I went for the hot pot a few days ago and then tried the lunch buffet yesterday. For the hot pot, I'm a big fan of the flavors in Szechwan cooking, but I had never had hot pot before. The servers were very helpful with suggesting how many meats and veggies to order for the hot pot. We ended up getting a split hot pot that was half classic spicy and half of what they called mild, which was a a cloudy white broth (I'm not sure what the stock base was, mushroom maybe?). To put in the hot pot we got cilantro, Chinese cabbage, dumplings (which ended up being filled with spinach), dired bean curd, wood ear mushroom, flounder, and spicy beef. We also got the sauce buffet. My favorite sauce was the tofu sauce which was a creamy white sauce that had a spicy-garlicky flavor similar to a horseradish sauce. Overall I thought everything was very good, but I feel like I was the limiting factor on the quality of the meal. With more experience matching ingredients and sauces, as well as with knowing how long to cook each item, I think this could really be outstanding. I'll be back.
For the lunch buffet I went close to 2:00 so some of the dishes had been out for awhile, but they still had about a dozen or so dinners and were still brining out fresh dishes. The whole buffet was filled with dishes. Starting at the front they had a block of cold salads (pickled cucumbers, seaweed salad, cold szechwan noodle, ginger chicken, etc.), then they had a block of dumplings and steamed buns (bbq pork buns, pork dumplings, shrimp dumplings, etc.), 2 blocks of szechwan dishes, a block of american Chinese dishes (beef and broccoli, general tzo, etc.), a block of desserts, and then 4 soups (duck congee, egg drop, hot and sour, and something else I can't remember). My favorites were the the cold salads especially the cold szechwan noodle (which was too mild, but still good) and the ginger chicken, which was very tender and had been cooked just right. I also liked the kung pow chicken, which was the spiciest of the dishes I tried. It had a fair amount of szechwan peppercorns and some heat. Still it didn't have as much of a punch as the Hong Kong Palace dishes. The other szechwan dishes I tried tasted very mild to me. The ma po tofu for example had no heat or numbing. They also had some shrimp and bean curd blocks, and other assorted fish dishes that I liked. As well as a chille chicken dish like the one at China Star, but it didn't have the heat or other flavors that that version has.
Overall, I thought there were enough good dishes and flavors that it was more than worth 8 bucks. I'll probably go again, but only if I can go closer to when they open. Also, I'm not sure the buffet can be sustained at this level. The selection was enormous for how many people where there when I was there, and it looked like the american chinese dishes where the popular ones. I'm worried that to remain viable they will have to cut their selection and dumb things down further. I'm eager to try the buffet on the weekend to see if it draws a larger crowd of people who want the szechwan offerings.
