Review: Jungle Cafe Buffet

 Medicine Hat, AB, Restaurant Reviews  No Responses »
Jan 062012
 

Let’s face it. I live in Medicine Hat. A one horse town that wouldn’t know good food if it slapped it in the face.
But since I’m stuck here and I have to eat, I’m gonna (regretfully) try a few places in town.

Yup. Just how I remembered it: Terrible

Today, I went to the Jungle Cafe inside the Medicine Hat Lodge. It’s a nice hotel. Not like “nice” nice, but it’s the best we got in this town.
The buffet however…

Looks are deceiving. The board in the front listed the menu items on the Buffet. It sounded quite nice:

-Roasted Striploin with Yorkies
-Beef Ribs
-Ginger Beef
-Cannelloni
-Shrimp Scampi over Rice
-Chicken Stir fry
-Pizza
-Scalloped Potatos and Veg
-Various Desserts

Where to begin….

First off, the staff are apathetic. No one even acknowledged we were there until I went up and poked the hostess that was talking to someone for at least 5 minutes. And no it wasn’t a patron. It didn’t end there. Not once was I offered a refill on my drink. I had to request it each time.
We didn’t even have the appropriate number of settings for our table. Not that the tables are “set” but the basket containing salt and peppers only had one Silverware roll. Apparently a booth meant to seat 4 is only supposed to eat with one set of silverware.

Now for the food. I know it’s a Buffet. Most buffets usually have terrible food. That’s a myth by the way. There are MANY quality buffets out there. There are some that give the entire name “Buffet” a bad name. This is one of them.

Let’s work our way down the menu.

Roasted Striploin. (IMO) The best cut of beef money can buy. With it’s luscious fat cap slowly melting over beautifully marbled meat producing a nice crisp and flavorful crust drizzled with a nice jus and topped with a fresh yorkshire pudding. I think I just drooled.
Sadly… what I got I wouldn’t feed to my dog. Not only was the striploin trimmed of anything that resembled fat. That’s not the worst part. The entire pan was so overcooked that I don’t even think the chef could spell thermometer. I’ve had some questionably graded meat in my life, but this was literally like gnawing on leather. I feel sorry for the cow that gave it’s life to end up in that pan o’ crap.

Some people like a crispy yorkshire pudding. I’m not one of them. I like them soft like a freshly baked roll. These were of the hard kind. I’m not faulting them for that. What I am faulting them for is the lack of salt. For the love of flavor, salt your damn batter. After adding a bit of salt, it was passable. A little tough, but passable.

Beef ribs. I love beef ribs. Roasted slowly so all the connective tissue melts producing a soft texture that has just enough of a grip to know you’re eating ribs. It shouldn’t be fall off the bone, but it also shouldn’t be bolted on for dear life. Beef Ribs done wrong are basically inedible. They’re impossible to eat, at least without ripping out a tooth. The ones I had tonight were part of Category #2. And they were slathered in Bulls Eye. I can pick out that Bull (plop) anywhere. Ridiculously sweet and artificially smokey. Yup. You hit the Bulls Eye. On the dart board o’ crap.

Ginger “Beef”. I love Ginger Beef. Tender strips of Beef battered lightly and deep fried and smothered in a slightly sweet gingery spicy sauce. It’s the unity of all flavors. Hot, sour, salty and sweet.
This wasn’t beef. It was pork. I don’t care about the underlying protein, as long as it’s done right.
Done right wasn’t even in the same Galaxy as this dish. I don’t know who invented it, but they would be spinning in their grave to even be in the same province as this. And if Wikipedia is right the guy who did invent it IS in the same province. If he’s still alive, for the love of life stay away from this dish.
What’s so bad about it? Let’s just say there was nothing good about it. You can’t get very far culinarily when you start with “Dry Garlic Ribs” that come in a box. Yup. Those deep fried hunks of crap that you get at the worst sports bars. They have an inherent off flavor that I can’t identify that’s unique to these ribs. They’re frickin’ terrible. The funny thing is…. making Dry Ribs the right way isn’t that hard. Take a pork butt, cube it and dredge in flour and deep fry. Cost and labor savings is the biggest driver of this boxed crap. The added cost and labor of doing it right is minimal. Think of whoever eats your food.

Cannelloni is marvelous. Fresh Pasta Shells stuffed with various fillings and topped with other various things like cheeses and sometimes a nice sauce.
What I got was spiral pasta in a generic tomato sauce with some strange consistency sausage baked with Cheddar. Average at best. I have to question the sausage though. I’m pretty sure they cheaped out on it since it had the strangest texture to it.

Shrimp Scampi. Fat shrimp smothered in a buttery lemon sauce over fluffy rice.
This was at least edible. But Shrimp Scampi it was not. It tasted thaiish. It had notes of lemon grass and was quite spicy. If anything it was TOO spicy, especially for a buffet.

Chicken Stir Fry. Tender chicken and an assortment of veg quickly woked over high heat with a light soy based sauce.
All I got was overcooked veg with some decent chicken in a thick heavy sauce. I couldn’t eat more than a few bites without feeling bloated.

Pizza. A crisp mahogany crust with a light coating of tomato sauce and a few good toppings.
What I saw was a crust that looked damn near albino. White looks damn near black compared to this crust.

Scalloped Potatos. Thinly sliced potatoes enrobed in cream and various cheeses and baked until golden.
What I got were dry potatoes that looked to be overcooked. It looks like it was missing the cream too.

Dessert. The end to a perfect meal.
Or in this case a boxed disaster that’s comparable to one of the worst meals I’ve ever had. Every single dessert from a box. That means it looks really pretty but tastes like the box it came in. The fruit had it’s rind left on it. Even the Jello didn’t have real whipped cream, but Edible Oil product (if you call it that… I sure can’t stomach that crap).

Ambiance. I can’t complain about it. The tables had a pleather top that matched the booths. Probably for easy cleaning.

Ambiance (10%): 6
Food (50%): 0
Service (25%): 0
Value (15%): 0
Overall : 0.6

Bottom Line: I’ve never scored a restaurant this low, even for Medicine Hat. Awful service teamed with even worse food makes the value of this restaurant a zero. I really have nothing good to say about this place.

 Posted by death_hawk at 22:55

Review: OCB

 Restaurant Reviews, Seattle, WA  No Responses »
Jan 062012
 

I’m a fat guy. Fat guys like to eat. Eats don’t come cheap when you’re eating for 2.
This is why Buffets rock. You pay one price and you eat enough until you fall asleep.

I’ve been in the food industry for years. I know the ins and outs pretty well.
The one thing I CANNOT figure out is how Old Country Buffet makes any damn money. For $12 (plus $2 for a drink) you can eat all you want. Now… you may be thinking “Who cares? Buffets have horrible food and nothing useful in terms of selection!” Well. You would be wrong. There’s steak on the buffet. And mussels. And butterfly shrimp. And a few other kinds of shrimp. And pork ribs. And there’s a bit more protein based fillers like fried/grilled chicken, pot roast, etc etc etc.

I know the US has cheap food prices, but I still can’t figure out how these guys are in business.

The steak quality is shockingly decent for a $12 buffet. Don’t expect Prime Rib (actual “Prime” Rib too, not what most people call Prime Rib) but at the same time, don’t think it was something like Bottom Round. Surprisingly it was Sirloin. And it was cooked Medium Rare. A feat that is lost on most places that cook steak and somehow manage to charge at least double what I paid here.

The Mussels were quite good, but the Shrimp was a bit disappointing. All of it was severely overcooked and tiny.

Ribs were “unique” as I’ve never seen pork ribs that big. They were the size of Beef Ribs. And no smartass, they weren’t beef. They were pork.

Fried Chicken was good, as was the Pot Roast.

As always, my reviews are based on a weighted scale. Keep in mind that “Food” is based on the type of restaurant. Just because OCB scored an 8 doesn’t mean it’s gonna equal an 8 at some fancy pants snooty $500/plate place. It’s an 8 in the Buffet Category.

Ambiance… It’s a buffet. Full of screaming kids. Not exactly date night. That is unless you both don’t care about ambiance and want some tasty cheap eats. Probably a 2nd date. Not a first.

The Service was pretty damn good for a buffet. Granted… it was self serve drinks too, so it’s not like they did a whole lot outside clear plates, but those plates were cleared pretty damn quick.

Finally comes Value. It was $12. And had steak. That was cooked well. Easily a 10 here.

Ambiance (10%): 1
Food (50%): 8
Service (25%): 7
Value (15%): 10
Overall : 7.35

Bottom Line: If you want some cheap food that’s pretty decent, you could do MUCH worse than an OCB. Hell.. I’ve had much worse steaks that were priced at least twice as much as what OCB charges.

 Posted by death_hawk at 21:27

Review: Bluefin Sushi

 Restaurant Reviews, Seattle, WA  No Responses »
Apr 012011
 

Today I had a huge hankering for seafood. The problem with seafood is that it’s [expletive deleted]ing EXPENSIVE! This is usually why I tend to seek out all you can eat places. The issue is that all you can eat joints are hit or miss. Some are AWESOME and others are just plain terrible. Price is usually a good indicator, but it’s not always the case. I was kind of questioning $28 for a sushi buffet that included Prime Rib, Snow Crab, Shucked Oysters among other things, but I figured I’d give it a shot.

First off, the selection was quite good. There’s a decent variety of seafood and a nice selection of hot items. Unlike most buffets, there wasn’t a bunch of “Salad” filler. Their website lists all the items on the buffet, but that’s not usually a good indicator to what’s good or not.

Assuming you’ve read their website before reading this review, you’ll see some interesting things like Prime Rib and Soft Shell Crab and some strange things like Salmon and Scallops. While Salmon and Scallops aren’t strange themselves, they read more like ingredients than actual dishes.

First, we’ll start with the noteworthy. The buffet included Snow Crab which was a nice touch, especially for $28. There wasn’t anything like drawn butter, but that’s not a bad thing since cold crab and hot butter is terrible.
Not only was there Snow Crab, there was a nice hot Asian style Dungie. For those who have had it, you know what I’m talking about. For those who don’t, it’s hard to describe. It’s a Dungie crab that’s chopped into large chunks and dredged before frying and tossed in an Asian style Soy/Ginger/Garlic sauce.
Next up is raw oysters, which did come with a nice variety of accompaniments like a really spicy horseradish, an Asian style soy/ginger/etc sauce and Tabasco. A minor issue for those snooty people that like varietals is that these were just generic oysters rather than something like a Kumamoto. Besides… generic oysters are better than no oyster.
Something I didn’t expect to see is Prime Rib. I was quite surprised that they had it on a Sushi Buffet. Even at 8PM (1 hour prior to closing) it was still at a nice Mid Rare. My one gripe is that it was a touch bland and didn’t have a ready source of au jus, but other than that it was shockingly good. At least for a Sushi buffet. I mean… I wouldn’t go there for the Prime Rib, but for someone that may not enjoy Sushi (like my companion) it was a nice touch.
Korean BBQ isn’t a stranger to all you can eat sushi and it sure wasn’t absent here. Although it seemed more like an afterthought than a “feature”. It was lacking in variety but was still tasty. Then again… it’s hard to break Short Ribs.
Shark Fin Soup. I walked by this and almost messed myself. Obviously this isn’t real Shark Fin Soup, but still worth a mention. This is by FAR my favorite soup if it’s made right. This particular iteration wasn’t bad, but it seemed like it was missing a few things. It was really sparse in terms of ingredients, but was still quite good. It even had a good bit of white pepper which most restaurants don’t add enough of.
Finally we get to the Sushi. With the variety of other food here I didn’t partake in a lot of it, but there are a few things worth mentioning. Unlike some of the all you can eat places I’ve been to, Blue Fin had Sashimi as well as good selection of Nigiri. For those who don’t know, Sashimi is just straight raw fish without rice or nori. Nigiri is a large piece of fish on top of a nugget of rice. They didn’t have a huge selection of Sashimi, but they did have Tuna, Salmon and Snapper. The Tuna looked quite nice, as did the Snapper but the Salmon looked a little limp. It tasted fine though.

A few other things that were interesting but not worth a paragraph:

-Cocktail Shrimp. Nicely sized too.
-Mongolian Beef. Had a good bit of bite to it.
-Manilla Clams in Black Beans. Just overall good.

Now… for the bad news. Their website lists a wide variety of food (and apparently ingredients) but a good bit of them we-re missing. I was quite looking forward to partaking in some Soft Shell Crab, but sadly they were absent. I know they’re not in season, but they shouldn’t be listing it if they don’t have it. There were a few other things missing, but I’ll attribute that to the day’s selection rather than maliciously leaving them out. Long story short, I wouldn’t set your heart on any particular item on the menu since it may be absent.
As with any buffet, there’s always issue with food quality. In this particular case, the quality was quite good. Very few things were cold that were supposed to be hot and vice versa. There were a few things that were overcooked, but not significantly to the point of complaint.

Because it is a buffet, the ambiance isn’t exactly “romantic” or “fancy”. But if you’re into good food at a reasonable price, Blue Fin Sushi really hits the mark.

The Service was quite good. A few reviews online mentioned issues with the quality of service, but I had no such issues. A server was prompt when we sat down and explained how things work. It’s not hard to understand how a buffet works, but it’s always a bit awkward not seeing a server before getting your first plate. Speaking plates, they were cleared in a timely manner and drinks were kept topped up. For a buffet (which is normally notorious for bad service) Blue Fin is quite good in terms of service.

As always, ratings are based on class of restaurant rather than overall. This means that good fast food can outrank fine dining, but doesn’t mean that it’s better.

Ambiance (10%): 7
Food (50%): 8
Service (25%): 8
Value (15%): 10
Overall : 8.3

Bottom line: If you enjoy large volumes of seafood it’d be stupid to pass up Blue Fin Sushi, even if you don’t like Sushi. Food Quality is quite good as is Service. The ambiance is decent if you don’t mind the family atmosphere. As for value, it’s hard to beat $28 per person for Snow Crab, Oysters and Sashimi.

Website: http://bluefinseattle.com/
Map: http://goo.gl/ClxvB

 Posted by death_hawk at 23:00
© 2011 The Mind of DH Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha