Sunny China International Buffet

Bad seats and dry meat written by PabloSTL
Last visited this restaurant on March 29, 2005

I took my best friend there late one weekday evening (7:30ish). I asked for a booth and the lady seating us tried to seat us in a booth that had very large clumps of cotton stuffing sticking out of both seats. (It was if she didn't even notice or was this Candid Camera?) When we declined it, she offered an adjacent booth that was just about as bad. We looked around on our own and found a good booth a few booths away. What was she thinking??? Was she working for the competition?

Anyway, the food was all dried out. While I'm tempted to think it was because it was late, that's no excuse. I've been to other Chinese buffets in the area late in the evening and never, ever encountered such dried out food.

The meats were mainly dry for lack of fresh sauce (or it'd been picked over all day without being refreshed) and the salad bar veggies were bone dry (can you say cobwebs?). It looked like no one had touched the stuff in days but it kept being set out anyway. Frankly, it didn't look safe to eat. Since I couldn't make a good salad (or even a reasonable fascimile), I thought I'd get some veggies from the steam table (meat and veggie type combos) but unfortunately the food was mostly meat. Don't get me wrong, I love meat but I would like to have had a good helping of broccoli or something to supply some minerals and roughage but it just wasn't going to happen.

The ambiance: it was late, a week night, no crowd, and it looked and felt like any other large Chinese buffet. In a word: comfortable.

All in all, it was a great dissapointment. I'd driven by it many a times since I moved into the Kirkwood area and thought, "I can't wait to check that place out." It has a great location (next door to Vianni High on So. Lindbergh) and much potential. As it is, I'm never going back. Not as long as there are quality restaurants around with owners and servers who take pride in their work. 'Tis ashame.

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