Chinese Buffet Suck.

[ralerin]

There's a fairly popular Chinese Buffet in my city that I guess recently went under new management.

1. The music used to be soft rock or instrumental versions of top 40 songs from the past 40 years played quietly...now we're talking about the most ear splitting techno I've ever heard. I like dance music and techno, but not when it's almost all I can hear. *OOMCHA OOMCHA OOOOMCHA BRRRRT OOOMCHA OOMCHA OOOMCHA BRRRRT*

2. I was picking up my plate to get some food (black pepper chicken om nom nom nom) when my hand went "squish" into something on the bottom of the plate. It was a wad of whipped cream. The next four plates underneath were dirty. I'm talking whipped cream, bits of dried on vegetable, sauce, that sort of thing. When I was picking up plates from the buffet after that, I had to check. 3 out of 4 plates after that were dirty.

3. Parenting suck! One kid, must've been around 9 ish, would pick up bowls and FILL them full of whipped cream. Out of the 4 canisters of cream, he emptied them all. Bowl after bowl after bowl of whipped cream, eaten with a spoon. Why didn't his mom tell him to leave some whipped cream for the other customers? Oh, right, because he's her special snowflake.

[blas]

Meh, I quit going to one local Chinese Buffet when we saw one of the buffet runners taking dirty plates and putting food back into the buffet (like whole pieces of chicken and stuff).

Sure, a cultural thing, and wasting food is bad, but in the restaurant business, that is unsanitary and just asking to get violations or get your place shut down.

[Cookie]

Eeeeek! I used to work as a server at a Chinese buffet and thankfully, these were not problems. We got health department scores of 96 or above consistently. My old boss would FREAK if she saw these things happening!

[elsporko]

I had a friend find a plastic cog in his food at a Chinese buffet. Made me wonder if the cooks were robots or something.

[Flying Grype]

Aah, the Chinese buffets around here are great. The only problem I ever had was that I found a metal shaving in an egg roll. But it wasn't the restaurant's fault, the shaving was inside the roll, and the rolls were the type that they buy frozen in bulk rather than making in-store.

The only health violation type issues I've run into in restaurants were at McDonald's -- undercooked chicken and the like.

[r2cagle]

Weirdly enough, chinese buffets don't last very long around here. They open up, seem to have good food, six months later my hubby and I start going. Pretty soon, we notice, dirty plates in the stack, the food on the buffet seems really old and dried out... and we stop going. A few months later.. the place is closed. It only seems to be the buffets too. Any place that only has combo plates/entrees seems to last. Guess that's the portion control factor??

[evillebee]

I can no longer go to the local chinese buffet here.

Last year I met hubby and a couple employees at the chinese buffet for lunch. When I walked up to the booth, they all had a weird look on their faces and said they would tell me after I ate. I figured it was something gross and they didn't want to share at such an inappropriate time. As we were walking out the doors they shared the following story.

We had an employee who would no longer eat at that chinese buffet because he said he saw an employee clipping her toenails at a booth during dinner hours!! The reason they had such weird looks on thier faces? As they were talking about that employee and reason he would no longer eat there, my hubby looked down to his side and saw a pair of toenail clippers in the window ledge beside the booth!

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I'm beginning to wonder if the Chinese place near the swamp is beginning to go downhill.

I came in Saturday afternoon to get a take-out buffet and ended up waiting a while at the counter because all the staff seemed to be talking amongst themselves. And there was nobody else at the register before me.

Also, the food wasn't as good as it normally is. Not terrible, mind you, but not quite as good. There was also a little less of a selection. One new thing on the buffet I did notice was squid, and I did try it. I didn't hate it, but I certainly wouldn't load up my plate with it.

There was (maybe still is) another Chinese buffet downtown, and that was where we always used to go until the place near the swamp opened. By the time we stopped going there, it became quite ghetto. It was in an old Big Boy restaurant and all the booths were ripped up from years of use. Some of them were duct-taped in an attempt to fix them. And to cool the place, they had a bunch of window air conditioners installed above the windows, some with the plastic covers taken off. I also heard they had some problems with roach infestations.

[Aut]

There used to be a ton of Chinese Buffets aroun here. Now, not so many. I miss the one that had the stream and coy fish. They were always so nice there.

But it surprises the in-laws that DH would go to these places because he's a bit of a germ freak. We used to go the american chain buffets, but seeing them full of grossly obese people all the time became a turn off.

[wagegoth]

Sure, a cultural thing.

Belonging to the culture of cheap, scummy, evil business owners.

[Titi]

I think that the kid in number three probably had a hand in creating problem number 2 especially since you said most of it was whipped cream. If she didn't teach him to share and was letting him eat that I could see her letting him paste the other plates with it as well.

[Flying Grype]

On those buffets it's usually edible oil product, a.k.a. whipped topping, a.k.a. Cool Whip. Real whipped cream doesn't do as well when it sits out for a long time.

All I can say is, Mom's gonna be up all night doing laundry. Even a couple of big spoonfuls of that stuff can play havoc with the digestive system. Poor kid, but his mother deserves it...

[greek_jester]

I really want to go to a Chinese buffet now, but the 2 best ones around here have closed down They kept getting busted for employing illegal Chinese immigrants (which in hindsight, probably explains why the food was so good).

[PepperElf]

except that the plates weren't just dirty from the whipped cream
they also had dried on sauces...


sounds like they need to have a little meeting with the board of health

[Imprl59]

We have a great Chinese buffet close to me but I'm not allowed to go there anymore. Last time we went sister and I were in the middle of dinner and heard a cat making ungodly noises. I'm sure it was just a coincidence but with all the cat and dog rumors that circulate about chinese buffets I couldn't eat any more and she won't go back :-(

Steve B.