I'm adding a little to this today because I also ate there yesterday when I did my last holiday prep shopping. Was a choice between all I could eat of fairly decent frozen food reheated at the Chinese Buffet, and a pizza made with blood clots at the restaurant across the road. I'm learning to like this little Chinese Buffet and the food has been pretty acceptable twice in a row. The best things yesterday were the tempura zucchini and carrot slices and the broccoli in the broccoli with overcooked beef. OK, this time I could not handle the stuffed mushrooms, which looked like they had a lot of mushrooms they otherwise would have been throwing away, and they stuffed them. Most of the food available was ok, but I got a chance to try their very scary submerged plank of fish this time and I have to tell about it.
The sunken fish is a huge fish fillet in a pan of slightly greasy water. Looks horrible and mostly it's never been touched, and I did see this same thing in a buffet in Mississippi this year and no one had eaten any of that one either. I don't mean there was a little water in the pan, I mean this was submerged totally. Yesterday they had made something that looked more like food than like something you would find at the beach. The pan had only a half inch of water in it, the fish was mostly above water, and it had a rub of seasonings on it. Hooray. I was the second person to try a piece, and it was creepy to actually cut fish with a spatula. I know, technically it's possible to do that, but yikes. You don't want fish you could spread like peanut butter.
At the table, I cut a piece off with a fork and looked at the underside, and it was covered with gray greasy skin. Well, ok, I'm a fisherman and I eat fish skin. I ate the piece and was surprised to detect that it was salmon. But! it was like the most ordinary canned salmon that you get, except it was boiled and had less flavor. I'm shaking my hands in the air as I write this, because this is a terrible thing to do to a nice piece of salmon, even if you start with frozen salmon fillet.
I will guess that the cooks in Chinese buffet restaurants all across the country have no idea how to poach salmon, have only heard about it and think it should be profitable. You actually poach salmon pieces (not a whole entire plank) in a simmering mix of wine and chicken broth, for ten to fifteen minutes, and then take it out and rub it down with spices. You take it out. Out of the water. Out. You don't leave it submerged in the tub of greasy water, even at half depth, forever. If you've done it correctly, you should be able to add the spice rub without the fish actually crumbling into paste. You add butter and garlic and salt, it's good. Poached salmon should taste nice. Should not taste like something you found at the beach. Poached salmon is not just boiled fish. They lost a star on this one.
So what follows is the old review:
I went back to the buffet after about a year! just because I was curious. I ate supper there on a Tuesday evening. I recognized no one, not the lady who picked up the dishes on the tables or the lady who took my money. She smiled, that's a nice touch. I ate some of just about everything that I considered interesting, and it was all ok. Hey! it's a 9$ buffet, they have to work with what is cheap. This time I did not find all the weird nauseating things I found before. I took three plates of food and I ate three plates of food. Not sure if they made the egg rolls there or if they were frozen, but eh, they were not the same as before and were ok. Supper in a microwave oven but you don't do it at home. Maybe they fired their old cooks? Maybe it's a new bunch of Asians running the place? I dunno. But it was ok and I will eat there again and hope it's just as good next time. A cheap meal.
Went to a similar buffet in Mississippi this summer and it was fantastically better, but this is Indiana. I appreciate the improvements and hope it's not an accident. read more