Out the Window

Hunan Asian - Opened February 2006, this is a new pan-Asian (but still mostly Chinese) restaurant and buffet opened by the owners of Hunan (below) on Maplewood. This is in a newly developing area in the far north of town on Missile Road. The quality is completely up to par with the original, and they've expanded the menu and buffet options to include a few non-Chinese options. Sushi (crab and shrimp rolls only, nothing raw), Thai rice, shrimp and chicken satay, teriyaki chicken, and Korean, Mongolian, and Singapore options are all available. I'm sure there are or will be others I don't know of yet. The *only* critical thing I can think of to say is that the floors are hard instead of carpet (at the other location), so Caity's high chair slides around a bit much. Hey, if that's all I have to complain about, I'm a happy camper. The people are wonderful, the food is excellent, and they're closer to us by a smidge, being up off the freeway there. Prices are the same at both locations, and both buffets are open all day every day.

Johnny Carino's - A relatively new Italian restaurant on Kell West between Cingular and United Market Street, Johnny Carino's is rather like combining Olive Garden's service and selection (and prices) with Fazoli's down-home Italian red-sauce and pizza atmosphere. It's a traditional sit-down restaurant, but not as...pristine as Olive Garden. Stonework walls inside and out, fireplaces, back wall to the kitchen looks like a pizzaria... Excellent, excellent, excellent food! They start you with a bread service that is to die for. Small, long loaves of hot, fresh bread studded throughout with various herbs and served in paper bags come to the table along with a small package of crispy fried minced garlic which the waiter pours into one of the small bread plates on the table. A seasoned olive oil sits on the table to be poured over the garlic and the bread is dipped...it's lovely. I'm not sure that I would ever go there because I was in the mood for pizza, but they do have a wonderful brick oven pizza that comes in a kids' size for their menu. I've only ever had one thing there (in 3 or 4 visits), but it's so good I can't bring myself to move away from it...yet. Chicken Milano: breaded chicken breast pounded thin, with a slice of ham and whole basil leaves topped with cheese and served with fettucine alfredo. Yummm. Chris had a Tuscan ribeye once that was also very, very good. Everything any of us has had there was superb. The only downside is the upscale prices. It's up there with Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and Samurai (for dinner) in overall total for our family, so sadly it is low on the rotation.

El Chico - Of the two sites in town, I prefer the smaller Southwest Parkway Cafe. The food is good, and the open kitchen and close bar provide enough noise to be cover for the kids but not so much that we can't hear each other talk. I personally love the fajita enchiladas. They have a variety of kids' meals, reasonably priced at $3.99 including drink and dessert. Even better, on Thursdays kids' meals are $.99 and there's an ex-clown chatting up the parents while he makes balloon animals and hats for the kids. And he's good! Wednesday they have lunch and dinner enchilada specials, and Monday nights there's a nacho special in the bar.

Buffet City - When Davenport's closed, and the sign went up for an Asian buffet restaurant in its place - just a block from both Hunan's and Samurai of Tokyo - I wondered at the wisdom of such an offering. It's been open a few weeks now, but we just got around to trying it out. Fair shot and all. Can I just say, WOW. Sheer volume alone would make this place impressive. Add in the fact that it has two of my favorite Asian items, lacking only one to make it perfectly complete, and I was amazed. 4 buffet tables of hot entrees, mostly Chinese, but some American items for the kids and the timid. A double-length salad, fruit, and dessert table. A staffed bbq and sushi bar! Mongolian BBQ - my favorite restaurant in CA - finally available here. It's not exactly the same, but it was darned tasty. And a thoroughly competent sushi chef making piece and roll after piece and roll - and more than California roll and salmon sushi (though that's what I had). You could order what you wanted separately and pay by the order, or you could take what was already prepared. He had at least 5 different rolls and another 5 or so types of piece sushi though, so unless you were really craving something specific that didn't happen to be on the table, why bother? The hot food was good, lots of variety. The one thing missing (which is me asking a lot, I know) was bbq pork buns. I won't hold that against them. Overall, the food quality was very good, though if I were sick and only wanted egg drop soup and lo mein (my usual choices) I'd still prefer Hunan's. But if I wanted anything else, I'd be very happy at Buffet City. Which kind of feels like betraying a friend, but there you have it. The downside to Buffet City, as compared to Hunan's, is that they charge children's prices starting at 3, and all the drinks are separate. This brings our total for a family of 5 for dinner to about $37, or $10 more than Hunan's for the same meal. Lunches, naturally, are a bit less at both restaurants. They also have a full Chinese menu available for table service and a la carte ordering, and you can get take-out of either the menu items or the buffet.

Hunan's - Simply our favorite place in town. Where Buffet City is primarily a buffet with an a la carte menu, Hunan's is primarily a sit down Chinese restaurant which happens to have a very popular lunch and dinner buffet. I think maybe once we've ordered from the menu when we had the misfortune to arrive between the lunch and dinner buffets and didn't have that option, but we are frequent diners at the buffet. They have 4 hot tables, a salad/fruit/dessert bar, and soft serve ice cream. The choices are nearly always the same, with the primary difference being the Friday and Saturday dinner buffets containing many more seafood options. For this reason, those nights the price is $1 more. Still, as I mentioned in the Buffet City review, they are very reasonably priced. Children's prices start at 4 years old instead of 3 (which matters to us, with a 3 year old child), and drinks are included with either the kids' meals or ours, I'm not sure which. All I really know is our bill contains 2 adult buffets, 1 child's buffet, and 2 drinks, and the most expensive time (Fri/Sat dinner) comes to under $30 including tip. lol They don't have nearly the variety of the other restaurant, but what they have is excellent. Every once in a while they add something new - like fairly recently the addition of the fabulous "shrimp cakes" which are pork wontons with whole shrimp. Their egg drop soup is my instant prescription for illness, for myself anyway. I've never had a bad meal there, and the staff is extremely friendly, and it doesn't hurt that we've been there so often they recognize us (and our drink orders) on sight, and wonder where we've been if we miss a week. I love that.