Zhou's Five is the biggest Asian buffet in Berlin.
It is located in the Victoria Center shopping mall in East Berlin,
A location to which no American tourist would ever go
Unless they were renting in the area and doing their daily shopping in the mall.
With the exception of the supermarket - which is enormous -
Zhou's Five is the biggest establishment in the mall.
It draws a huge crowd.
They are making enough money to be able to afford to
Put concrete Chinese style sculptures on the lawn surrounding the mall.
The sculptures are a nice touch - although you can't see them from the restaurant.
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How does Zhou's Five differ from an American Asian buffet?
1) Execution is absolutely excellent.
The cooking at American Asian buffets are
"Ya takes ya chances. Ya get what ya get."
I have a favorite Asian buffet in Austin, Texas where I live.
The cooking there is pretty good.
The cooking at Zhou's is better.
2) Even though the number of steam tables is enormous,
And it looks like you are getting a huge selection,
Your choices are actually limited relative to an American buffet.
They "pad" the offerings by offering many many many many desserts.
Desserts are one of the cheapest things they can put on the buffet.
A traditional Western salad bar also takes up copious space.
A third component which you sometimes see in the United States
is a Mongolian grill.
This also takes up a ton of space.
It has a few protein items but most of the offerings are vegetables.
So the actual number of cooked carnivorous Asian dishes is not that large.
4) I would be complaining about the chintziness of the offerings except for
a) the execution and
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b) THE ROAST DUCK !!!!!
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Roast Duck Roast Duck Roast Duck Roast Duck !!!!!
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That one expensive item is hidden in the middle of one of the steam tables.
It was mostly surrounded by cheapie items.
Their execution of the Roast Duck is absolutely positively first rate.
Their duck is as good as the Duck you would get from a dedicated Cantonese Barbecue place.
And - this being a buffet -
It is all you can eat.
So I got a bunch of other items,
But I piled on the roast duck.
The duck was everything advertised.
I left Zhou's Five a very happy camper.
One consequence of roast duck being on the menu
Is that duck is incredibly filling.
I often fill my plate two or three times at an Asian buffet.
One plateload - plus the Duck -
And I was ready to waddle out of there
Feeling like I had eaten a ton.
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So Zhou's has its advantages and disadvantages.
But a key point here ...
Is that Zhou's is the largest Asian Buffet in Berlin.
Chinese food offerings in Europe can be hit or miss.
(In Paris, most of the places we tried were meh.
We have not made the same experiments here.)
I suspect, the army of customers populating Zhou's
Had come there from all over Berlin and the Berlin suburbs.
Within local context, Zhou's may be indispensable.
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As for me personally,
I don't get duck on my buffets at home.
So this Yelper is basically happy. read more