475 Etna St. St Paul, MN 55106
I went here two Saturday's with a best buddy and the memory of the awful food still lingers in my traumatized taste bud's memory.
Pulling into the empty parking lot, sans one lone car around 6 P.M. that fateful evening, I thought maybe this wasn't the best day to sample what this place had to offer. You see, as a rule I never go to a food establishment of any kind when it is going to close within an hour, or in this case, when it looks deserted. I stepped out of the car and squinted my eyes at the hours of business sign as the sun glinted off the windows. "Maybe we should just go to Garibaldi", I said, "this doesn't look good." "Ah, it's fine my buddy responded re assuredly, they are still open for two more hours, they will put fresh stuff out." I reluctantly agreed, ignoring my stomach's subconscious gurgling as it recoiled at the thought of bad Chinese buffet food, and opened the door.
The place was empty, except for a lone customer sitting in a booth near the entrance, his head hovering over his plate of "food" with a hat pulled down, covering his eyes. He didn't look up when we entered and his clothes seemed to drape around his plate of food. I didn't know why he was eating in that matter at the time, but later figured out that he was likely ashamed that he was eating such "food", and didn't want any witnesses should he run for political office in the future. A young man greeted us, and showed us to one of the many empty booths in the restaurant. As he asked for our drinks and confirmed that we would be eating at the buffet, I wondered whether I should have previewed what the food looked like before committing to it. A few seconds later, my worst fears would be confirmed.
I approached the buffet cautiously, like a hunter who has just shot a rabid mother grizzly bear with a pellet gun in mating season, and wasn't sure if she was really dead. I poked at one of the items in the tray as steam rose all around.. I felt as if I was in a horror movie and my stomach was about to be the victim of a horrendous crime carried out by a posse of MSG filled hooligans, with greasy intentions. I pawed with a spoon (unwashed for hours likely,) at various items in the buffet before coming to some fried rice that looked like it had been made within the last 6 hours or so, (everything else looked like it had been sitting there since the Reagan Administration). I reluctantly picked a few other items off the buffet table that looked edible in comparison to the very worst that was there, and walked back to the table with a light plate and a heavy heart. I ate the stale rice with the gumption of a depressed cow eating rotten grass, and could not take more than a bite out of any of the other items. My friend took a different approach, taking an item from each tray, and sampling with a small bite, inspecting and poking like a scientist as he turned the food item in circles, trying to decipher exactly what it was he was attempting to eat. Or maybe checking for maggots.. Another minute of this charade passed before we decided to cut our losses and leave for Plaza Garibaldi, asking the server what our options were since we didn't eat much, and we ended up paying for a single meal between the two of us, something like $7 give or take a dollar, still way to much for food that shouldn't (in my opinion) be served to anyone of the mammalian variety.
To describe what the "food" looked and tasted like wouldn't do my stomach or taste buds justice, but I will give it a shot: the texture of the meat products are what linger in my visual memory most acutely; you see the breading on the meat, instead of being crispy and crunchy, was soggy and wet, and had what seemed to be multiple layers of MSG dunked fat, surrounding what was attempting to pass itself off of as meat. If your game enough to reach the epicenter of the piece of food where the meat was (as I was), you are greeted with the familiar taint of "funny buffet taste" - possibly the worst taste in all of the world, and one that will linger in your taste bud's memory long after the traumatic experience has passed.
Taking in to account the time of day that we went there, and the fact that place was mostly empty and a few hours away from closing, I was tempted to not write a review trashing the place. But then I thought, if these individuals are going to operate a restaurant and keep it open when it is not busy, the least they can do is make sure that they at least have some edible food for customers. Instead, it seems they decided to lazily put out an awful product, and hope that the one or two people that got ripped off would not be enough to change the opinion on the place as a whole.
Little did they know that fateful day they had Tasty Buds as a customer, and that his awful memory of Peking Restaurant, (and that of his taste buds) would be recorded forever in the annal's of Urbanspoon history.
So to avoid an awful memory like the one I had that fateful day, I strongly encourage all to avoid ever trying this food out, even to see if it really is that bad, because it is.
