A Flourishing Garden

Location: 

China Garden Buffet

1788 Morse Rd  Columbus, OH 43224

(614) 848-3628

My dining buddy, JI.

You guys should just go ahead and consider me to be a Chinese buffet expert. I love them, and I will try any Chinese buffet at least once. I've rarely had bad experiences, and I've never been to a Chinese buffet that didn't have at least five dishes I like. The defining item at a Chinese buffet is, for me, the crab rangoon.

I've been to China Garden probably more than fifty times in my life. I started going there back in 2002 when I was with my first husband, and I go there at least four times a year. So that would be at least 44 times in the past 11 years! The decor is nice, they always have the best music (Chinese buffets score really high points with me if they have Asian versions of American pop songs on their Muzak), and the staff is great. They have a good selection of food, and according to Poke, they have the best Peanut Chicken (yuck! I'll never try it!). The best thing about China Garden, which is bane on many buffets of any culture, is food temperature. As a chef, I know the rules, and I know that it's hard to keep buffets above 140* let alone 165*, and I take my chances every time I eat at a buffet. But I have an iron stomach and thus far in my life, it has not been buffet food that gave me salmonella and e. coli!

Crab rangoon, white rice, General Tso's chicken

But I digress. China Garden is #1 in my book because they have the best crab rangoon. They are little pastry purses, stuffed full of creamy goodness and never chewy or hard to bite into. China Garden is the only buffet that I've ever been to that provides the spicy mustard in packets, which is my favorite, so I don't have to get a bowl with plain hot mustard from the salad bar. That's awesome.  China Garden also has some of the best General Tso's chicken. Now, in case you didn't know, there are two kinds of General Tso's out there. There is the sticky, syrupy, brighter red kind, and the darker red, thinner sauced, sesame seeds on top (why, I don't know) kind. China Garden has the latter, and it's super freakin' tasty. Sometimes the chicken in the sticky sauce gets pretty chewy, and you can literally sit there and gnaw on a larger piece of chicken until it's mere shreds between your teeth. Not fun. But at China Garden, they make their chicken pieces on the smaller side (about the size of a large peanut) and because it's in the thinner sauce, it doesn't absorb all that moisture and get chewy. Tiny little bite sized crispy pieces of perfectly sauced chicken. Yum.

Kid's: $Free under age 2$

I love all this food!

Hmmm What should I eat next?

China Garden has the best of a lot of menu items, actually: egg rolls, vegetable fritters, teriaki chicken, bacon-wrapped krab, Singapore noodles, and spring rolls, to name a few.

From L to R: egg roll, crab rangoon, broccoli chicken, vegetable fritter

Overall, if you're in the Westerville area and you're tasting for Chinese food, stop by the China Garden buffet. The price is right ($7 lunch, $11 dinner) and the food is amazing. 

And the BEST sugar buns this side of Hong Kong

Overall Scores: (1-5, 1 being lowest, 5 highest)           

Cleanliness: 3 (the bathrooms could use some work)

Value: 5

Accessibility: 5

Friendliness: 5

Menu: 5