Beijing Kitchen
| Food | Mojo | Price |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | 5 | 8 |
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Sit back, grab your Chop Sticks and enjoy my first review: Beijing Kitchen at 345 State St. in Grand Rapids. It's not quite downtown, it's not quite Heritage Hill and it's not quite your oridinary $4.99 chinese buffet.
Before I wax poetic about a $4.99 buffet that includes free Faygo pop (but not Diet Coke. Faygo only!), ice cream, passable chinese food and a cable news channel I've never seen before, we should stop and examine what really makes for a good chinese buffet. Price plays a role here, as does the sheer number of choices. But ask yourself this: Are you ever really going to try all 50+ chinese options at your local buffet? If you have, then seek medical attention immediately. If you're more like me, however, and you're there to have 2 or 3 plates of slightly-above-average, grade-b chicken over a heaping mound of fried rice then skip the 911-call and read on.
Brian's five keys to a successful Chinese Buffet experience
- Cheap enough that you don't have to think twice about going
- Enough choices to prevent necessary "doubling up" in one meal
- Food is hot.
- Crispy breaded stuff
- General Tso's Chicken
Number 5 is key for many of my friends, so let's start there. General Tso's chicken at the Beijing Kitchen is really more like slightly-spicy sweet and sour chicken. But did you like it, you're asking. Hell yes. The chicken was crispy, there was enough spice to make me want more, and the news channel blaring over my shoulder was distracting enough that I didnt' notice the similarities between the sauce on my General Tso's and the sweet-n-sour sauce on the plate across the table from me.
As for the rest of the buffet, there's just something endearing about the Model-T qualities of it all. You want ice-cream? Sure, you can have any flavor you want as long as its strawberry. You want pop? Stick to the Faygo or risk the wrath of the owners.
What matters in the end is this: For $4.99 you get a good (enough) meal, go home happy, and smell like chinese food all day long. It's the gift that keeps on giving, and I'm done shopping for this week.
