East Meets West at Chinese Buffet

If you have a big group of people, might have something to please everybody.

The restaurant sits on Jefferson Avenue at Overland Drive in a big building that holds about 60 tables.

This buffet-style restaurant has six serving stations each holding about 10 dishes. It offers four soups, a small salad bar with a few cold items – eggs, crab salad, three-bean salad – and a dessert area with soft-serve frozen yogurt, cookies, cakes and various fruits and puddings.

The highlight is the Mongolian barbeque. You just pile up your choice of ingredients from a serving station next to the big, round barbeque, and a chef cooks it right in front of you behind a Plexiglas window.

The food is pretty standard American-Chinese: orange chicken, beef broccoli and hot-and-sour pork, for example. It also has a few American classics, such as french fries, pizza and sautéed salmon. On Saturday and Sunday, they serve all-you-can-eat snow crab, too.

The prices are great. For a lunch buffet, it’s $4.99. Diner during the weekdays is $7.99 and during the weekends it’s $10.99.

Children ages 3-10 years pay 50 cents per year of age.

There are a few downsides. I’ve been here numerous times, and it always feels a little hot and muggy inside. Smooth jazz or classic rock pipes through the restaurant’s stereo system, doing little to compliment the Asian décor.

The tables are easy to move around, and the servers are always happy to do it, so though it’s not a romantic place for a date, the wide variety and the big size make it ideal for a big get-together.

If you're looking for some Asian cuisine that's a little more authentic, try Pho Tho on Ynez and Rancho California Roads. Read a review by .

For something a little fancier but still reasonably priced, try . Read a review by .