China Star Review 5/13/11

China Star Buffet
2400 W Stone Dr # 7
Kingsport, TN 37660-2388
(423) 247-8883

China Star is a large buffet restaurant located in the Jennings Farm Shopping Center on the west side of Kingsport, TN.  The shopping center is located between the Walmart and the new Lowe's right off W. Stone Drive/Hwy 11-W at Deneen Ln.  This fairly large buffet restaurant was one of the first tenants in the shopping center and has been fairly popular for several years being the first Chinese restaurant on the west side of town. 

This restaurant has apparently changed management or ownership within the past year or so as it seems to have a completely new front of house staff. This restaurant has had one of the largest Chinese buffet offerings in Kingsport until recently. 

The restaurant has three quite long two-sided steam tables and a large chilled table that support a large variety of Chinese food items.  In the past year or so they've added a few sushi items to the chilled section and also have an ice cream freezer with at least eight flavors for those that might possibly have room for a dessert after sampling the rest of their offerings.  From the time this restaurant first opened about five years ago, they were fairly consistent in their food items under the previous management as the food tasted pretty similar from day to day.

Let me tell you straight away that I am not a fan of Chinese buffet restaurants in general. From my own training in Chinese restaurants, chefs are taught to produce one dish at a time in the classical Chinese restaurant environment.  The only items that are produced en masse are such things as egg rolls, fried rice and soups.  To turn out a particular item in a large quantity as is required for a buffet, which is normally six to eight servings, is extremely hard to do with any consistency or quality.  Much of this has to do with the wok that most foods are cooked in as well as the chef preparing it.  The typical restaurant wok works best preparing no more than two servings of an item at a time.  Beyond that it requires a much larger wok that has different requirements in temperature control much less the fine tuning of the many ingredients that often comprise a particular dish.  The sauces that are an integral part of many dishes are not a premix in most instances.  The ingredients are added one at a time to build the item's flavor profile.  All of these things contribute to why most foods on a buffet are not as good as a single dish ordered off a menu in a quality Chinese restaurant.

Back to the China Star: this restaurant has several good items that aren't normally seen on many Chinese buffets. Their broiled green mussels with a cheese sauce is a very tasty item if not very authentic to Chinese cuisine.  They also have a coconut chicken that's also very tasty.  It's battered chunks of chicken deep fried with a thick, sweet coconut sauce.  I suspect the sauce is derived from cream of coconut like Coco Lopez which is used to make a real Piña Colada drink. Authentic Chinese or not, it's tasty.  Another is their peanut chicken which is pounded thin boneless chicken breasts coated in Panko crumbs, deep fried, sliced into strips and coated with an Indonesian-style peanut butter-based Satay sauce.  Quite tasty if not Chinese.  They have a tasty green bean dish which consists of very skinny young green beans (all green, no bean) that have been stir fried with garlic and other seasonings.  Besides stir fried potatoes, this is one of the few vegetable offerings on the buffet if you exclude rice and noodle dishes.

Our Friday the 13th dinner was not very lucky nor one of the better meals I've had at this restaurant.  On weekends, besides the wonderful cheese mussels, they have snow crab legs.  Unfortunately, there were nothing but scrap pieces on the steam table from when we arrived at approximately 7 PM until we left an hour later when they finally put some more out.  I was looking forward to them even if they use no seasonings and often overcook them.  One thing that does bother me about many of these buffets is that at least 75% of their dishes are made from chicken.  I grew up with Chinese restaurants that had such wonderful dishes as sweet and sour pork which I've found on very few buffets over the years.  Sweet and sour chicken ala China Star is just not the same.  In fact, I found no pork items on the buffet, even in their version of hot and sour soup. They do offer Mongolian beef and pepper steak. They had one fish item which was a slab of broiled salmon which I've had before and it was pretty much tasteless with a dusting of paprika to make it appear seasoned.  They did have a couple of shrimp items such as typical breaded fried shrimp but they'd been on the buffet for way too long.  It seems like none of the items are cleared away from being out too long rather they're only replaced with fresh when the bins are mostly emptied.

Their spring rolls were smaller in diameter than my fingers and were more wrapper than the unidentifiable tasteless filling they contained.  Their Mongolian beef was definitely not as good as I'd had in previous visits and totally lacked that almost barbecued flavor that stir frying it in very hot oil produces. I made a huge mistake in trying their seafood casserole which consists of surimi seafood with tiny shrimp in a cheesy sauce.  It's normally as okay as anything made with surimi can be but not this time.  Evidently, some of the surimi or shrimp had spoiled and in the words of my son, "it tastes like death."  That was not an understatement and after spitting out my first bite, I took a napkin to scrape my tongue hoping that it wouldn't kill me in a few hours. I can't remember ever putting anything in my mouth that tasted so vile. By that point my appetite had waned considerably and I thought I might try a few fruit items from the cold table to repair my taste buds.  Their so-called sushi looked nice but contained no raw items and was disappointing.  Wrapping sushi rice with nori around a piece of surimi and cream cheese leaves much to be desired.  Even the wasabi was sub-standard as it was so mild and/or adulterated. I expect wasabi mixed with a little soy to clear my sinuses in about fifteen seconds after taking a bite of sushi I've swished through it.  No such luck that night and barely any taste.  I tried the Mandarin orange segments and I suspect they'd been on the buffet for several days as they were limp and sour in a fermented kind of way.  My wife did like the raspberry-lime sherbet but I'm not convinced that a bowl of murky water is the best place to keep the communal ice cream dippers between customers. The honeydew melon was okay but the cantaloupe was pretty bad but that didn't surprise me since it's so early in the season.  I though I'd try the cherry cobbler but found that it was only extremely thick cherry pie filling that must've been on the buffet since lunch and no pastry was evident.  They used to have such things as sesame seed covered adzuki bean-filled steamed balls which were tasty if you caught them fresh but they don't seem to be available anymore.

My verdict is that this restaurant that was once as good as a typical Chinese buffet can be, has slipped considerably in several critical areas.  Food quality needs major improvement including replacing items that have been out on the buffet too long.  Allowing a seafood dish such as the seafood casserole to be served shows that no one in the kitchen is sampling before they serve it.  Not regularly refilling popular items such as the the crab legs on a night they're featured is another mistake. The staff quality seems to have slipped a bit too as we were already seated with our first plates of food before our drink orders were delivered. Based upon our  party of three's experiences Friday night, I can't in good conscience recommend China Star Buffet.             

My New Love

I guess I might as well announce it here as anywhere: I've fallen in love again.  My wife's probably going to be a bit upset over that four letter word but I can't help myself.  You might be thinking I've succumbed to the proverbial mid-life crisis but you'll be wrong as I've fallen in love with a Sunbeam.  To be specific: a Sunbeam Cooker-Fryer Model CF that was made in the USA in 1952. Even today, it's considered by many to be the finest and most heavy duty non-commercial deep fryer/cooker ever produced.  They are now collectors items selling as usable versions for $160 and up all the way to over $285 for one in mint condition.  My darling that I inherited from my late aunt Mae might not be considered cosmetically to be mint but still looks good with no dents and has the original fryer basket with handle, the cooker's lid and power cord.  This deep fryer would make a Fry Daddy leave town under cover of darkness!

I first came across this cooker/fryer in 2002 when doing an inventory of my late Aunt and Uncle's house after their deaths.  I knew about deep frying as any respectable Chinese restaurant and almost every American restaurant has one.  I'd not done any deep frying at home and most of what I knew outside of a restaurant was mostly limited to what my mother might do in her electric skillet while growing up.  I knew of some college friends that owned various versions of a Fry Daddy but I quickly determined that they were good for cooking up a big handful of french fries and not much else.  When I discovered my Sunbeam, I thought it looked pretty old and quaint and relegated it to spending it's remaining years in an under counter cabinet's shelf or so I thought.

About six months ago I thought I might attempt to do a batch of french fries or perhaps some fried chicken in it and brought it out and gave it a decent cleaning.  One thing I noticed was that it was not only a sizeable deep fryer that could hold a gallon of oil but it was also capable of producing things like beef stew, roasts and many other things.  It has a big metal plate on it's front that lists many things that can be cooked in it along with the proper cooking temperature. Unlike many similar appliances, it has a rotary dial where the temperature can be set from a simmer to over 400°F and remains backlit until it achieves the desired temperature.  It has a substantial aluminum cooking body liner that helps it to maintain temperature along with an integral bracket for placing the fryer basket to drain.  In other words, this was a well thought out appliance easily in the class of such things as a KitchenAid stand mixer and it's currently 59 years old!

In the past few weeks I've used it to produce french fries as good any restaurant could and on a whim tonight ran off a batch of fried chicken that not only turned out flavorful but also moist inside without being pressure fried.  Later on tonight I turned out a batch of corn tortilla chips from fresh corn tortillas cut into 1/8ths along with a couple of flour tortilla chimichangas that were also memorable.  I've got a feeling that this love affair is going to last! Stay tuned for pictures of our honeymoon.