server on the side that there were peel and eat shrimp, raw clams on the half shell, and raw oysters on ice. I am very careful about raw shellfish at buffets and it must be on hard ice and not look glazed, dry, or waxy in any way. The oysters looked wet and fresh. I took some of those and spooned some cocktail sauce on. (The rest of that buffet server had an extensive salad bar, fresh fruits, canned fruits, and puddings.)
I then went over to the dumplings and took a dim sum and two pan fried dumplings. There were also bean paste buns and a roll of some type of leaf filled with rice and bean paste, tied with string in a bundle and steamed. The oysters were fresh and good. The dim sum was typical of buffet dim sum. The pan fried dumplings were light and in the style that I have had them at Japanese restaurants. They were good. My wife tried the leaf stuffed with rice and bean paste and she said that it was very good. She commented that the bean paste was not sweet as it is in a bean paste bun. We should have ended the meal here and this review would come out much better than it will.
I had come for spare ribs and I went next to take some. The spare ribs that were out were nothing like the ribs that were in the photo. These were not Chinese-style spare ribs. These were an attempt at spare ribs from a barbecue restaurant. They had a brown sauce covering them and it looked like they had been baked rather than grilled in a flame broiler. There was little meat on the bones and what was there would not cut off or bite off. I took two ribs and had little meat to eat and what meat that I could get off was hard to chew and not very tasty. The sauce was an attempt at American barbecue sauce but not quite. I was very disappointed. Sometimes a restaurant should leave photos off their site that do not reflect what you will actually find when you get to the restaurant. Later, more ribs came out - replacing the two I took - and I decided I would try again. This time the two ribs I took had slightly more meat come off the bones but it was still hard to hack off and the taste was not worth the effort. (Good Chinese spare ribs are not hard to make - the ribs go under a flame broiler and are turned halfway through. They come out moist, crispy on the edges, and full of flavor. I have watched them made many times at the Chinese take out and they come out wonderful. Why is this so hard for a buffet to do?!?)
I went over to the crab legs. There were no large clusters as there were in the photo. There were small legs - the smaller two legs of a cluster attached. I am not sure where the rest of the cluster went. I took two of these paired crab legs back to my table. When I got there a server came running over with a wooden bowl. The size of the bowl would hold twice what was out in the serving tray on the buffet. Nice gesture, I guess. I broke the larger of the two legs off one of the pair and cracked open the shell with my hands and pulled out the meat - in one piece. I took a bite and my mouth filled with the taste of all of the salt in the ocean. I have had crab legs in buffets and restaurants for many, many years. I have never had crab legs that tasted as much as pure salt as these. Perhaps it was just the one. I tried the other - exactly the same. Not good. Not good at all. If crab legs are naturally very salty, everyone else must do something to rinse that salt off before they are boiled or steamed and served. I have never before had any this salty - even in the cheapest buffet!
My wife all of this time who is a picky eater - as you regular readers well know by now- was picking through the few actual entrees that were on the buffet. She tried a little of the beef and peppers. She even tried the steak - which by the way was nothing like the wonderful looking steak in the photo. This was a piece of steak that had been browned on top and only slightly on bottom and looked like it had some type of coating on top - though it was hard to tell what that might be and did not taste coated. In fact, (I tried it too) it did not much taste like anything. Ah, well. She eventually resorted to going back to the beginning items and took appetizer items like chicken on a stick and peel and eat shrimp. She did like the seaweed salad, but as I mentioned, it never came back out until we were leaving and she had taken what little had been on the original platter near the beginning of our meal.
It looked like there were a lot of things to choose to eat -and there were - but there were few stand alone entrees. There was chicken and broccoli and beef and peppers - of course, these are the two Chinese buffet standards. I am not sure how they came to be that but go to any Chinese buffet and there they will be as if these are the pinnacle of Chinese cuisine. I will say that they were made well and these two dishes had a better taste than many other Chinese buffets. There was General Tso chicken - another buffet staple. There was honey chicken, chicken and shrimp with black pepper sauce, seafood scampi, salt and pepper crab halves that were primarily shell, coconut shrimp,
I sounds like a lot but as we walked around and looked for what was not hot and spicy and what was not overly sweet, we were walking around looking and looking for what to take.
I tried some basics - an egg roll and lomein noodles. Buffet egg rolls are usually doughy. These were pretty much only the doughy wrapper with hardly anything inside. The not crispy dough wrapper was hard to bite into and next to impossible to chew. I resorted to scooping the little filling out with a fork and that had little flavor. The lomein noodles, themselves, were authentic and long. They were cooked in too much oil, and while they tasted good, they were too greasy. My wife tried the chow mei fun noodles and said that they were not bad. She also tried the fried rice and she said that it was lightly cooked - it did not look brown as most Chinese fried rice looks but more like Japanese fried rice.
I tried a crab cake. It was served with a bowl with what the sign said was honey mustard on the side. the crab cakes were small and thick. They were made with real crab. The first one I tried was tasty. The second one I took later - with a dab of the honey mustard - was more filler than crab and the honey mustard sauce was made with Chinese hot mustard. That ruined whatever taste there was in the crab cake.
There had been a tempting photo of a whole Peking Duck on the website. There was duck on the buffet, but what was out were two half drumsticks and little pieces of duck that were more bone and grizzle than meat. I tried one of the half drumsticks. It was OK. There were no Peking Duck pancakes or the usual vegetables that accompany the duck in the pancake - scallions, cucumber, etc. There was a bowl of the brown sauce to spoon on the duck.
This is a list of what was on the buffet on this night. To be fair there is a lot here, but quantity does not mean anything if the taste does not stand out for the better. Soups - Wonton, Hot and Sour, Seafood, and Seafood Bisque. Dumplings - Fried dumplings, dim sum, bean bun, steamed bun, gluten rice with bean paste. On the cold servers - seaweed salad, sushi, edamame, salad, "French salad", krab salad (not crab salad), pasta salad, shrimp, clams, oysters, seafood salad. Hot foods - chicken on a stick, lo mein, ribs, rib tips, spring rolls, egg rolls, seafood scampi, chicken and broccoli, pepper steak, fried shrimp, chicken fingers, NY steak with teriyaki sauce, garlic bread, spinach, honey chicken, General Tso chicken, crab legs, roast chicken, chicken wings, pasta with krab (not crab) and mozzarella cheese, pizza, string beans, shrimp and chicken in black pepper sauce, cheese wontons, sweet and sour shrimp, cheese puffs, corn on the cob, spiced crabs, salmon with dill sauce, fried Texas fish (catfish), baby clams with black bean sauce, coconut chicken, and french fries. Desserts - soft ice cream with cones and sprinkles, cakes, fruit, fried donuts, puddings, and almond cookies.
Desserts were three trays of the usual Chinese restaurant "Little Debbie" type sheet cakes, some cookies, soft serve ice cream and the fruits and puddings that I mentioned above. There was nothing tempting in the desserts. My wife had fresh melon and we both had a fortune cookie. I had decided that if there was something good I would try a dessert. They were all commercial and nothing was worth the carbs.
Service was good. There was a server at our table regularly to take our plates away - sometimes just as we finished with them. We were offered to refill our drinks. I was given the bowl for the crab shells. Everyone was pleasant and said hello when we came in and said good bye as we were leaving.
Overall - the meal was a big disappointment. There were a few good things to eat. The Seafood Bisque was the best thing that I had in the whole meal. There were too many things that were just OK or not good. Nothing was bad. It was just not good. Had everything been cooked as it should have been and tasted as it should have - with all of the seafood, etc. the meal would certainly be worth the $14.99 ($16.96 with soda). But in the end - with how it all was - it just is not worth the price - and even at less of a price, it was not a place that I would go back to. It was just too disappointing. Perhaps this was why there were so few people in the restaurant. Perhaps those who would come here had already come and found what I did.
I cannot really recommend this buffet. I would love to be able to. Maybe they will improve. At some distant point in the future, I may go back - just to see if it gets better. But until then, this one was a big disappointment. (I have said that several times, haven't I? Hmm - must be how I truly feel.)
Ruby Buffet is located at Westfield's Sunrise Mall in Massapequa, New York off of Sunrise Highway. The address is 1 Sunrise Mall Suite 2152, Massapequa, NY 11758. The phone number is (516) 882 - 0300. There is a website and it is linked at the side of this page. I have no idea if my meal at this location is any indication of the food at the other Ruby Buffet locations.
In late December we saw an advertisement in the newspaper for Ruby Buffet and a coupon for 20% off. We finally got to try the restaurant in mid-January. The day we were going to go, I did an internet search for Ruby Buffet and found a webpage and also discovered that this buffet was part of a chain of Ruby Buffets with three locations in Pennsylvania, one in New Jersey, one in Maryland, and this one in New York. Each location had a webpage and I went to see what I could find out about Ruby Buffet. The first thing that struck me was the price - $14.99 which is on the upper mid-range of buffet prices in this area. Children are $8.99 (6-10 - over 10 pay adult price) and $6.99 (2-5). Under two are free. Soda with refills is $1.99. For a family this meal can get expensive. Looking at the website, I was taken with the photos of the food being served. Platters of sushi and sashimi, whole prawns with the heads (which are common in other areas, but not in New York), large crab leg clusters, a nice looking carved steak, and a tray of wonderful looking spare ribs were featured in the photos. They described themselves as international in one spot, as a Japanese and Chinese seafood buffet in another spot, and under their name on the sign it says "Asian Buffet". From the photos on the website I was eager to go and try this buffet. I had been thinking prior to that day that I would love to have good Chinese spare ribs. Not the type that most buffets serve - small ribs with no meat covered in thick red sweet sauce - but rather real Chinese restaurant ribs which I know only one Chinese buffet serves - Good Taste Buffet in Commack,NY (which I have written about several times on this site and you can find the articles in the archives). When I saw the photo of the ribs at Ruby Buffet they looked just like those. I thought that if we go instead for the first time to Ruby Buffet I could have those ribs and also try a new buffet that we have been meaning to try. I also saw a photo of a very appealing steak that caught my eye as well. It was with much anticipation that we headed out to Ruby Buffet.
The buffet is located outside the food court in the rear of the mall, right off the parking lot and has its own entrance outside. There is no entrance to the restaurant from inside the mall - and this buffet is open much later than the mall is - to 10 pm on weeknights and to 11 pm on Fridays and Saturdays. We went on a Friday night. There were a lot of cars outside the entrance in the parking lot. It turns out that these were shoppers at the mall. When we went into the restaurant on a Friday evening it was almost empty. There were several tables tables filled out of many. This was a big surprise. Asian buffets in this area on a Friday night are packed. The weather was good. There were people in the mall. There was hardly anyone in the restaurant. My first thought was that at $14.99 this buffet was priced way too high for the location. This management was hoping that this buffet would hold its own as a stand alone restaurant without connection to the mall, but from appearances, that was not happening. Not far away is a larger Chinese buffet with a lower dinner price that has had lines to get in most nights - especailly on Friday and Saturday night - for the past year since it opened.
We went in and were seated. The dining room is very nicely decorated. There are booths around the walls and there are tables in the middle of the dining room. Along the walls there are four other small dining rooms. These rooms had about sic to eight tables along the walls in each. The rooms seemed too small for party rooms and they had no doors to separate them for a private party. It was just odd that such small rooms would be scattered about. A server came right over and asked for our beverage order and we went right up to the buffet. I looked quickly around the buffet servers and I was not seeing what I had seen in the photos - well, let me put it this way - similar items were there, but they did not look anyway near prepared as they were in the photos. There were three, double sided hot buffet servers in the middle of the buffet area which takes up the rear of the restaurant. We went up first for soup. There were Oriental in design, square soup bowls. There were four soups. One was the standard wonton soup, another was hot and sour, the third was Seafood Soup - a white thin soup with a mixture of egg and pieces of seafood (not uncommon at some buffets), and the fourth soup was Seafood Bisque - a thick, orange color soup with what appeared to be flat noodles but I believe more to be pieces of Krab broken up into the soup, chunks of potato, carrot, and a few small lumps of what could be real crab,shrimp, or other seafood (it was hard to tell). I took the Seafood Bisque. My wife took the wonton soup.
My wife commented to me how good the wonton soup broth was. She described it as light and not salty. (Based on this, I went back toward the end of the meal and took some - by now it was more salty - perhaps because it was added to or perhaps it had cooked down in the hour and became more concentrated.) The Seafood Bisque despite the unknown seafood content was very tasty. Bisque should have a little bite to it and this one was just right. I very much enjoyed the soup! Around the point that we were finishing our soup, the manager who had been hovering around various tables came over to ask how the food was - we said very good - as it this point it certainly was.
We moved on to our next course, and my wife went to the dumplings and I went to the sushi bar. The small platters of sushi somewhat resembled what they had in the photos. There were no labels on anything. There was an assortment of rolls, fish on rice and one small platter of just pieces of fish with seaweed salad on the side. This platter emptied quickly - with the few diners in the restaurant - and did not get replaced until we were leaving, despite the two sushi chefs behind the counter. I am not sure what they were making but it did not seem to be actively replacing what was missing from the platters on the ice covered counter. In fact, later in the meal we observed one moving out empty platters and rearranging those left to look as if nothing was missing. The quality of the fish was just less than average for other buffets or equal or less cost. It was not bad but not full of flavor.
I next went up to try the dumplings and saw on the end of a long cold buffet server on the side that there were peel and eat shrimp, raw clams on the half shell, and raw oysters on ice. I am very careful about raw shellfish at buffets and it must be on hard ice and not look glazed, dry, or waxy in any way. The oysters looked wet and fresh. I took some of those and spooned some cocktail sauce on. (The rest of that buffet server had an extensive salad bar, fresh fruits, canned fruits, and puddings.)
I then went over to the dumplings and took a dim sum and two pan fried dumplings. There were also bean paste buns and a roll of some type of leaf filled with rice and bean paste, tied with string in a bundle and steamed. The oysters were fresh and good. The dim sum was typical of buffet dim sum. The pan fried dumplings were light and in the style that I have had them at Japanese restaurants. They were good. My wife tried the leaf stuffed with rice and bean paste and she said that it was very good. She commented that the bean paste was not sweet as it is in a bean paste bun. We should have ended the meal here and this review would come out much better than it will.
I had come for spare ribs and I went next to take some. The spare ribs that were out were nothing like the ribs that were in the photo. These were not Chinese-style spare ribs. These were an attempt at spare ribs from a barbecue restaurant. They had a brown sauce covering them and it looked like they had been baked rather than grilled in a flame broiler. There was little meat on the bones and what was there would not cut off or bite off. I took two ribs and had little meat to eat and what meat that I could get off was hard to chew and not very tasty. The sauce was an attempt at American barbecue sauce but not quite. I was very disappointed. Sometimes a restaurant should leave photos off their site that do not reflect what you will actually find when you get to the restaurant. Later, more ribs came out - replacing the two I took - and I decided I would try again. This time the two ribs I took had slightly more meat come off the bones but it was still hard to hack off and the taste was not worth the effort. (Good Chinese spare ribs are not hard to make - the ribs go under a flame broiler and are turned halfway through. They come out moist, crispy on the edges, and full of flavor. I have watched them made many times at the Chinese take out and they come out wonderful. Why is this so hard for a buffet to do?!?)
I went over to the crab legs. There were no large clusters as there were in the photo. There were small legs - the smaller two legs of a cluster attached. I am not sure where the rest of the cluster went. I took two of these paired crab legs back to my table. When I got there a server came running over with a wooden bowl. The size of the bowl would hold twice what was out in the serving tray on the buffet. Nice gesture, I guess. I broke the larger of the two legs off one of the pair and cracked open the shell with my hands and pulled out the meat - in one piece. I took a bite and my mouth filled with the taste of all of the salt in the ocean. I have had crab legs in buffets and restaurants for many, many years. I have never had crab legs that tasted as much as pure salt as these. Perhaps it was just the one. I tried the other - exactly the same. Not good. Not good at all. If crab legs are naturally very salty, everyone else must do something to rinse that salt off before they are boiled or steamed and served. I have never before had any this salty - even in the cheapest buffet!
My wife all of this time who is a picky eater - as you regular readers well know by now- was picking through the few actual entrees that were on the buffet. She tried a little of the beef and peppers. She even tried the steak - which by the way was nothing like the wonderful looking steak in the photo. This was a piece of steak that had been browned on top and only slightly on bottom and looked like it had some type of coating on top - though it was hard to tell what that might be and did not taste coated. In fact, (I tried it too) it did not much taste like anything. Ah, well. She eventually resorted to going back to the beginning items and took appetizer items like chicken on a stick and peel and eat shrimp. She did like the seaweed salad, but as I mentioned, it never came back out until we were leaving and she had taken what little had been on the original platter near the beginning of our meal.
It looked like there were a lot of things to choose to eat -and there were - but there were few stand alone entrees. There was chicken and broccoli and beef and peppers - of course, these are the two Chinese buffet standards. I am not sure how they came to be that but go to any Chinese buffet and there they will be as if these are the pinnacle of Chinese cuisine. I will say that they were made well and these two dishes had a better taste than many other Chinese buffets. There was General Tso chicken - another buffet staple. There was honey chicken, chicken and shrimp with black pepper sauce, seafood scampi, salt and pepper crab halves that were primarily shell, coconut shrimp,
I sounds like a lot but as we walked around and looked for what was not hot and spicy and what was not overly sweet, we were walking around looking and looking for what to take.
I tried some basics - an egg roll and lomein noodles. Buffet egg rolls are usually doughy. These were pretty much only the doughy wrapper with hardly anything inside. The not crispy dough wrapper was hard to bite into and next to impossible to chew. I resorted to scooping the little filling out with a fork and that had little flavor. The lomein noodles, themselves, were authentic and long. They were cooked in too much oil, and while they tasted good, they were too greasy. My wife tried the chow mei fun noodles and said that they were not bad. She also tried the fried rice and she said that it was lightly cooked - it did not look brown as most Chinese fried rice looks but more like Japanese fried rice.
I tried a crab cake. It was served with a bowl with what the sign said was honey mustard on the side. the crab cakes were small and thick. They were made with real crab. The first one I tried was tasty. The second one I took later - with a dab of the honey mustard - was more filler than crab and the honey mustard sauce was made with Chinese hot mustard. That ruined whatever taste there was in the crab cake.
There had been a tempting photo of a whole Peking Duck on the website. There was duck on the buffet, but what was out were two half drumsticks and little pieces of duck that were more bone and grizzle than meat. I tried one of the half drumsticks. It was OK. There were no Peking Duck pancakes or the usual vegetables that accompany the duck in the pancake - scallions, cucumber, etc. There was a bowl of the brown sauce to spoon on the duck.
This is a list of what was on the buffet on this night. To be fair there is a lot here, but quantity does not mean anything if the taste does not stand out for the better. Soups - Wonton, Hot and Sour, Seafood, and Seafood Bisque. Dumplings - Fried dumplings, dim sum, bean bun, steamed bun, gluten rice with bean paste. On the cold servers - seaweed salad, sushi, edamame, salad, "French salad", krab salad (not crab salad), pasta salad, shrimp, clams, oysters, seafood salad. Hot foods - chicken on a stick, lo mein, ribs, rib tips, spring rolls, egg rolls, seafood scampi, chicken and broccoli, pepper steak, fried shrimp, chicken fingers, NY steak with teriyaki sauce, garlic bread, spinach, honey chicken, General Tso chicken, crab legs, roast chicken, chicken wings, pasta with krab (not crab) and mozzarella cheese, pizza, string beans, shrimp and chicken in black pepper sauce, cheese wontons, sweet and sour shrimp, cheese puffs, corn on the cob, spiced crabs, salmon with dill sauce, fried Texas fish (catfish), baby clams with black bean sauce, coconut chicken, and french fries. Desserts - soft ice cream with cones and sprinkles, cakes, fruit, fried donuts, puddings, and almond cookies.
Desserts were three trays of the usual Chinese restaurant "Little Debbie" type sheet cakes, some cookies, soft serve ice cream and the fruits and puddings that I mentioned above. There was nothing tempting in the desserts. My wife had fresh melon and we both had a fortune cookie. I had decided that if there was something good I would try a dessert. They were all commercial and nothing was worth the carbs.
Service was good. There was a server at our table regularly to take our plates away - sometimes just as we finished with them. We were offered to refill our drinks. I was given the bowl for the crab shells. Everyone was pleasant and said hello when we came in and said good bye as we were leaving.
Overall - the meal was a big disappointment. There were a few good things to eat. The Seafood Bisque was the best thing that I had in the whole meal. There were too many things that were just OK or not good. Nothing was bad. It was just not good. Had everything been cooked as it should have been and tasted as it should have - with all of the seafood, etc. the meal would certainly be worth the $14.99 ($16.96 with soda). But in the end - with how it all was - it just is not worth the price - and even at less of a price, it was not a place that I would go back to. It was just too disappointing. Perhaps this was why there were so few people in the restaurant. Perhaps those who would come here had already come and found what I did.
I cannot really recommend this buffet. I would love to be able to. Maybe they will improve. At some distant point in the future, I may go back - just to see if it gets better. But until then, this one was a big disappointment. (I have said that several times, haven't I? Hmm - must be how I truly feel.)
Ruby Buffet is located at Westfield's Sunrise Mall in Massapequa, New York off of Sunrise Highway. The address is 1 Sunrise Mall Suite 2152, Massapequa, NY 11758. The phone number is (516) 882 - 0300. There is a website and it is linked at the side of this page. I have no idea if my meal at this location is any indication of the food at the other Ruby Buffet locations.
Friday, November 23, 2012
Back to Capt. George's Seafood Restaurant, Williamsburg, Virginia
Captain George's Seafood Restaurant in Williamsburg, Virginia is one of the few, what I consider, expensive buffets that I go to. When I say expensive, I am talking about dinner for two with just soft drinks coming to almost $80 after tax and tip. If someone asked me what is the most complete and best seafood buffet that you have experienced, my answer would be Captain George's. A number of years back I would see more buffets like this but no longer. Seafood buffets are harder and harder to find.
There are four locations of this restaurant. They are in Williamsburg, Va, Virginia Beach, Va, Outerbanks, NC, and Myrtle Beach, SC. The adult dinner buffet is #31.00. Children are charged half price. There is also a menu to order from, though most order the buffet.
The food is good. For the extent of the seafood that you are offered, the value is good as well. There is no lobster on the buffet, but there is an overwhelming assortment of crab, crab dishes, other shellfish, and fish, as well as chicken, beef, and pork. There is a large salad bar with crab salad and shrimp salad along with other prepared salads and tossed salad to make yourself. There are always two soups and they are always the same - a wonderful she crab soup which is thick and creamy with a slightly sharp taste - and New England Clam Chowder which is equally good. Because I only find the she crab soup here, that is what I have, and am tempted to go for a second cup if there was not so much more to take after the soup.
This is the place to come if you like crab legs. The crab legs are continually replenished and come hot hot and steaming. These are snow crab clusters - all of the legs and claw on the cluster and they are large. Many just pile their plate up with them. I have found that crab legs are best eaten hot and if you allow them to cool to much the meat is hard to remove from the shell. I recommend taking just one or two clusters at a time and then go back for more hot ones. There will always be more to take when you go back here at Captain George's. You can make a meal out of the crab legs alone. But there is more shellfish to take. There is hot steamed shrimp, both spiced and plain. There is also cold steamed shrimp back on the salad bar. There are steamed crawfish. There are small steamed clams - "steamers". You will also find Oysters Rockefeller. In season, you will also find steamed blue crabs. And this is just what is on the shellfish bar.
There is a long buffet of seafood entrees. Many are prepared crab dishes such as Norfolk Special which is crab meat, shrimp, and scallops in a butter garlic sauce, baked Crab Imperial which is a crab meat casserole, Deviled Crab, soft-shelled crabs in season - which I got to try on this last visit and they were wonderful, and still it goes on and on. And for those who do not like seafood, there is good southern fried chicken, sliced prime rib of beef, and barbecue pork ribs without the bone. And I have not listed everything that is on the buffet. I could go on listing the various types of fried and broiled fish, the side dishes, the potatoes, the hush puppies, the broiled and fried shell fish, and on and on. Dinner here can be overwhelming and this is one of those buffets that even if you try to control yourself, you walk out feeling that you have eaten too much.
Dessert is an assortment of Greek pastries, cakes, hot cobblers, fruits and puddings - in particular Greek rice pudding. Desserts here are on the sweet side - as many want them to be!
I am in this area twice a year and each time I think, well, we can skip Captain George's because it so expensive. (I know many of my readers can afford spending close almost $100 for dinner for two. I just can't.) But when we are near here, I just can't resist and always go back.
The one thing to be aware of when you come to the Williamsburg location is that the restaurant has a mystery dinner theater attached to it and dinner is the buffet. If you come at the same time that dinner is set for the dinner theater you will encounter longer lines at the buffet servers than usual because of the people coming in all at once from the theater. Once they come through once or twice, the flow at the buffet servers returns to normal.
I very much recommend trying the buffet at Captain George's Seafood Restaurant. It is an experience.I have never tried any of the other locations. A friend went to the Captain George's in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and told me it was great.
This Captain George's is located at 5363 Richmond Road, Williamsburg, VA 23188. The phone number is 757-565-2323. Large parties should make reservations in advance during the summer. There is a link to the main webpage for all locations at the side of this page.
There are four locations of this restaurant. They are in Williamsburg, Va, Virginia Beach, Va, Outerbanks, NC, and Myrtle Beach, SC. The adult dinner buffet is #31.00. Children are charged half price. There is also a menu to order from, though most order the buffet.
The food is good. For the extent of the seafood that you are offered, the value is good as well. There is no lobster on the buffet, but there is an overwhelming assortment of crab, crab dishes, other shellfish, and fish, as well as chicken, beef, and pork. There is a large salad bar with crab salad and shrimp salad along with other prepared salads and tossed salad to make yourself. There are always two soups and they are always the same - a wonderful she crab soup which is thick and creamy with a slightly sharp taste - and New England Clam Chowder which is equally good. Because I only find the she crab soup here, that is what I have, and am tempted to go for a second cup if there was not so much more to take after the soup.
This is the place to come if you like crab legs. The crab legs are continually replenished and come hot hot and steaming. These are snow crab clusters - all of the legs and claw on the cluster and they are large. Many just pile their plate up with them. I have found that crab legs are best eaten hot and if you allow them to cool to much the meat is hard to remove from the shell. I recommend taking just one or two clusters at a time and then go back for more hot ones. There will always be more to take when you go back here at Captain George's. You can make a meal out of the crab legs alone. But there is more shellfish to take. There is hot steamed shrimp, both spiced and plain. There is also cold steamed shrimp back on the salad bar. There are steamed crawfish. There are small steamed clams - "steamers". You will also find Oysters Rockefeller. In season, you will also find steamed blue crabs. And this is just what is on the shellfish bar.
There is a long buffet of seafood entrees. Many are prepared crab dishes such as Norfolk Special which is crab meat, shrimp, and scallops in a butter garlic sauce, baked Crab Imperial which is a crab meat casserole, Deviled Crab, soft-shelled crabs in season - which I got to try on this last visit and they were wonderful, and still it goes on and on. And for those who do not like seafood, there is good southern fried chicken, sliced prime rib of beef, and barbecue pork ribs without the bone. And I have not listed everything that is on the buffet. I could go on listing the various types of fried and broiled fish, the side dishes, the potatoes, the hush puppies, the broiled and fried shell fish, and on and on. Dinner here can be overwhelming and this is one of those buffets that even if you try to control yourself, you walk out feeling that you have eaten too much.
Dessert is an assortment of Greek pastries, cakes, hot cobblers, fruits and puddings - in particular Greek rice pudding. Desserts here are on the sweet side - as many want them to be!
I am in this area twice a year and each time I think, well, we can skip Captain George's because it so expensive. (I know many of my readers can afford spending close almost $100 for dinner for two. I just can't.) But when we are near here, I just can't resist and always go back.
The one thing to be aware of when you come to the Williamsburg location is that the restaurant has a mystery dinner theater attached to it and dinner is the buffet. If you come at the same time that dinner is set for the dinner theater you will encounter longer lines at the buffet servers than usual because of the people coming in all at once from the theater. Once they come through once or twice, the flow at the buffet servers returns to normal.
I very much recommend trying the buffet at Captain George's Seafood Restaurant. It is an experience.I have never tried any of the other locations. A friend went to the Captain George's in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and told me it was great.
This Captain George's is located at 5363 Richmond Road, Williamsburg, VA 23188. The phone number is 757-565-2323. Large parties should make reservations in advance during the summer. There is a link to the main webpage for all locations at the side of this page.
Friday, October 07, 2011
Captain George's Seafood Buffet (Revisited) - Williamsburg, VA
In my last article I wrote about a very disappointing return to a seafood buffet. In this article I want to tell you about an excellent return to Captain George's Seafood Buffet. I can't believe that my last (and first) article on this buffet was in 2005, as I certainly have been there since, but it has been at least three years since my last visit. There has been a change to the decor, but the buffet and its abundance pretty much remains as it was - and the price in all of this time has not increased too much.
Captain George's has several locations in Virginia and North and South Carolina. I have only been to the one in Williamsburg, Virginia, but I have been told that the rest are very similar. Captain George's is primarily a buffet restaurant but there is a menu also, though I have rarely seen anyone order from it rather than ordering the buffet, but I am sure some do. If you are set on having lobster, then you are ordering from the menu, as there is no lobster on the buffet. There is so much other than lobster that unless you are really set on having lobster, you will not be unhappy with the buffet.
This location is a few miles outside of the historic area of Colonial Williamsburg toward the direction of the several outlet malls. There is a large parking lot just for this restaurant. The restaurant is large and there are several dining rooms. This buffet also has a dinner theater type production murder mystery that takes place in a dining room well separated from the dining room in which the general public is seated, though the diners from the dinner theater do come in at intervals to the same buffet serving area. There are also private dining rooms for parties.
The decor in the main dining room has been changed since we were last there about three years ago. The walls in the past were made to look like a little village of shops. Now those facades were gone and the room has been decorated to look more elegant with chandeliers and a more colonial ballroom appearance. It is very nice, though my wife missed the quaint village look of the past. The buffet is set into a facade of a clipper ship complete with masts with sail rigging.
Price for the buffet is now $31 per adult. Children from 5 to 12 are half price and children four and under are free. There is an early bird special on Sundays from Noon to 4 pm at $27.00 per adult. They are open every day except Christmas. Soft drinks are charged separately and you get free refills. With soft drinks, tax, and tip the meal, for me, was expensive at over $70 for two. For many others, it would be considered an average dinner out. For the money spent, there is value here in what you are offered and what you get, especailly compared to other restaurants in this area.
I started my meal with one of the two soups that are always found on the buffet. There is She Crab Soup and there is New England Clam Chowder. I have had both. Both are very good. I have always enjoyed the She Crab Soup and that is what I choose again on this trip. This is a thick, white cream soup with pieces of crab and tiny pieces of potatoes, peppers, and vegetables. It has a velvety texture and tastes great. They say it is a secret recipe. This is not like the red, thin Maryland crab soup. It is more like a bisque than a chowder. The New England Clam Chowder is a thick white cream chowder full of clams and potatoes.
There is a salad bar that is a mix of lettuce and salad fixings with a variety of salad vegetables to add to the lettuce and then top your salad with a variety of dressings. There are also seafood salads to enjoy like crab salad and shrimp salad.
I am not sure if one would consider crab legs and steamed shrimp as appetizers or entrees, but they are in abundance. There are both hot and cold steamed crab legs and shrimp. Since hot tends to be what is preferred I will focus on those. Large snow crab clusters are continually brought out to the buffet server replenishing what is being taken. These are whole clusters that are of significant size. There is butter sauce and there is cocktail sauce. There is also hot steamed shrimp. There are also steamed crayfish and there are steamed hard shell blue crabs. All of this is found on a second clipper ship buffet server off to the side of the main server. There are also oysters Rockefeller - baked oysters stuffed with spinach and cheese. The crab legs and shrimp are good. I find the crayfish - everywhere that I have had them - not just here - to be very fishy in flavor and I now tend to pass them by. Others love them! I took one of the blue crabs but I have never mastered the art of getting the meat out of them and there was little to be found after I got through with opening the shell that I was sad that the poor crab gave his life for so little. I would much rather pick the loads of meat out of the snow crab legs and joints. If you like mussels you will also find steamed mussels and you will also find small steamed clams.
There is a lot more here than just shellfish - in fact there is more here than just seafood. After the soup, and the salad, and then the shellfish, I moved on to the main buffet server where the entrees and the side dishes are. Now, note that I said, "I", my wife who does not eat seafood other than shrimp had moved on before me. The entrees vary from pre-sliced prime rib of beef to local seafood specialties. Just about all that I remember from past meals were here still. Of special note is the Norfolk Special which is a mixture of crab, shrimp, and scallops in a lightly seasoned butter sauce. You get all the goodness of the crab and other shellfish without the work of getting it out of the shell. Another local dish is Crab Imperial which is a casserole full of crab meat. There is no skimping on the crab here - and it is the real thing - no sea legs are used here when it is supposed to be crab. I also enjoyed the fried scallops and the fried clams. The clams were nicely and naturally sweet.
There is much more seafood. There is broiled salmon, mahi mahi, fried pollack, fried shrimp, a changing broiled catch of the day, baked clams, stuffed mushrooms, and more. If you want other than seafood there is fried chicken, slices of prime rib, Italian manicotti, fall off the bone barbecue ribs in sauce, and broiled chicken. Of course, there has to be side dishes (well, in most places there have to be side dishes - see last week's article). There is corn on the cob, string beans, steamed rice, sauteed mushrooms, broccoli, potato salad and cole slaw. You will find baked rolls, fried hushpuppies (fried cornmeal dumplings), and cornbread muffins. It is all good. And there is far more than anyone can eat at one meal, so if you want to try it all, take a little taste.
I know my readers want to hear about desserts and there is a nice assortment of desserts at Captain George's. Several of the desserts are Greek and they are famous for their rice pudding and their honey oozing Baklava. There is also Chocolate cake, Strawberry shortcake, carrot cake, and cookies - all fine bakery quality. There are also hot fruit cobblers (apple, cherry, and peach), flan, and seasonal fresh fruits. These desserts are worth saving room for, so keep the dessert area in mind as you go back for just one more plate full of seafood.
Our service was very good. Our server took our soft drink orders when we sat down. I asked for an unsweetened ice tea. The ice tea that I was brought was sweet. When I called her over and told her I expected an automatic, of course, let me bring you another - but she was so certain that she had it right. She went off to get another and had to ask if this one was the same as the other - it wasn't. She was still surprised, but that was the only glitch in the entire meal with service. She was very pleasant the whole time and she was prompt at clearing away plates, bringing refills on drinks, and leaving a plate to pile empty crab shells on.
Is it good? Yes. Will it cost you more than the usual OCB meal? Yes, a lot more (3 times more). Is it worth it? Yes. Will I go back? Absolutely. I have been back many times before.
As I said when I started this article, there are three locations of Captain George's in several places besides Williamsburg, Va in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. These are all popular vacation spots and you can be sure that the other locations are in vacation areas as this one is Virginia Beach, Myrtle Beach, and Outer Banks. (There are actually fewer locations now than there were six years ago.)
I very much recommend that you try Captain George's. If you go to one of the other locations, let me know how it is.
This Captain George's is located at 5363 Richmond Road, Williamsburg, VA 23188. The phone number is 757-565-2323. Large parties should make reservations in advance during the summer. There is a link to the main webpage for all locations at the side of this page.
Captain George's has several locations in Virginia and North and South Carolina. I have only been to the one in Williamsburg, Virginia, but I have been told that the rest are very similar. Captain George's is primarily a buffet restaurant but there is a menu also, though I have rarely seen anyone order from it rather than ordering the buffet, but I am sure some do. If you are set on having lobster, then you are ordering from the menu, as there is no lobster on the buffet. There is so much other than lobster that unless you are really set on having lobster, you will not be unhappy with the buffet.
This location is a few miles outside of the historic area of Colonial Williamsburg toward the direction of the several outlet malls. There is a large parking lot just for this restaurant. The restaurant is large and there are several dining rooms. This buffet also has a dinner theater type production murder mystery that takes place in a dining room well separated from the dining room in which the general public is seated, though the diners from the dinner theater do come in at intervals to the same buffet serving area. There are also private dining rooms for parties.
The decor in the main dining room has been changed since we were last there about three years ago. The walls in the past were made to look like a little village of shops. Now those facades were gone and the room has been decorated to look more elegant with chandeliers and a more colonial ballroom appearance. It is very nice, though my wife missed the quaint village look of the past. The buffet is set into a facade of a clipper ship complete with masts with sail rigging.
Price for the buffet is now $31 per adult. Children from 5 to 12 are half price and children four and under are free. There is an early bird special on Sundays from Noon to 4 pm at $27.00 per adult. They are open every day except Christmas. Soft drinks are charged separately and you get free refills. With soft drinks, tax, and tip the meal, for me, was expensive at over $70 for two. For many others, it would be considered an average dinner out. For the money spent, there is value here in what you are offered and what you get, especailly compared to other restaurants in this area.
I started my meal with one of the two soups that are always found on the buffet. There is She Crab Soup and there is New England Clam Chowder. I have had both. Both are very good. I have always enjoyed the She Crab Soup and that is what I choose again on this trip. This is a thick, white cream soup with pieces of crab and tiny pieces of potatoes, peppers, and vegetables. It has a velvety texture and tastes great. They say it is a secret recipe. This is not like the red, thin Maryland crab soup. It is more like a bisque than a chowder. The New England Clam Chowder is a thick white cream chowder full of clams and potatoes.
There is a salad bar that is a mix of lettuce and salad fixings with a variety of salad vegetables to add to the lettuce and then top your salad with a variety of dressings. There are also seafood salads to enjoy like crab salad and shrimp salad.
I am not sure if one would consider crab legs and steamed shrimp as appetizers or entrees, but they are in abundance. There are both hot and cold steamed crab legs and shrimp. Since hot tends to be what is preferred I will focus on those. Large snow crab clusters are continually brought out to the buffet server replenishing what is being taken. These are whole clusters that are of significant size. There is butter sauce and there is cocktail sauce. There is also hot steamed shrimp. There are also steamed crayfish and there are steamed hard shell blue crabs. All of this is found on a second clipper ship buffet server off to the side of the main server. There are also oysters Rockefeller - baked oysters stuffed with spinach and cheese. The crab legs and shrimp are good. I find the crayfish - everywhere that I have had them - not just here - to be very fishy in flavor and I now tend to pass them by. Others love them! I took one of the blue crabs but I have never mastered the art of getting the meat out of them and there was little to be found after I got through with opening the shell that I was sad that the poor crab gave his life for so little. I would much rather pick the loads of meat out of the snow crab legs and joints. If you like mussels you will also find steamed mussels and you will also find small steamed clams.
There is a lot more here than just shellfish - in fact there is more here than just seafood. After the soup, and the salad, and then the shellfish, I moved on to the main buffet server where the entrees and the side dishes are. Now, note that I said, "I", my wife who does not eat seafood other than shrimp had moved on before me. The entrees vary from pre-sliced prime rib of beef to local seafood specialties. Just about all that I remember from past meals were here still. Of special note is the Norfolk Special which is a mixture of crab, shrimp, and scallops in a lightly seasoned butter sauce. You get all the goodness of the crab and other shellfish without the work of getting it out of the shell. Another local dish is Crab Imperial which is a casserole full of crab meat. There is no skimping on the crab here - and it is the real thing - no sea legs are used here when it is supposed to be crab. I also enjoyed the fried scallops and the fried clams. The clams were nicely and naturally sweet.
There is much more seafood. There is broiled salmon, mahi mahi, fried pollack, fried shrimp, a changing broiled catch of the day, baked clams, stuffed mushrooms, and more. If you want other than seafood there is fried chicken, slices of prime rib, Italian manicotti, fall off the bone barbecue ribs in sauce, and broiled chicken. Of course, there has to be side dishes (well, in most places there have to be side dishes - see last week's article). There is corn on the cob, string beans, steamed rice, sauteed mushrooms, broccoli, potato salad and cole slaw. You will find baked rolls, fried hushpuppies (fried cornmeal dumplings), and cornbread muffins. It is all good. And there is far more than anyone can eat at one meal, so if you want to try it all, take a little taste.
I know my readers want to hear about desserts and there is a nice assortment of desserts at Captain George's. Several of the desserts are Greek and they are famous for their rice pudding and their honey oozing Baklava. There is also Chocolate cake, Strawberry shortcake, carrot cake, and cookies - all fine bakery quality. There are also hot fruit cobblers (apple, cherry, and peach), flan, and seasonal fresh fruits. These desserts are worth saving room for, so keep the dessert area in mind as you go back for just one more plate full of seafood.
Our service was very good. Our server took our soft drink orders when we sat down. I asked for an unsweetened ice tea. The ice tea that I was brought was sweet. When I called her over and told her I expected an automatic, of course, let me bring you another - but she was so certain that she had it right. She went off to get another and had to ask if this one was the same as the other - it wasn't. She was still surprised, but that was the only glitch in the entire meal with service. She was very pleasant the whole time and she was prompt at clearing away plates, bringing refills on drinks, and leaving a plate to pile empty crab shells on.
Is it good? Yes. Will it cost you more than the usual OCB meal? Yes, a lot more (3 times more). Is it worth it? Yes. Will I go back? Absolutely. I have been back many times before.
As I said when I started this article, there are three locations of Captain George's in several places besides Williamsburg, Va in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. These are all popular vacation spots and you can be sure that the other locations are in vacation areas as this one is Virginia Beach, Myrtle Beach, and Outer Banks. (There are actually fewer locations now than there were six years ago.)
I very much recommend that you try Captain George's. If you go to one of the other locations, let me know how it is.
This Captain George's is located at 5363 Richmond Road, Williamsburg, VA 23188. The phone number is 757-565-2323. Large parties should make reservations in advance during the summer. There is a link to the main webpage for all locations at the side of this page.
Friday, September 30, 2011
SEAFOOD FEAST AT THE WILLIAMSBURG LODGE, WILLIAMSBURG, VA
For many years until several years ago, the Williamsburg Lodge, a hotel owned and operated by Colonial Williamsburg in Williamsburg, Virginia served a spectacular seafood buffet in its restaurant on Friday and Saturday nights. I wrote about missing this buffet once it was gone way back in 2006. I was very excited to learn that this buffet was brought back to the Lodge this year on Friday nights. When I made plans to return to this area after my own three year absence I was very excited to have this meal once again - and I looked forward to it with great anticipation. Sometimes, anticipation is much better than the actual event, and perhaps this one time spectacular meal should have been left as a memory.
The Williamsburg Lodge in the past few years was completely renovated. It appears as if the old building was taken down and a new building put up - but in actuality the renovations were done around the former building and some of the original building is there. We made reservations for the Seafood Feast when we arrived in the area. There was little that I was able to learn about it in advance other than the price and that it was "back". We arrived for dinner and searched through the "new" hotel looking for the restaurant. What we found was very different from the large dining room that we remembered.
Over the years everything changes. The room was certainly not the same. The once brightly lit, ballroom type dining room was now a dark, wood paneled room - still very fancy but in a more masculine style - I guess, this is the "Lodge" and woodsy lodge comes to mind to describe this new dining room. Instead of a large room at the rear hosting a buffet laid out in chaffing dishes and serving pieces on tables, there was now a counter built for serving that went around the rear of the dining room and along one side. We were seated at a table near the serving area and the woman who would be our server came over to greet us. She was quick to hand us two wine lists and describe the specials - which were wines and beers being served. She then left and did not return for awhile, never asking if we would like to order a beverage of any kind. We each had a small glass tumbler of ice water that was brought to the table as we sat down. I had intended to order an ice tea, but that never happened.
We went up to the serving area and over to the soup tureen. There was just one soup - the sign said it was Sweet Corn Chowder. This was a thin soup that was more like a broth than a chowder with corn in it. The soup was tasty, but not at all what I would have expected for corn chowder. One of Colonial Williamsburg's historic tavern restaurants serves a corn chowder that is nothing like this. That corn chowder is a thick cream corn chowder. I had expected when I saw the sign that this would be that -as way back in the past - this seafood buffet would serve several dishes that were featured in the Colonial Williamsburg tavern restaurants - but no, that is not so any longer, and this was a very different corn chowder. The soup was good - but not what was anticipated. It was also a surprise that this was not a fish soup to go along with the seafood theme of the buffet.
Anticipation played a very large role in my feelings for this meal. Yes, things change - but some things should not be presented as if they are the same - there are reasons that I say this - and then be very different.
Since my good wife does not eat corn for her own reasons, she passed the soup and went to the salad first - and then walked away from the salad area with an empty plate. She is the first to admit that she is a picky eater and she likes things plain. She does not like dressings and eats her salad plain. This should not be a problem as generally, salad greens and lettuce are put out for you to create a salad of your liking. Not here. There were two "green salads" - Caesar salad (which I had and it was very good) and a salad of mixed greens covered in balsamic vinegar dressing. There was also a black bean salad and an asparagus salad, both with dressing. No plain salad. There was nothing wrong with any of this - if you care for it. The problem is in a world full of allergies and preferences, there needs to be plain included with the fancy.
If I may return to the past for a moment, this buffet would feature an elaborate selection of appetizers including caviar, various pates, cold crab legs, and seafood. I had been able to try things that I would never have been able to try. There was a cold section along the line - actually, past the hot entrees and side dishes - and I went there to find cold shrimp which were already de-veined (which is a step above the usual), raw oysters on the half shell, cheese cubes of Swiss, cheddar and blue cheese, and grapes and strawberries. The shrimp were fine - but nothing special. The oysters were gritty with sand that had not been properly flushed out when they were shucked. Over next to the carving area there was also a small selection of sushi that was a bit odd in assortment and one could barely see a dot of fish in the middle of the rolls of rice. There certainly was no pate or caviar, not even the cold, thin slices of Virginia salt ham that I remembered from past buffet meals here. There was also a basket of dinner rolls that were oily, not buttery, but oily.
OK - maybe the entrees would make up for what has been lacking up to this point in the meal. There were several hot entrees and a single side dish that were on the counter between the salad and the cold shrimp. There was an unusual crab cake au gratin. This was a crab cake mixture with cheese and covered in bread crumbs in a casserole. It was baked into a pan rather than formed into crab cakes. There was broiled talapia in a vegetable mix and covered in a sauce. There was marinated chicken sliced thin with lemon and thyme with a mixture of green beans, bacon, onions, and cherry tomatoes sauteed together. There was "Five Spice" salmon cooked with roasted potatoes, both white and dark purple potatoes. There was sliced loin of pork with mustard sauce. The only side dish was garlic mashed potatoes. There were no other side dishes. The only vegetables were mixed into the entrees. If you wanted a vegetable you were scooping them out from around the entrees. There were also shot glasses sitting out with a hot yellow liquid in them. I could not figure what this was until I realized later that it was melted butter for
Remember my picky eater wife that does not eat things with sauces and likes things plain. So far she was not eating anything other than cold shrimp and some string beans that she managed to get out of the chicken dish as plain as she could.
There was a carving area also and they were carving a small round of prime rib of beef. The beef was very rare which was great for me but many people coming up to the carving station were asking for well done and that meant that the beef had to be taken to the kitchen where it would be cooked more. Those that I observed were not happy with that. There were three horseradish sauces on the table for the beef and the carver kept having to explain them. One was hot and spicy, one was just grated horseradish, and the other was pretty much oil. There was also a saute pan where scallops were being seared and served to order. (I had to wonder if they had been over to Golden Corral to get this idea.)
Now, there was this large ice display next to the carving station that had crab legs on the ice. There was no serving piece. I asked the carver for a serving piece and she said that she served the crab legs hot from a pot that was next to the ice display. She put a cluster on my plate. Crab legs cannot just be kept cooking. The crab shell was mushy and just crumbled when I tried to crack it. This was what those shot glasses of butter were for. If one had not noticed it over on the other serving table, you would not have had butter with your crab if you are so inclined. The crab was overcooked and not worth the effort to get it away from the rubbery shell - and it tasted water logged.
I tried a variety of thing. The beef was good, but I like rare beef. The loin of pork was dry. The chicken was OK. I do not like garlic mashed potatoes so I pulled the white and purple roast potatoes out of the salmon dish. I have never had purple potatoes before and they were interesting. The crab cake casserole was unusual and did not exactly taste like crab cakes but was differently nice. The talapia was fine - why do so many restaurants (and not just buffets) use talapia so often? (Guess - it is a lot cheaper than flounder. And an aside, as I have written before, it is NOT a heart healthy fish.)
Overall the food was good. If you found things that you like to eat. My wife did not. She ate very little. This was another of those infrequent meals that I felt very bad that she was not able to eat. Any picky eater would be in this same spot - and there was no kid-friendly food AT ALL here.
There was a dessert table that was laid out very finely with plates of very small pieces of cake and what can only be described as petite fours. There was traditional southern pecan pie, key lime pie, and small slices of cheesecake. The was a hot server with hot bread pudding. There was also the only colonial dish on the buffet here on the dessert table - Tipsy Triffle. This is a bowl of cake, strawberry syrup, and cream with liquor flavoring. I tried the key lime pie. It was good. If you like sweets there were good things to sample here. With the size of each thing out, you would be putting several on your plate to equal a usual sized dessert.
Service was fair. The server did show up when we were away from the table to take away the plates. She did come by a few times to ask if we wanted more water and with the small tumbler glasses that we had she filled them numerous times. Eventually, my glass accumulated so much ice from her pitcher that there was no more room for water.
We were both very disappointed. My wife was miserable. At least I was not hungry when we left. She barely ate anything.
This meal cost $32.00 per person. With the tax and tip this meal experience cost over $80 for the two of us. This meal - even if you like everything being served is NOT WORTH IT. There is no value here for what you are getting. I have had better meals at chain buffets at a third the price.
As I said, some memories are better left as memories. We will be back again - many times - to Colonial Williamsburg. We will not be going back to the Lodge for the Seafood Feast. I so much wish that I was writing otherwise. I so much miss that buffet that no longer exists.
The Williamsburg Lodge is located in Colonial Williamsburg at 310 South England Street
Williamsburg, Virginia. For details to to www.history.org and look at dining and lodging.
The Williamsburg Lodge in the past few years was completely renovated. It appears as if the old building was taken down and a new building put up - but in actuality the renovations were done around the former building and some of the original building is there. We made reservations for the Seafood Feast when we arrived in the area. There was little that I was able to learn about it in advance other than the price and that it was "back". We arrived for dinner and searched through the "new" hotel looking for the restaurant. What we found was very different from the large dining room that we remembered.
Over the years everything changes. The room was certainly not the same. The once brightly lit, ballroom type dining room was now a dark, wood paneled room - still very fancy but in a more masculine style - I guess, this is the "Lodge" and woodsy lodge comes to mind to describe this new dining room. Instead of a large room at the rear hosting a buffet laid out in chaffing dishes and serving pieces on tables, there was now a counter built for serving that went around the rear of the dining room and along one side. We were seated at a table near the serving area and the woman who would be our server came over to greet us. She was quick to hand us two wine lists and describe the specials - which were wines and beers being served. She then left and did not return for awhile, never asking if we would like to order a beverage of any kind. We each had a small glass tumbler of ice water that was brought to the table as we sat down. I had intended to order an ice tea, but that never happened.
We went up to the serving area and over to the soup tureen. There was just one soup - the sign said it was Sweet Corn Chowder. This was a thin soup that was more like a broth than a chowder with corn in it. The soup was tasty, but not at all what I would have expected for corn chowder. One of Colonial Williamsburg's historic tavern restaurants serves a corn chowder that is nothing like this. That corn chowder is a thick cream corn chowder. I had expected when I saw the sign that this would be that -as way back in the past - this seafood buffet would serve several dishes that were featured in the Colonial Williamsburg tavern restaurants - but no, that is not so any longer, and this was a very different corn chowder. The soup was good - but not what was anticipated. It was also a surprise that this was not a fish soup to go along with the seafood theme of the buffet.
Anticipation played a very large role in my feelings for this meal. Yes, things change - but some things should not be presented as if they are the same - there are reasons that I say this - and then be very different.
Since my good wife does not eat corn for her own reasons, she passed the soup and went to the salad first - and then walked away from the salad area with an empty plate. She is the first to admit that she is a picky eater and she likes things plain. She does not like dressings and eats her salad plain. This should not be a problem as generally, salad greens and lettuce are put out for you to create a salad of your liking. Not here. There were two "green salads" - Caesar salad (which I had and it was very good) and a salad of mixed greens covered in balsamic vinegar dressing. There was also a black bean salad and an asparagus salad, both with dressing. No plain salad. There was nothing wrong with any of this - if you care for it. The problem is in a world full of allergies and preferences, there needs to be plain included with the fancy.
If I may return to the past for a moment, this buffet would feature an elaborate selection of appetizers including caviar, various pates, cold crab legs, and seafood. I had been able to try things that I would never have been able to try. There was a cold section along the line - actually, past the hot entrees and side dishes - and I went there to find cold shrimp which were already de-veined (which is a step above the usual), raw oysters on the half shell, cheese cubes of Swiss, cheddar and blue cheese, and grapes and strawberries. The shrimp were fine - but nothing special. The oysters were gritty with sand that had not been properly flushed out when they were shucked. Over next to the carving area there was also a small selection of sushi that was a bit odd in assortment and one could barely see a dot of fish in the middle of the rolls of rice. There certainly was no pate or caviar, not even the cold, thin slices of Virginia salt ham that I remembered from past buffet meals here. There was also a basket of dinner rolls that were oily, not buttery, but oily.
OK - maybe the entrees would make up for what has been lacking up to this point in the meal. There were several hot entrees and a single side dish that were on the counter between the salad and the cold shrimp. There was an unusual crab cake au gratin. This was a crab cake mixture with cheese and covered in bread crumbs in a casserole. It was baked into a pan rather than formed into crab cakes. There was broiled talapia in a vegetable mix and covered in a sauce. There was marinated chicken sliced thin with lemon and thyme with a mixture of green beans, bacon, onions, and cherry tomatoes sauteed together. There was "Five Spice" salmon cooked with roasted potatoes, both white and dark purple potatoes. There was sliced loin of pork with mustard sauce. The only side dish was garlic mashed potatoes. There were no other side dishes. The only vegetables were mixed into the entrees. If you wanted a vegetable you were scooping them out from around the entrees. There were also shot glasses sitting out with a hot yellow liquid in them. I could not figure what this was until I realized later that it was melted butter for
Remember my picky eater wife that does not eat things with sauces and likes things plain. So far she was not eating anything other than cold shrimp and some string beans that she managed to get out of the chicken dish as plain as she could.
There was a carving area also and they were carving a small round of prime rib of beef. The beef was very rare which was great for me but many people coming up to the carving station were asking for well done and that meant that the beef had to be taken to the kitchen where it would be cooked more. Those that I observed were not happy with that. There were three horseradish sauces on the table for the beef and the carver kept having to explain them. One was hot and spicy, one was just grated horseradish, and the other was pretty much oil. There was also a saute pan where scallops were being seared and served to order. (I had to wonder if they had been over to Golden Corral to get this idea.)
Now, there was this large ice display next to the carving station that had crab legs on the ice. There was no serving piece. I asked the carver for a serving piece and she said that she served the crab legs hot from a pot that was next to the ice display. She put a cluster on my plate. Crab legs cannot just be kept cooking. The crab shell was mushy and just crumbled when I tried to crack it. This was what those shot glasses of butter were for. If one had not noticed it over on the other serving table, you would not have had butter with your crab if you are so inclined. The crab was overcooked and not worth the effort to get it away from the rubbery shell - and it tasted water logged.
I tried a variety of thing. The beef was good, but I like rare beef. The loin of pork was dry. The chicken was OK. I do not like garlic mashed potatoes so I pulled the white and purple roast potatoes out of the salmon dish. I have never had purple potatoes before and they were interesting. The crab cake casserole was unusual and did not exactly taste like crab cakes but was differently nice. The talapia was fine - why do so many restaurants (and not just buffets) use talapia so often? (Guess - it is a lot cheaper than flounder. And an aside, as I have written before, it is NOT a heart healthy fish.)
Overall the food was good. If you found things that you like to eat. My wife did not. She ate very little. This was another of those infrequent meals that I felt very bad that she was not able to eat. Any picky eater would be in this same spot - and there was no kid-friendly food AT ALL here.
There was a dessert table that was laid out very finely with plates of very small pieces of cake and what can only be described as petite fours. There was traditional southern pecan pie, key lime pie, and small slices of cheesecake. The was a hot server with hot bread pudding. There was also the only colonial dish on the buffet here on the dessert table - Tipsy Triffle. This is a bowl of cake, strawberry syrup, and cream with liquor flavoring. I tried the key lime pie. It was good. If you like sweets there were good things to sample here. With the size of each thing out, you would be putting several on your plate to equal a usual sized dessert.
Service was fair. The server did show up when we were away from the table to take away the plates. She did come by a few times to ask if we wanted more water and with the small tumbler glasses that we had she filled them numerous times. Eventually, my glass accumulated so much ice from her pitcher that there was no more room for water.
We were both very disappointed. My wife was miserable. At least I was not hungry when we left. She barely ate anything.
This meal cost $32.00 per person. With the tax and tip this meal experience cost over $80 for the two of us. This meal - even if you like everything being served is NOT WORTH IT. There is no value here for what you are getting. I have had better meals at chain buffets at a third the price.
As I said, some memories are better left as memories. We will be back again - many times - to Colonial Williamsburg. We will not be going back to the Lodge for the Seafood Feast. I so much wish that I was writing otherwise. I so much miss that buffet that no longer exists.
The Williamsburg Lodge is located in Colonial Williamsburg at 310 South England Street
Williamsburg, Virginia. For details to to www.history.org and look at dining and lodging.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Coming Back to Golden Buffet, Centereach, New York
It has been about two years since I last went to the Golden Buffet in the village of Centereach on Long Island in the state of New York. Chinese/Asian buffets on Long Island are becoming scarce. There are just a handful left. This one is a distance from me but we had nothing special to do on a Saturday night, had been shopping during the day near to this buffet and we decided to go back.
When I last wrote about Golden Buffet in 2009, I gave it a mixed review. Read that article if you would like to see how I felt then. That had been my second visit and my first review in 2006 had been better. Things were better on this visit.
One thing that is different (though not really better) is that the price has gone up (haven't they all?). Dinner on the weekend is now $14.99 - that is $2 per adult more. The weeknight dinner price is now $12.99 - a dollar increase. I actually hesitated before walking in at that price. Not that it is particularly high, but I was not sure the dinner here was worth that price from my recollection of my last visit. This price is pretty much ball park for other Chinese buffets on the weekend around here, as long as the meal is good. I decided what the heck and we went in.
As I have described before this restaurant is located inside an indoor strip mall that is mostly vacant of businesses. There is an eye glass store across the way inside from the restaurants doors. There does not seem to be anything else open inside. This is exactly as this has been since I first went to this restaurant in 2006. Business is not good for indoor strip malls out there. The outside of the entire restaurant is visible from the parking lot and you see the sign and the windows for this restaurant outside in the parking lot. The entrance door is just inside the empty mall.
The restaurant is a large, bright, airy room with nice decor. My wife commented on how nice the large, brass chandeliers are. This is a large restaurant and there is a party room at the back that is in a separate room, closed off from the rest of the restaurant by a door. There was a birthday party going on in there on this night. For a Saturday night in the summer the restaurant was crowded - which is always a good thing. I noticed that there were a number of Asian people eating at the restaurant which is a very good sign when it comes to an Chinese/Asian restaurant. I noted this in 2009 as well. While there were plenty of people dining, we were taken to a table immediately when we went in and there was no crowd to fight at the buffet servers.
I will not describe the layout of the buffet again. You can read my earlier articles for that. It remains exactly the same. We gave the server our drink orders - lately we have been having just ice water at some of the buffets that we go to. It saves a little money and we can have soft drinks at home. We went up to the buffet.
As usual for us, we start with soup. My wife took the wonton soup and I made a mix of the hot and sour soup and the egg drop soup. There was also a chicken soup with vegetables. I tend to mix the hot and sour soup with either broth from the wonton soup or egg drop soup as I prefer my hot and sour soup mildly spiced. This one was not overwhelmingly spiced hot and probably would have been fine as it is. It had a nice blend of the correct vegetables mixed in with plenty of tofu and whole petals - I don't really know what these are but they appear to be flower petals and they very well may be - and they are always good. Before I mixed it, the hot and sour soup was a light brown in color rather than the more common deep red/brown. I enjoyed this hot and sour soup more than I have others that I have had recently at other Chinese buffets.
After the soup, my wife went for dumplings - there were two types - a steamed meat dumpling and a steamed "dim sum" cup filled with dense, chopped meat. I took one each of those later and they were both good, and I usually don't care much for the "dim sum" cup style dumpling as they tend to be too intense in flavor. Here this was very nice. I went first for the sushi bar.
And entire wall is filled with a sushi bar. There was a sushi chef there refilling plates of rolls and sushi as their contents were taken. There was a good variety of slices of rolls and four different types of fish on top of rice. At the side there was a tray of soy sauce, a tray of wasabi, and a tray of spicy mayo. I like spicy mayo and have had it served on the side at only one other Chinese buffet. This one was slightly milder than what I have had before, but that was good as it did not overwhelm the fish. On this plate I also took some peel and eat shrimp. They were good size, cold, and fresh. There was a tray of raw clams on the half shell and raw oysters. There was another tray of cold mussels. I went to take some oysters and there were none left when i went up. These were not replaced during the meal while we were there. Hot crab legs were out on the hot server and these went quickly. They were not replaced as quickly as they might have been - but the man at the table behind us made a comment to the server that there were no crab legs and a dish of them was brought out to him at his table.
It appeared to me that everything was refilled other than the oysters and the delay in the crab legs- and when those did come out they were not snow crab any longer but rock crab claws. It may have just been a busy day for crab legs. One tray that was labeled roast pork was empty and later was replaced with roast beef. That is an equal substitute and fine.
One of the problems on my last visit was that some of the dishes were left to dry out. Nothing here on this night was drying out. Everything was, as I say, "well tended". Most things were gone and replaced so regularly that they could not dry out. While we were there the steamed flounder was replaced twice.
This brings me to the steamed flounder. I wrote about this before and it is worth repeating. This is the best Chinese buffet steamed flounder that I have had. This is a thick fillet of flounder - NO bones. It is steamed and served in a brown, light ginger sauce. The fish is tasty. The sauce is tasty - spoon some from the serving tray on top of what you take. And there are no bones! There also is no fish skin which some may like, but I don't enjoy. I took this on two trips up to the buffet server.
This is nothing to do with this particular Chinese buffet but the dishes need to vary a bit at Chinese buffets. There seem to be the same standards at everyone that I go to - chicken with broccoli, beef with broccoli (or peppers - same sauce), General Tso chicken, crab in cheese sauce, and so on. Yes, those were all here. There was one dish labeled Shrimp with Zucchini which seemed like a pleasant diversion and I took some of that - but while there was shrimp (and some fake crab legs) in a nice, thick sauce with small pieces of red and green peppers and some onion - there was no zucchini. My wife and I were both enticed to try this - and both of us commented that there was no zucchini, but we both agreed that it was good - and different - any way. I also took a shrimp that had a stuffing mounded on top and baked and that was good - and not overly greasy as other similar that I have had at other buffets. I took some lo mein and that was very good as well. My wife tried the fried rice and she said it was good.
In my last article I commented on the egg roll. I tried one here again and it was better. It is still small - the usual Chinese buffet sized egg roll, but it was nicely filled and the shredded vegetables inside had a nice taste. I thought that I was tasting mustard - and I had the thought as I was eating it that it tasted like good egg rolls that I have had in the past. That mustard taste may have been mustard greens shredded into the filling - and it gave this egg roll just the right taste. Now, these are nothing to run right out and try - but they are better than they were in 2009.
Overall the food was very good. I was a bit concerned that there may have been more sugar/sweetener used in some of the dishes than was necessary. Nothing was overly sweet but several things tended toward the sweet side of taste. As it was, it all turned out to be not too sweet.
For our dessert lovers, there was nothing special here. There were two of the usual small Chinese buffet little pieces of cake. One with a sugar icing and another a sliced roll with sugar cream filling. There was a lot of fresh fruit - orange wedges, watermelon (it is the season), cantaloupe, honeydew melon, and pieces of fresh mango. There was red and green jello. There was chocolate pudding. There was marshmallows mixed with fruit salad - salad. There was also a soft serve machine with vanilla ice cream. With your check you get a fortune cookie.
Now. Was everything wonderful? Well, not everything. The service was not up to what it had been on my last two visits. There were a number of women taking care of the tables. When we would get up to get another plate of food, the used plates on our table would not be there when we returned. All good. But no one ever came to our table to ask if we would like more water. My glass was empty and my wife's glass was less than half full. It was water with ice - nothing that costs them anything to bring - but no one was coming to refill the glasses. And they were running around to other tables - such that you could not even get their attention - and refilling soda and drinks at those other tables. So this tells me something - we did not order and pay extra for soft drinks. We were not getting any attention in regard to refilling our glasses. This annoyed me and it was reflected in the tip that I left. As I said at the beginning - we have ordered water at other Chinese/Asian buffets and we have always had servers come and ask to fill the glasses or just take the glasses and fill them. When we were done eating and she came by to take the plate that was in front of me, she asked THEN - would you like more water. By then it was too late. Not to end on a sour note but the dinner cost enough to pay full attention to every table regardless of what extras are ordered.
Would I go back to Golden Buffet? Yes. Do I recommend that you go there if you are in this area? Yes. The food was good. There was plenty to choose from and after my initial hesitation going in about the price, there was value for what you are getting. Try it.
Golden Buffet is located at 1973 Middle Country Road in Centereach, NY. This is in the same shopping center on Route 25 as Walmart so it is not hard to find. There is no website. The phone number is 631-588-5188.
When I last wrote about Golden Buffet in 2009, I gave it a mixed review. Read that article if you would like to see how I felt then. That had been my second visit and my first review in 2006 had been better. Things were better on this visit.
One thing that is different (though not really better) is that the price has gone up (haven't they all?). Dinner on the weekend is now $14.99 - that is $2 per adult more. The weeknight dinner price is now $12.99 - a dollar increase. I actually hesitated before walking in at that price. Not that it is particularly high, but I was not sure the dinner here was worth that price from my recollection of my last visit. This price is pretty much ball park for other Chinese buffets on the weekend around here, as long as the meal is good. I decided what the heck and we went in.
As I have described before this restaurant is located inside an indoor strip mall that is mostly vacant of businesses. There is an eye glass store across the way inside from the restaurants doors. There does not seem to be anything else open inside. This is exactly as this has been since I first went to this restaurant in 2006. Business is not good for indoor strip malls out there. The outside of the entire restaurant is visible from the parking lot and you see the sign and the windows for this restaurant outside in the parking lot. The entrance door is just inside the empty mall.
The restaurant is a large, bright, airy room with nice decor. My wife commented on how nice the large, brass chandeliers are. This is a large restaurant and there is a party room at the back that is in a separate room, closed off from the rest of the restaurant by a door. There was a birthday party going on in there on this night. For a Saturday night in the summer the restaurant was crowded - which is always a good thing. I noticed that there were a number of Asian people eating at the restaurant which is a very good sign when it comes to an Chinese/Asian restaurant. I noted this in 2009 as well. While there were plenty of people dining, we were taken to a table immediately when we went in and there was no crowd to fight at the buffet servers.
I will not describe the layout of the buffet again. You can read my earlier articles for that. It remains exactly the same. We gave the server our drink orders - lately we have been having just ice water at some of the buffets that we go to. It saves a little money and we can have soft drinks at home. We went up to the buffet.
As usual for us, we start with soup. My wife took the wonton soup and I made a mix of the hot and sour soup and the egg drop soup. There was also a chicken soup with vegetables. I tend to mix the hot and sour soup with either broth from the wonton soup or egg drop soup as I prefer my hot and sour soup mildly spiced. This one was not overwhelmingly spiced hot and probably would have been fine as it is. It had a nice blend of the correct vegetables mixed in with plenty of tofu and whole petals - I don't really know what these are but they appear to be flower petals and they very well may be - and they are always good. Before I mixed it, the hot and sour soup was a light brown in color rather than the more common deep red/brown. I enjoyed this hot and sour soup more than I have others that I have had recently at other Chinese buffets.
After the soup, my wife went for dumplings - there were two types - a steamed meat dumpling and a steamed "dim sum" cup filled with dense, chopped meat. I took one each of those later and they were both good, and I usually don't care much for the "dim sum" cup style dumpling as they tend to be too intense in flavor. Here this was very nice. I went first for the sushi bar.
And entire wall is filled with a sushi bar. There was a sushi chef there refilling plates of rolls and sushi as their contents were taken. There was a good variety of slices of rolls and four different types of fish on top of rice. At the side there was a tray of soy sauce, a tray of wasabi, and a tray of spicy mayo. I like spicy mayo and have had it served on the side at only one other Chinese buffet. This one was slightly milder than what I have had before, but that was good as it did not overwhelm the fish. On this plate I also took some peel and eat shrimp. They were good size, cold, and fresh. There was a tray of raw clams on the half shell and raw oysters. There was another tray of cold mussels. I went to take some oysters and there were none left when i went up. These were not replaced during the meal while we were there. Hot crab legs were out on the hot server and these went quickly. They were not replaced as quickly as they might have been - but the man at the table behind us made a comment to the server that there were no crab legs and a dish of them was brought out to him at his table.
It appeared to me that everything was refilled other than the oysters and the delay in the crab legs- and when those did come out they were not snow crab any longer but rock crab claws. It may have just been a busy day for crab legs. One tray that was labeled roast pork was empty and later was replaced with roast beef. That is an equal substitute and fine.
One of the problems on my last visit was that some of the dishes were left to dry out. Nothing here on this night was drying out. Everything was, as I say, "well tended". Most things were gone and replaced so regularly that they could not dry out. While we were there the steamed flounder was replaced twice.
This brings me to the steamed flounder. I wrote about this before and it is worth repeating. This is the best Chinese buffet steamed flounder that I have had. This is a thick fillet of flounder - NO bones. It is steamed and served in a brown, light ginger sauce. The fish is tasty. The sauce is tasty - spoon some from the serving tray on top of what you take. And there are no bones! There also is no fish skin which some may like, but I don't enjoy. I took this on two trips up to the buffet server.
This is nothing to do with this particular Chinese buffet but the dishes need to vary a bit at Chinese buffets. There seem to be the same standards at everyone that I go to - chicken with broccoli, beef with broccoli (or peppers - same sauce), General Tso chicken, crab in cheese sauce, and so on. Yes, those were all here. There was one dish labeled Shrimp with Zucchini which seemed like a pleasant diversion and I took some of that - but while there was shrimp (and some fake crab legs) in a nice, thick sauce with small pieces of red and green peppers and some onion - there was no zucchini. My wife and I were both enticed to try this - and both of us commented that there was no zucchini, but we both agreed that it was good - and different - any way. I also took a shrimp that had a stuffing mounded on top and baked and that was good - and not overly greasy as other similar that I have had at other buffets. I took some lo mein and that was very good as well. My wife tried the fried rice and she said it was good.
In my last article I commented on the egg roll. I tried one here again and it was better. It is still small - the usual Chinese buffet sized egg roll, but it was nicely filled and the shredded vegetables inside had a nice taste. I thought that I was tasting mustard - and I had the thought as I was eating it that it tasted like good egg rolls that I have had in the past. That mustard taste may have been mustard greens shredded into the filling - and it gave this egg roll just the right taste. Now, these are nothing to run right out and try - but they are better than they were in 2009.
Overall the food was very good. I was a bit concerned that there may have been more sugar/sweetener used in some of the dishes than was necessary. Nothing was overly sweet but several things tended toward the sweet side of taste. As it was, it all turned out to be not too sweet.
For our dessert lovers, there was nothing special here. There were two of the usual small Chinese buffet little pieces of cake. One with a sugar icing and another a sliced roll with sugar cream filling. There was a lot of fresh fruit - orange wedges, watermelon (it is the season), cantaloupe, honeydew melon, and pieces of fresh mango. There was red and green jello. There was chocolate pudding. There was marshmallows mixed with fruit salad - salad. There was also a soft serve machine with vanilla ice cream. With your check you get a fortune cookie.
Now. Was everything wonderful? Well, not everything. The service was not up to what it had been on my last two visits. There were a number of women taking care of the tables. When we would get up to get another plate of food, the used plates on our table would not be there when we returned. All good. But no one ever came to our table to ask if we would like more water. My glass was empty and my wife's glass was less than half full. It was water with ice - nothing that costs them anything to bring - but no one was coming to refill the glasses. And they were running around to other tables - such that you could not even get their attention - and refilling soda and drinks at those other tables. So this tells me something - we did not order and pay extra for soft drinks. We were not getting any attention in regard to refilling our glasses. This annoyed me and it was reflected in the tip that I left. As I said at the beginning - we have ordered water at other Chinese/Asian buffets and we have always had servers come and ask to fill the glasses or just take the glasses and fill them. When we were done eating and she came by to take the plate that was in front of me, she asked THEN - would you like more water. By then it was too late. Not to end on a sour note but the dinner cost enough to pay full attention to every table regardless of what extras are ordered.
Would I go back to Golden Buffet? Yes. Do I recommend that you go there if you are in this area? Yes. The food was good. There was plenty to choose from and after my initial hesitation going in about the price, there was value for what you are getting. Try it.
Golden Buffet is located at 1973 Middle Country Road in Centereach, NY. This is in the same shopping center on Route 25 as Walmart so it is not hard to find. There is no website. The phone number is 631-588-5188.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Pan Seared Seafood at Golden Corral - New Feature
I was near Philadelphia, PA on business and decided that I would go back to the Golden Corral in Bensalem, PA and look closely over the dessert selections so that I could tell the readers who were disappointed in my last Golden Corral article that I did not make a big deal about the dessert selections there all about what you will find at Golden Corral for dessert. I also was looking forward to enjoying their rib feature again. It is very rare that I am somewhere that has a Golden Corral restaurant.
We got to the Golden Corral and to my surprise - and at first, disappointment that the rib feature had ended - and this was the first day of a new feature - Pan Seared Seafood - made to order at the grill. Interesting... Well, I would have more to write about.
I am not going to go into the details of this buffet or the location. I did that in my last article just a short time ago. You can read all about it there. What I do want to tell you about is this new feature - and like all other features at Golden Corral it is only at the restaurants for a limited time. And this feature is with dinner only. It is not available at lunch. This is an unusual feature as it is based completely at the grill and each dish is made to order for you. There are nine choices - and here is how it works (according to the sign at the grill). First, you select your fish - shrimp, scallops, or talapia fish. Next you select your "base" - what the fish will sit upon. You have a choice of white rice, linguine, or mixed sauteed vegetables. Finally, you select your sauce - and there are three of those - scampi sauce, spicy Alfredo sauce, or lemon picata. You step up to the grill - where the steaks are cooked and tell the chef your choices. The chef has three pans of seafood bubbling away next to him on the grill - shrimp, scallops, and talapia. The chef then takes a scoop of ONE of the seafood - shrimp, scallops, or talapia - BUT NOT a combination of them - "ONLY ONE" - and places it into another dry fry pan on the griddle and adds a bit of liquid butter or butter like sauce. The chef then lets your order saute. There are places for two pans to cook at the same time - so expect a bit of a wait if there is a crowd. While your seafood is "pan searing" you are asked what base and what sauce. You can leave any of these out if you wish. Why did I emphasize above ONLY ONE - because I made the mistake of asking for shrimp and scallops and was told rather firmly that you can have only one at a time and if you want more you need to come back. Again, this was the first day and the two chefs who were alternately working this new feature at the grill were both commenting that this was all new to them and they were not quite getting the process easily down yet. So perhaps, this only one business was just the rule of this chef to avoid his confusion - and then again, maybe not.
I went up to see what I would like to try on this new feature. I had decided on shrimp and scallops and as you see, that idea was shot down pretty quickly so I said that I wanted scallops. I did not want linguine right then. I have a problem eating rice. And when I looked at the tray of sauteed vegetables they looked extremely oily in the pan. I decided at that point that I would pass on those. I had thought that I would put my own sauce on top. The rice, linguine, mixed vegetables, and all three sauces are in the serving trays that face out to the public on the serving counter next to the grill and have serving utensils like all of the other buffet trays. In fact I was surprised that the chef had to assemble this all for you as I figured that you could get the seafood and assemble it yourself - BUT NO - the chef, here at least on this first night, had to do it all for you. I had thought that I would take my own sauce and try the lemon picata, but I had already had been handed the plate with several "seared" scallops and I did not dare touch the sauce spoon. :) By this time the spicy Alfredo sauce had run out - it must have been very popular as our server at our table had recommended that we try it. My first thought as I walked away from the grill with my plate was "Too many rules with this feature". What is the difference if you have one or all three seafood selections at the same time - it is a buffet and you will take more anyway. What is the difference if you take the "base" or sauce yourself- it is easily accessible from the front of the counter in serving trays situated to serve yourself as with all of the other buffet trays.
I got a few other things from the buffet to add to the scallops and went back to the table. They were fine. What had gone into the pan as scallops a little bigger than the size of a nickel came out smaller than the size of a dime. There were maybe nine or ten. They were not the best scallops that I have ever had but they were not bad.
Later, I went back to try the shrimp. As I walked up to the grill I decided that I would try it this time all the way - shrimp, sauteed vegetables - oily and all, and lemon picata sauce. When it was my turn to order, the same chef said to me "I know you only want the seafood - nothing else." I told him that this time I would try it all and he seemed delighted. He seared a pan of about eight small shrimp, scooped some of the mixed vegetables onto my plate and then spooned the lemon picata sauce on top of the vegetables. This was what he did with all of the sauces - they went on before the seafood despite the pictures on the wall showing the seafood and the "base" covered in sauce. I took my plate back to the table.
I have to tell you that this combination was very good. The lemon picata sauce had capers in it. The mixed vegetables were artichoke heart leaves, red peppers, and zucchini. All together they blended in a great tasting dish. I was impressed. This was probably one of the better tasting seafood dishes that I have had at any buffet. I went back again to do the same thing all over again but this time with scallops.
OK - for those who keep saying how can I eat so much - I don't eat so much. The serving size of these featured dishes are about the size of a typical side dish serving. You are not getting a plateful with this. When I eat at buffets, I eat a sampling of things - not whole portions. This feature is portioned out by the chef and he is not filling your plate. You can always go back for more.
Anyway, the scallops were just as good with the vegetable and lemon picata sauce as the shrimp - perhaps even better! I did not try the scampi sauce - it is garlic and butter and not different from any other scampi sauce. There was no more spicy Alfredo sauce. And I did not try the talapia. I have to tell you a little that I know about talapia. It is popular in restaurants because it is a mild tasting white flaky fish that is a less expensive substitute for flounder. What I have read - and don't debate me on this if you think differently - is that FARM raised talapia does not have the same omega health benefits as other fish and what it does have for some reason, some how takes away the benefits from you that other healthy types of fish give you. I like talapia. I used to order it a lot. I don't order it often any longer because of what I have read about it. Here is just one such article. I did not write it - I am just passing the information along.
Before I go on to the desserts, I give the new feature at Golden Corral a BIG thumbs up!
Now, the desserts. I wish that I could tell you that they had wonderful desserts at Golden Corral, but there really was nothing here worth boasting about. The best of the desserts was the soft ice cream and sundae bar and if you are into sundaes or ice cream cones, then there is a nice selection of four flavors (two machines) and a lot of sauces and toppings. As to cakes - there were two cakes - carrot cake and what they called German chocolate cake. German Chocolate cake usually has a light chocolate frosting - theirs had a hard dark chocolate frosting. There was also a sugar free Mocha cake. There was blueberry pie and the sign said apple pie but no apple pie was to be seen. There were chocolate covered macaroons. There was a fruit filled cookie bar and a chocolate filled cookie bar. There was diet chocolate pudding and diet jello. There were three different hot fruit cobblers and one overly gooey chocolate cobbler - the fruit cobblers were more appealing. There was a sign that said vanilla cupcakes and I have had Golden Corral's cupcakes in the past and they generally are good. There was also a banana pudding. Nothing looked wonderful- except the ice cream.
I went over to the salad bar to look for fresh fruit. Behind the salad bar is a whole display of fresh oranges, lemons, and watermelons. There were no oranges on the buffet server and the watermelon server was empty. A young boy came up looking for watermelon and asked the man behind the counter for some. One piece was placed into the serving bowl for him - and that was it. Others came up looking for it, now found no one to ask, and walked away.
A few don't believe me when I say that so often the desserts are not worth telling you about - and when there are great desserts you hear it from me. If you go to Golden Corral for the desserts you are going to be disappointed.
Before I close, I want to comment about the choices at Golden Corral and I like Golden Corral very much - it may just be the best of the remaining chain buffet restaurants. There is not a lot of choices at Golden Corral if you want to eat plain or low fat. Most vegetables are seasoned or are in some form of sauce. The meats are beef, pork, or chicken - and only the rotisserie chicken and the cold chicken breast strips on the salad bar are not fried or highly seasoned. There are no carvings. There were at one time but not any more. This is a high fat selection buffet. My wife does not like Golden Corral because it is hard for her to choose what to eat there. She does eat low fat and likes plain things. She winds up eating the cold chicken from the salad bar and salad selections for most of her meal. So if you are not a meat eater and you are one who wants to eat lower fat foods this is not the place for you. Even this new feature has butter in everything and the seafood was cooked twice in butter (or some type of butter sauce).
So - pan seared seafood feature - Yeah!
Desserts - hardly worth the calories.
We got to the Golden Corral and to my surprise - and at first, disappointment that the rib feature had ended - and this was the first day of a new feature - Pan Seared Seafood - made to order at the grill. Interesting... Well, I would have more to write about.
I am not going to go into the details of this buffet or the location. I did that in my last article just a short time ago. You can read all about it there. What I do want to tell you about is this new feature - and like all other features at Golden Corral it is only at the restaurants for a limited time. And this feature is with dinner only. It is not available at lunch. This is an unusual feature as it is based completely at the grill and each dish is made to order for you. There are nine choices - and here is how it works (according to the sign at the grill). First, you select your fish - shrimp, scallops, or talapia fish. Next you select your "base" - what the fish will sit upon. You have a choice of white rice, linguine, or mixed sauteed vegetables. Finally, you select your sauce - and there are three of those - scampi sauce, spicy Alfredo sauce, or lemon picata. You step up to the grill - where the steaks are cooked and tell the chef your choices. The chef has three pans of seafood bubbling away next to him on the grill - shrimp, scallops, and talapia. The chef then takes a scoop of ONE of the seafood - shrimp, scallops, or talapia - BUT NOT a combination of them - "ONLY ONE" - and places it into another dry fry pan on the griddle and adds a bit of liquid butter or butter like sauce. The chef then lets your order saute. There are places for two pans to cook at the same time - so expect a bit of a wait if there is a crowd. While your seafood is "pan searing" you are asked what base and what sauce. You can leave any of these out if you wish. Why did I emphasize above ONLY ONE - because I made the mistake of asking for shrimp and scallops and was told rather firmly that you can have only one at a time and if you want more you need to come back. Again, this was the first day and the two chefs who were alternately working this new feature at the grill were both commenting that this was all new to them and they were not quite getting the process easily down yet. So perhaps, this only one business was just the rule of this chef to avoid his confusion - and then again, maybe not.
I went up to see what I would like to try on this new feature. I had decided on shrimp and scallops and as you see, that idea was shot down pretty quickly so I said that I wanted scallops. I did not want linguine right then. I have a problem eating rice. And when I looked at the tray of sauteed vegetables they looked extremely oily in the pan. I decided at that point that I would pass on those. I had thought that I would put my own sauce on top. The rice, linguine, mixed vegetables, and all three sauces are in the serving trays that face out to the public on the serving counter next to the grill and have serving utensils like all of the other buffet trays. In fact I was surprised that the chef had to assemble this all for you as I figured that you could get the seafood and assemble it yourself - BUT NO - the chef, here at least on this first night, had to do it all for you. I had thought that I would take my own sauce and try the lemon picata, but I had already had been handed the plate with several "seared" scallops and I did not dare touch the sauce spoon. :) By this time the spicy Alfredo sauce had run out - it must have been very popular as our server at our table had recommended that we try it. My first thought as I walked away from the grill with my plate was "Too many rules with this feature". What is the difference if you have one or all three seafood selections at the same time - it is a buffet and you will take more anyway. What is the difference if you take the "base" or sauce yourself- it is easily accessible from the front of the counter in serving trays situated to serve yourself as with all of the other buffet trays.
I got a few other things from the buffet to add to the scallops and went back to the table. They were fine. What had gone into the pan as scallops a little bigger than the size of a nickel came out smaller than the size of a dime. There were maybe nine or ten. They were not the best scallops that I have ever had but they were not bad.
Later, I went back to try the shrimp. As I walked up to the grill I decided that I would try it this time all the way - shrimp, sauteed vegetables - oily and all, and lemon picata sauce. When it was my turn to order, the same chef said to me "I know you only want the seafood - nothing else." I told him that this time I would try it all and he seemed delighted. He seared a pan of about eight small shrimp, scooped some of the mixed vegetables onto my plate and then spooned the lemon picata sauce on top of the vegetables. This was what he did with all of the sauces - they went on before the seafood despite the pictures on the wall showing the seafood and the "base" covered in sauce. I took my plate back to the table.
I have to tell you that this combination was very good. The lemon picata sauce had capers in it. The mixed vegetables were artichoke heart leaves, red peppers, and zucchini. All together they blended in a great tasting dish. I was impressed. This was probably one of the better tasting seafood dishes that I have had at any buffet. I went back again to do the same thing all over again but this time with scallops.
OK - for those who keep saying how can I eat so much - I don't eat so much. The serving size of these featured dishes are about the size of a typical side dish serving. You are not getting a plateful with this. When I eat at buffets, I eat a sampling of things - not whole portions. This feature is portioned out by the chef and he is not filling your plate. You can always go back for more.
Anyway, the scallops were just as good with the vegetable and lemon picata sauce as the shrimp - perhaps even better! I did not try the scampi sauce - it is garlic and butter and not different from any other scampi sauce. There was no more spicy Alfredo sauce. And I did not try the talapia. I have to tell you a little that I know about talapia. It is popular in restaurants because it is a mild tasting white flaky fish that is a less expensive substitute for flounder. What I have read - and don't debate me on this if you think differently - is that FARM raised talapia does not have the same omega health benefits as other fish and what it does have for some reason, some how takes away the benefits from you that other healthy types of fish give you. I like talapia. I used to order it a lot. I don't order it often any longer because of what I have read about it. Here is just one such article. I did not write it - I am just passing the information along.
Before I go on to the desserts, I give the new feature at Golden Corral a BIG thumbs up!
Now, the desserts. I wish that I could tell you that they had wonderful desserts at Golden Corral, but there really was nothing here worth boasting about. The best of the desserts was the soft ice cream and sundae bar and if you are into sundaes or ice cream cones, then there is a nice selection of four flavors (two machines) and a lot of sauces and toppings. As to cakes - there were two cakes - carrot cake and what they called German chocolate cake. German Chocolate cake usually has a light chocolate frosting - theirs had a hard dark chocolate frosting. There was also a sugar free Mocha cake. There was blueberry pie and the sign said apple pie but no apple pie was to be seen. There were chocolate covered macaroons. There was a fruit filled cookie bar and a chocolate filled cookie bar. There was diet chocolate pudding and diet jello. There were three different hot fruit cobblers and one overly gooey chocolate cobbler - the fruit cobblers were more appealing. There was a sign that said vanilla cupcakes and I have had Golden Corral's cupcakes in the past and they generally are good. There was also a banana pudding. Nothing looked wonderful- except the ice cream.
I went over to the salad bar to look for fresh fruit. Behind the salad bar is a whole display of fresh oranges, lemons, and watermelons. There were no oranges on the buffet server and the watermelon server was empty. A young boy came up looking for watermelon and asked the man behind the counter for some. One piece was placed into the serving bowl for him - and that was it. Others came up looking for it, now found no one to ask, and walked away.
A few don't believe me when I say that so often the desserts are not worth telling you about - and when there are great desserts you hear it from me. If you go to Golden Corral for the desserts you are going to be disappointed.
Before I close, I want to comment about the choices at Golden Corral and I like Golden Corral very much - it may just be the best of the remaining chain buffet restaurants. There is not a lot of choices at Golden Corral if you want to eat plain or low fat. Most vegetables are seasoned or are in some form of sauce. The meats are beef, pork, or chicken - and only the rotisserie chicken and the cold chicken breast strips on the salad bar are not fried or highly seasoned. There are no carvings. There were at one time but not any more. This is a high fat selection buffet. My wife does not like Golden Corral because it is hard for her to choose what to eat there. She does eat low fat and likes plain things. She winds up eating the cold chicken from the salad bar and salad selections for most of her meal. So if you are not a meat eater and you are one who wants to eat lower fat foods this is not the place for you. Even this new feature has butter in everything and the seafood was cooked twice in butter (or some type of butter sauce).
So - pan seared seafood feature - Yeah!
Desserts - hardly worth the calories.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Christmas Buffet at Best Buffet, Huntington, NY
What - I went to a Chinese restaurant for Christmas dinner? What happened? Did the neighbors hated hounds come bursting into our kitchen and eat the turkey for our Christmas dinner? Well, maybe in the movies but we decided this year that we wanted something different - and I also have wanted to go back and try Best Buffet since they reopened several years ago and I was not happy. So this sounds like a big risk for such an important holiday dinner but it was just the two of us and based on some customer reviews that I have read since, we decided to try this.
Best Buffet in Huntington, New York is located where East Buffet was a number of years ago. East was one of the top Chinese buffets on Long Island. A fire put them out of business and the building remained empty for a while until the letters were changed just a bit on the front and East became Best. Everyone had high hopes for Best because we all liked East so much. I am not sure why we would think that a new restaurant with new owners would be anything like the former restaurant, but going there a few years back I had great anticipation. And, in fact, the new restaurant looked exactly the same inside and was serving almost a carbon copy of the menu from when it was East. What did not carry over - at that time - was the quality and the attention to keeping the food hot in the serving trays. My complaint at that time was that almost all of the food was cold - and at a buffet this is not good, or safe.
So, a few years have passed and we are not just trying this on an ordinary week or weekend night - we are going on Christmas! Here is what I figured - if this restaurant cannot put the food out hot and keep it hot for a crowded holiday meal then there really is something wrong.
Let me tell you about our Christmas dinner and you will see how it was as we go along. The dinner menu that is featured on Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas Day all day is special for the holiday with a number of items not ordinarily on the buffet - but the regular buffet offerings were there as well. For the most part this is not an "American Chinese" restaurant. It features a number of authentic Chinese dishes and for this reason there are many Chinese families eating here. There are dishes that I have never seen anyplace else and there are dishes that I have heard about served in Chinatown - and in China.
Soup is an important part of authentic Chinese meals and here for this special dinner there were eight soups. There were six hot soups and two dessert (cold soups). Aside from the usual wonton and hot and sour soups, there was lobster bisque with large pieces of lobster meat, seafood bisque, a ham and melon soup, a "silky" soup with ginsing, and then the two dessert soups one of which was tapioca soup (both sweet soups). I tried the lobster bisque. It was very good! I also later during the meal tried the ham and melon soup. It was slightly sweet, had a mild taste of ham and melon. The ham was boiled down to shreds and the melon was cooked down to fibers. The taste was familiar and I had winter melon soup in San Francisco many, many years ago - and that may have been the taste that was coming into my memory.
There are a number of grills working making hot meats and appetizers. There is a sushi bar with a variety of sushi. There were fresh clams and oysters being shucked and put out on ice. The buffet has a salad bar with unusual Chinese prepared salads and also greens and toppings to create a mixed salad. This is not your usual salad bar - even for an Asian buffet. There are two long, double-sided buffet servers with hot foods. There was also something that I have never seen before and is featured at dinners at this buffet for the same price Monday to Thursday and for just two dollars extra on weekends. It is called Shabu-Shabu. This is an Oriental hot pot. You select raw vegetables, meats, and fish on which is poured boiling hot broth which cooks what you selected. It was included on this holiday dinner. We looked at the extensive assortment of things to put into your bowl - beyond the vegetables that I could recognize and the meats like chicken and beef, and seafood including shelled raw lobster, there were many things that I did not recognize. There did seem to be raw tripe (stomach) in one of the serving dishes. I was not courageous enough to try this. I likely missed out on something really good, but I was plenty else that is more conventional to choose from so I stuck to the not so exotic. Most of the people taking this were Asian.
One of the things that I saw on the advertisement for this dinner was roast suckling pig. I have never had that but I have seen enough food shows on the Travel Channel to know that this is something not to miss. In case you are concerned that there was a little roast piggy out being carved, have no fear - the pig was cut up in the kitchen and brought out on a platter in thick pieces and put on a hot tray to keep it hot. My first piece was just as I anticipated from what I have seen on TV. The skin was crispy brown with a layer of fat below and a thick layer of pork below that. It was very good. Now, I must tell you that later when I went back for more the hot tray was not doing such a good job in keeping this pig sufficiently hot and it was just warm. (Back to my first review when things were not kept hot? Well, the pig was not hot as it should be and there were just a very few more things - grilled appetizers - that needed to be hotter. Everything else was fine!) Hey, I went back three times for more pig - hot or not - it was good.
I tried a number of different dishes. One that I did not care for but only because it was not to my taste was guinea hen stewed with herbs. I have never had guinea hen before and I did eat some of it. What was excellent were beef short ribs stewed in red wine! Scallops, clams, and fried tofu were good. Bake clams with bacon on top surprised me when I discovered after putting the contents of the clam shell into my mouth (the bottom hidden by the thick pieces of bacon) that the these were not chopped clams like baked clams usually are - these were whole clams. Nice, but I am not a big fan of cooked clams in the shell. The conventional shrimp with lobster sauce here is made the proper way with ground pork in the sauce - all other Chinese buffets leave out the pork.
On the advertisement menu it listed lobster with ginger sauce. There was none - BUT there were large steamed lobster claws mixed in with the crab legs. This was so much better than lobster with ginger sauce! The claws were full of lobster meat and there was plenty of melted butter sauce to dip the lobster in. I went back several times for these - and there was none of the usual wait and fight to get some before they are gone - there were plenty and they kept coming out.
There were several carvings - Peking Duck (yes, from the movie - "Chinese Turkey"), Fillet Mignon, Prime Rib, and Rack of Lamb. Each carved to your order. The duck was crispy without a lot of fat.
There were so many dishes that I cannot remember them all to tell you about. There were salt and pepper fried frog legs, salt and pepper fried dungeness crab, and salt and pepper fried calamari. There were mussel dishes. There were various Chinese meat dishes. There were several types of noodles including a Korean-style noodle which were very thin, a bit gelatinous, and very tasty. There were a number of seafood and fish dishes. Many of the more unusual things were there as part of the special Christmas dinner menu. They do claim to have 220 dinner items on the regular buffet menu.
For dessert there was a large variety of authentic Chinese pastries and puddings. There are desserts here that are not found in any other Chinese buffet - and not in restaurants unless they are located in predominantly Chinese areas.
Price for the Christmas Day dinner was $32.99 per adult and $16.99 per child. They automatically add a 12% service charge to your check. The buffet price does not include drinks. Soft drinks are refillable if you order them. There is a bar - we overheard one table asking for more juice to be added to a cocktail because it was "too strong". That is pretty good! This buffet is not cheap. It never was. Regular weekend adult dinners are $25.99 and are $18.99 on weekdays. This special dinner was also served on Christmas Eve night and is to be repeated on New Year's Eve and also all day New Year's Day. My wife, as we were leaving, pointed this out to me and said, "Let's come back!" That says it all! (For regular readers who have gotten to know my picky eater wife you understand why.)
I will come back to Best Buffet. I may even be here for New Years (though when you are reading this that will have passed). With this wonderful meal, I now recommend Best Buffet. I hope that it holds up equally well on a regular night...
Best Buffet in Huntington, New York is located where East Buffet was a number of years ago. East was one of the top Chinese buffets on Long Island. A fire put them out of business and the building remained empty for a while until the letters were changed just a bit on the front and East became Best. Everyone had high hopes for Best because we all liked East so much. I am not sure why we would think that a new restaurant with new owners would be anything like the former restaurant, but going there a few years back I had great anticipation. And, in fact, the new restaurant looked exactly the same inside and was serving almost a carbon copy of the menu from when it was East. What did not carry over - at that time - was the quality and the attention to keeping the food hot in the serving trays. My complaint at that time was that almost all of the food was cold - and at a buffet this is not good, or safe.
So, a few years have passed and we are not just trying this on an ordinary week or weekend night - we are going on Christmas! Here is what I figured - if this restaurant cannot put the food out hot and keep it hot for a crowded holiday meal then there really is something wrong.
Let me tell you about our Christmas dinner and you will see how it was as we go along. The dinner menu that is featured on Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas Day all day is special for the holiday with a number of items not ordinarily on the buffet - but the regular buffet offerings were there as well. For the most part this is not an "American Chinese" restaurant. It features a number of authentic Chinese dishes and for this reason there are many Chinese families eating here. There are dishes that I have never seen anyplace else and there are dishes that I have heard about served in Chinatown - and in China.
Soup is an important part of authentic Chinese meals and here for this special dinner there were eight soups. There were six hot soups and two dessert (cold soups). Aside from the usual wonton and hot and sour soups, there was lobster bisque with large pieces of lobster meat, seafood bisque, a ham and melon soup, a "silky" soup with ginsing, and then the two dessert soups one of which was tapioca soup (both sweet soups). I tried the lobster bisque. It was very good! I also later during the meal tried the ham and melon soup. It was slightly sweet, had a mild taste of ham and melon. The ham was boiled down to shreds and the melon was cooked down to fibers. The taste was familiar and I had winter melon soup in San Francisco many, many years ago - and that may have been the taste that was coming into my memory.
There are a number of grills working making hot meats and appetizers. There is a sushi bar with a variety of sushi. There were fresh clams and oysters being shucked and put out on ice. The buffet has a salad bar with unusual Chinese prepared salads and also greens and toppings to create a mixed salad. This is not your usual salad bar - even for an Asian buffet. There are two long, double-sided buffet servers with hot foods. There was also something that I have never seen before and is featured at dinners at this buffet for the same price Monday to Thursday and for just two dollars extra on weekends. It is called Shabu-Shabu. This is an Oriental hot pot. You select raw vegetables, meats, and fish on which is poured boiling hot broth which cooks what you selected. It was included on this holiday dinner. We looked at the extensive assortment of things to put into your bowl - beyond the vegetables that I could recognize and the meats like chicken and beef, and seafood including shelled raw lobster, there were many things that I did not recognize. There did seem to be raw tripe (stomach) in one of the serving dishes. I was not courageous enough to try this. I likely missed out on something really good, but I was plenty else that is more conventional to choose from so I stuck to the not so exotic. Most of the people taking this were Asian.
One of the things that I saw on the advertisement for this dinner was roast suckling pig. I have never had that but I have seen enough food shows on the Travel Channel to know that this is something not to miss. In case you are concerned that there was a little roast piggy out being carved, have no fear - the pig was cut up in the kitchen and brought out on a platter in thick pieces and put on a hot tray to keep it hot. My first piece was just as I anticipated from what I have seen on TV. The skin was crispy brown with a layer of fat below and a thick layer of pork below that. It was very good. Now, I must tell you that later when I went back for more the hot tray was not doing such a good job in keeping this pig sufficiently hot and it was just warm. (Back to my first review when things were not kept hot? Well, the pig was not hot as it should be and there were just a very few more things - grilled appetizers - that needed to be hotter. Everything else was fine!) Hey, I went back three times for more pig - hot or not - it was good.
I tried a number of different dishes. One that I did not care for but only because it was not to my taste was guinea hen stewed with herbs. I have never had guinea hen before and I did eat some of it. What was excellent were beef short ribs stewed in red wine! Scallops, clams, and fried tofu were good. Bake clams with bacon on top surprised me when I discovered after putting the contents of the clam shell into my mouth (the bottom hidden by the thick pieces of bacon) that the these were not chopped clams like baked clams usually are - these were whole clams. Nice, but I am not a big fan of cooked clams in the shell. The conventional shrimp with lobster sauce here is made the proper way with ground pork in the sauce - all other Chinese buffets leave out the pork.
On the advertisement menu it listed lobster with ginger sauce. There was none - BUT there were large steamed lobster claws mixed in with the crab legs. This was so much better than lobster with ginger sauce! The claws were full of lobster meat and there was plenty of melted butter sauce to dip the lobster in. I went back several times for these - and there was none of the usual wait and fight to get some before they are gone - there were plenty and they kept coming out.
There were several carvings - Peking Duck (yes, from the movie - "Chinese Turkey"), Fillet Mignon, Prime Rib, and Rack of Lamb. Each carved to your order. The duck was crispy without a lot of fat.
There were so many dishes that I cannot remember them all to tell you about. There were salt and pepper fried frog legs, salt and pepper fried dungeness crab, and salt and pepper fried calamari. There were mussel dishes. There were various Chinese meat dishes. There were several types of noodles including a Korean-style noodle which were very thin, a bit gelatinous, and very tasty. There were a number of seafood and fish dishes. Many of the more unusual things were there as part of the special Christmas dinner menu. They do claim to have 220 dinner items on the regular buffet menu.
For dessert there was a large variety of authentic Chinese pastries and puddings. There are desserts here that are not found in any other Chinese buffet - and not in restaurants unless they are located in predominantly Chinese areas.
Price for the Christmas Day dinner was $32.99 per adult and $16.99 per child. They automatically add a 12% service charge to your check. The buffet price does not include drinks. Soft drinks are refillable if you order them. There is a bar - we overheard one table asking for more juice to be added to a cocktail because it was "too strong". That is pretty good! This buffet is not cheap. It never was. Regular weekend adult dinners are $25.99 and are $18.99 on weekdays. This special dinner was also served on Christmas Eve night and is to be repeated on New Year's Eve and also all day New Year's Day. My wife, as we were leaving, pointed this out to me and said, "Let's come back!" That says it all! (For regular readers who have gotten to know my picky eater wife you understand why.)
I will come back to Best Buffet. I may even be here for New Years (though when you are reading this that will have passed). With this wonderful meal, I now recommend Best Buffet. I hope that it holds up equally well on a regular night...
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