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.

Fries, Onion rings, vegetable pieces, fried rice

I love this rice, Mom!

This right here is the BEST plate ever.

Crab rangoon, brown sauce chicken, naked chicken for S&S

Panko Shrimp, Egg roll

Mustard

Egg roll, spring roll, teriaki pork, crab rangoon, crispy flaky thing

I dip my fries in Sweet & Sour sauce - What?

Teriaki pork, crab rangoon, sugar buns, broccoli chicken

General Tso's and white rice

No pics while I'm chewing!

Beige Plate: Lo Mein, chicken, coconut shrimp

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

Cleanliness: 4 (always those old bathrooms! ugh!)

Value: 5

Accessibility: 5

Friendliness: 5

Menu: 5

Neighbor's Deli Update!

I've been going to Neighbor's Deli since they were a Jersey Mike's franchise. Super awesome owner, super awesome food, and just when I think it can't get any better (unless they moved closer to my house) - French Onion Soup.

OMG.

The best non-sit-down-restaurant French Onion Soup that I've had in a long time. Make sure you go get some as soon as possible. Also, join their Facebook page for great deals.

And now, the photos (do not judge too harshly, this soup sat in the car for 25 minutes while I was stuck in traffic. I popped it in the microwave for 30 seconds and it was perfect):

Ejecutar en la frontera

(Or: Run from the border)

Location: 

On The Border

4175 Morse Crossing  Columbus, OH 43219

(614) 471-4416 ‎

I have to warn you, in case you didn't already know, that I'm basically a Mexican food snob. That being said, we decided to go to On the Border because we were starving and it was literally right in front of our eyeballs.

What a mistake. The service was mediocre at best. Our waiter had an earpiece in, which he clearly spent more time listening to than to us, and I personally could not understand a word he said due to mumbling and volume of voice. My best friend could make most of it out, but I'm not sure how. The floors were sticky - and I don't mean Texas Roadhouse/peanuts all over the floor/sticky - I mean when I set my feet down and stood in one spot for more than 10 seconds, I had to exert effort to remove my shoe from the floor. The entire restaurant, even the bathroom, was like this. It was so bad that I checked the bottoms of my shoes to see if I had stepped in gum - I had not.

My food was terrible. Our waiter brought two bowls of the same salsa, and one basket of chips. We waited so long between ordering drinks & food that he had to bring us more chips. They were fine, nothing special. The salsa was watery and had no zip - even my 21 month old son would not eat it and he'll eat pretty much anything. He loves spicy food like mama, so it probably tasted bland to him too! I ordered barbacoa enchiladas, which is: "Three enchiladas filled with Shredded Beef and aged cheddar cheese, topped with red chile enchilada sauce and melted cheddar cheese." When my plate arrived, you could tell immediately that it had been sitting under a heat lamp. The random blue chip shoved into my beans was rubbery; The sauce wasn't shiny like fresh sauce, it was matte like old crusty sauce. The cheese was dull and starting to separate, the tortillas were dry and cracking, and the meat filling was just ordinary. When I tasted the red enchilada sauce, I almost spit it out. Instead of being a tangy delicious sauce, it was almost exactly like mole. Thick, sweet, and seriously had the hints of cocoa that mole has. Total (bad) surprise to my mouth. My refried beans were run of the mill, and my Mexican rice tasted like someone's leftover Rice-A-Roni... from last year. I got a side of black beans for my son, which he ate all of, and they were fine. You can't really mess up black beans... as far as I know... I'm sure it's been done.

My best friend got the Queso Chicken, "Tender grilled Chicken Breast topped with creamy chile con queso sauce and fresh sliced avocado. Served with sauteed vegetables and cilantro lime rice." She liked it okay, but it wasn't exactly what she'd expected. The chile con queso sauce was more like Rotel  + Velveeta, and didn't really have a flavor to it. The chicken was grilled, and she said it was not spicy, but very flavorful. Yay! A good thing! Also her rice was nice and fluffy and tasty, and the sauteed vegetables (squash & zucchini) were done perfectly. Apparently I should have ordered off the "fresh" menu! Guess that's the only food that's made fresh!

Overall, this was a very disappointing experience. I guess if I had never eaten at a real Mexican restaurant, I might think places like this are good? I don't know. It was just sad. I will most likely never go back, and that feels fine to me because I'd rather support the mama y papa restaurantes down the street.

Queso Chicken

Barbacoa Enchiladas

Salsa #1

Salsa #2

Where'd the chips go?!

More chips.

GIVE ME THOSE ICE CUBES

Nom nom nom

Kid's cup

Blurry Black Beans

Yum. Food. Almost as good as ice cubes.

READY TO GO!

Seriously, get me out of here!

Damnit Mom, I said LET'S GO!

I'm being angelic because I want to GTFOutta here!

Take home a box (careful of those edges, I sliced my thumb)

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

Cleanliness: 1

Value: 2

Accessibility: 5

Friendliness: 2

Menu: 2

The Golden Goose... Er, Rangoon?

Location: 

Golden China Express

453 E Wilson Bridge Road Worthington, OH 43085

(614) 848-4600

Just wanted to throw a quick review in about this tiny Chinese take-out place that we go to every once in awhile. Honestly, we should go there more, but they're kind of on the pricey side. (Well, compared to my favorite Chinese pig-out, The Buffet!) I always get the crab rangoon and combination #17, General Tso's with fried rice and an egg roll. It's perfect every time! The crab rangoon are the best best best of any Chinese take out I've ever had. They are huge, about the size of a playing card, hot, crispy, and totally stuffed with crab-cream cheese filling. Oh my god, I literally just started drooling just typing about them! Anyway  the General Tso's is the stickier kind, but they keep their chicken pieces to about the size of half a matchbox car, so they don't get chewy. They don't include any peppers (sad face) but they do include 4-5 pieces of steamed broccoli.  What I really like is their fried rice.  It doesn't have a ton of vegetables in it, or those weird pieces of teriaki pork or whatever that red, hard, tasteless pork is that you often find in fried rice. Blargh. I hate those things. It's just rice, fried, no additions. I don't mind the occasional pea or carrot, but when you get more vegetables than rice, it's like why not order vegetable fried rice instead? I just want some tasty fried rice to put my tasty General Tso's chicken into.

Check out the Golden China Express  on East Wilson Bridge Road, at the intersection of Huntley and Worthington Galena. You will not be disappointed. Poke always gets the house fried rice, and it actually fills him up! He eats a lot. Here's a photo of the combination #17, without the egg roll or crab rangoon - I kinda scarfed those down before I thought to take a picture!

Yum!

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

Cleanliness: 4

Value: 4

Accessibility: 3 (you either have to know the back way in, or wait to turn left for 117 hours)

Friendliness: 5

Menu: 5

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