Originally posted December 29, 2007

Recently I sat down and tried to determine the number of Asian food restaurants in the St Cloud area. I used the broad stroke approach including Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and anything fitting into the whole mandarin culture and area. When it was all said and done I came to 11. That is not including the latest popular Mongolian craze or restaurants over 5 miles from St Cloud proper. That’s amazing. I would venture to bet that its the second or third most populated food type behind Americana and pizza (go figure on the later since it is a college town).Next on my path through the prepared food world was the Great Wall Buffet. My opinion of buffets are they are pretty much the same thing from place to place, but in all cases it is best to pay attention to the details and the things that set them apart from their competitors. That is how we are going to approach this one too.

Food: 6

You will find most of the building blocks of any other Chinese buffet. The buffet is a medium sized buffet with a larger number of options for the diner. They dabble in sushi roles and on the kids plate they had something resembling Totino’s pizza rolls. Unfortunately the sauce was too bland to appreciate as much as Totino’s. For the life of me I cannot remember the name of their General Tso’s alternative chicken dish, and it does not appear on their website, but it was something different. If you are a vegetarian, then you will appreciate the buffet. Besides that it’s pretty status quo.

Service: 3 of NA

Par for the course. You really don’t go to a buffet if you are interested in being doted on by the serving staff. If anything our server, who also subbed as the cashier, was efficient and barely spoke a word as he swooped down on plates from vacated tables. Beverages are self served so there is no server dependence here. I look at Service here as almost a non-entity. We really did not see or interact with the server except when we came in and payed to strap on the old feed bag.

Atmosphere: 4

The restaurant is clean and laid out for the purpose of feeding the masses. Decorated as it always seems to be with large lit up pictures of different Chinese locales, mirrors, and traditional respectful references to classic Chinese decoration including the shrine to Budda. Nothing more to say here as atmosphere is counter to this type of restaurant setting. Just make sure there’s enough room in the aisle as I make my way to the trough.

Overall: 5

Nothing outstanding but the price is moderate and you get what you pay for. Just remember when going to a buffet, your goal is not to make sure the restaurant loses money on you because of how much you eat, just enjoy the variety of tastes in moderation and your belt will still cinch up to the same hole.