Pass the General Tso's chicken

I love Chinese food. Eat a lot of it. When I was job hunting a number of years ago, I remember thinking that one of my requirements would be that there be a Chinese restaurant nearby. There are two Chinese places in Fairmont. One is simply called "China Buffet" and it's my restaurant of choice. The buffet is pretty darn good, and the take-out (wherein one can order a much wider variety of dishes), which I get often, is even better. The other one used to be called "China Restaurant" (clever, that), and may have been the first one I tried when I first came out here to Martin County. It was okay, but not as good as China Buffet, as I discovered later. Some people claimed that they liked China Restaurant better, though I couldn't understand why. My friend Erin and I tried it once for lunch and were severly underwhelmed. We went back to our usual China Buffet shortly afterwards. They changed ownership, and names, awhile ago. First they were called "China King" and then "China King Buffet." Some of my students and some others told me that it was much improved, so last week I decided to give it a try. I sampled something like nine different dishes (if you count appetizers and two kinds of rice) and I would say that not one of them compared favorably with the same items at the China Buffet. It was bland and the vegetables soggy, not crispy. I can't figure out why people like it better, or even at all. I've had worse Chinese food (Winslow, Arizona, anyone?), but this was not particularly good. (I've had better than China Buffet, too, but probably in a bigger city, like Minneapolis.) So, no more China King for me.

I ate at China Buffet tonight.