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

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

Asian Star? How about Five Star!

Location: 

Asian Star Buffet - Festival Centre

2847 Festival Lane

Dublin, OH 43017

(614) 336-8618 ‎

The Asian Star Buffet was a big surprise to me when I was taken there for the first time. I had driven through the Festival Centre before, but somehow I had never noticed the buffet.

Since it's been awhile, as in over two years, since I took these photos, I can't honestly remember everything about this particular visit. I can, however, tell you that we have returned many times since and it has always been delicious. I will be rating on the combined experiences. 

I visited this buffet many, many times while I was pregnant, even alone (which is saying something because I hate to eat alone). After the kid was born, it was the first Chinese buffet we took him to, and he loved it. His first bite of buffet food was cantaloupe, but the second was the breaded chicken for Sweet & Sour Chicken (no sauce). They have some of the best Crab Rangoon in town, and their egg rolls taste like take out egg rolls (instead of the weird, dry, flavorless egg rolls that tend to be on buffets). The best thing about this buffet is the shallow pans. They have a lot of variety and they refill often.  I hate it when you go to a buffet and they have deep pans and the food just sits there for 17 hours getting gross. I do wish they offered more beef dishes, since I am not a fan of chicken, but they offer lots of vegetables so that makes me really happy!

That all being said, here's the rating and some delicious photos!

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

Cleanliness: 3 (the dining room/food areas are fine, but the bathroom is always so gross, even though it's not dirty, it's very old and worn down, and one toilet is always broken)

Value: 5

Accessibility: 5

Friendliness: 5

Menu: 5

Mmmm Crab Rangoon - All for me!

Lots of variety at this buffet!

They have a good salad bar that includes tasty sushi (not scary sushi)!

My son's favorite part of the buffet

I love these little sugar buns

They had at least seven different kinds of chicken

Disgusting yet beautiful desserts... Why Chinese people, Why?!

Awesome won-ton broth, not salty at all!

Best decor this side of Hong Kong

jiā yóu

Location:

Hong Kong Buffet

1831 W. Henderson Rd.

Columbus, OH 43220

Well, I can't say anything other than "try harder" - pronounced "jiā yóu" in Mandarin - because the Hong Kong Buffet used  to be one of my favorite places to eat.  Perhaps it's a lunch-buffet-only problem, but the day we went it was packed and yet the food still had that hours-old feel to it.  We went on a Sunday afternoon, feeling hung-over and knowing that a Chinese buffet would be the perfect remedy.  We had both been there in the past, and I'm not sure when he was there (lunch or dinner) but I had only experienced their dinner service.

This lunch was incredibly disappointing.  The crab rangoon was fair, not crispy enough and definitely not hot.  The egg rolls were passable - meaning I should have passed on them - and the only winner on the fried food bar was the spring roll.  I found this almost amusing since usually their spring rolls are pretty gross, but this time they were perfectly cooked with just the right amount of filling.  I have no idea if they make them in-house or order them out but either way something changed & it was for the better.  I didn't even bother to get my favorite flower-style steamed bun because it looked half dead lying there in the basket.  My friend opted to get practically everything on the bars, including General Tso's (chewy), Peanut Chicken (gristly), and some kind of beef ("just not good" he said).  Nothing was hot, which as a Chef who is ServSafe certified I know that food must be held at or above 140 degrees Fahrenheit.  This stuff was definitely in the danger zone, which I realized immediately.  As I've mentioned before, I've survived e. coli and salmonella so there isn't much I won't eat... but then I ate some Singapore Noodles off the bar.

So, I LOVE Singapore Noodles.  They involve some of my favorite ingredients: super fine noodles, curry, vegetables, and msg (monosodium glutamate).  This day was a sad day for Singapore Noodles.  They were practically cold, there were no vegetables except a random scrap of something green in every fifth bite, and the flavor was just lacking.  Within ten minutes of consuming these noodles I knew that something had gone very wrong in my stomach because I instantly felt nauseous.  I'm sure if I hadn't been hung-over the feeling probably wouldn't have been so bad, but this was just yucky.  I gulped down two more glasses of lemon water, picked at some broccoli on my plate, and watched my friend eat the rest of his food.  At the end of the meal we both agreed that we would probably never come back there again.

I will give the Hong Kong Buffet one more try for dinner.  They always have crab legs in mounds and mounds at dinnertime, and they are always fresh because, well, for $11.00/person, everyone there takes at least one or two full-sized plates back to the table with them.

Check out the Hong Kong Buffet website here.

Overall Scores: (1-5, 1 being lowest, 5 highest)
Cleanliness: 4
Value: 2
Accessibility: 5
Friendliness: 5
Menu: 2

A sign on the door at Hong Kong Buffet...  Makes me nervous to work there.