Little Plastic Spoons: A Flourishing Garden

Location:
Asian Garden Buffet
8633 Columbus Pike
Lewis Center, Ohio 43035(740) 549-1888

I've been to this buffet on several occasions. Honestly I would like to go more often, but I am rarely in or around Lewis Center anymore, so I forget it's there. This buffet is pretty typical, but the thing that makes them stand out is the freshness. The food is always SO fresh. Often at buffets, Chinese or otherwise, you will see a few pieces of whatever left in the pan for someone to finally take. AGB does not let that happen. Once it's down to a few, they switch it out and put in fresh. You won't find those dried up sticky noodles and vegetables at the bottom, you won't have any chewy crab rangoon or egg rolls.

The crab rangoon are little purse-types, which I am starting to prefer over the triangles. The triangles seem to get stale and chewy and lose their filling very quickly on buffets, whereas the purses stay nice and fresh and full. AGB has a good selection of fried foods, including french fries and onion rings, which were a big hit with my son. The only things that were really disappointing were the white rice and General Tso's, two very important items for a Chinese buffet. The white rice wasn't sticky, it was just stuck together and hard - even though it was warm. The General Tso's chicken pieces were hard and had to be gnawed on, and the sauce was b-l-a-n-d. It was so strange because all the other food I had was really good! Well except the brown sauce, because I expected it to be salty and it was sweet. That was my own misjudgment. Their hot & sour soup, my new obsession, was okay. Very miso-y, which is kinda strange because H&S soup has no miso in it. One other kind of annoying thing, which happens at 9/10 Chinese buffets, is the lack of mustard packets. Once again, as always, I had to get a bowl of hot mustard off the salad bar. It's not so much that I hate that kind of mustard, it's just that I feels so wasteful when I leave so much. Oh, I almost forgot the teriaki - pork, I believe, because it was darker on the inside than chicken usually is - freakin' amazing. I usually stay away from the chick-on-a-stick, but I was tasting for it that day. It was so flavorful, so tender, and so perfectly moist - not dripping gross and not toughly dry. It was literally perfect.

Overall, I'd say in the realm of Chinese buffets, Asian Garden Buffet is definitely one to be visited more often. The staff is friendly, they loved to play with my son, and they kept up on the refills with impeccable timing.