Golden Dragon Chinese Buffet & Hibachi Grill
2404 Memorial Blvd.
Kingsport, TN 37664
phone 423-765-9588
fax 423-765-9589
I apologize to my readers for the lack of recent posts. I've got a couple of other restaurants to review besides this one that I hope to post soon. Back to the Golden Dragon: this in no way is related to the venerable Golden Dragon Chinese Restaurant that was in Kingsport for many years at the corner of E. Sevier St. and N. Wilcox Dr. It appears from their advertisements to be part of a chain. The building they're in is directly behind the Ft. Henry Mall/Kingsport Town Center in the former Ryan's Steakhouse/Red Apple Chinese Buffet that's in front of Ross N. Robinson Middle School.
We went there this Friday evening (7/8/11) with my wife, daughter and her boyfriend. As I had only a light late breakfast about 10 AM, I was ready to try as many things as my appetite could handle! The first thing that you notice when entering this fairly large restaurant is the large number of well-lighted steam table buffet stations. In addition to these it has a couple of cold stations as well as a "Hibachi Grill" where dishes can be fixed to your choosing in a giant wok from meats, vegetables and sauces of your selection. This is a feature that my friends Emily & Daniel Wong first featured in Kingsport as a "Mongolian Grill" at their nearby Ming Garden restaurant that's currently celebrating their twentieth anniversary.
After being seated by our friendly hostess (who knew our son), we were attended to by our cordial but basically non-English speaking waitress and placed our drink orders. This went somewhat awkwardly due the language issues as my daughter asked if they had Mr. Pibb which she didn't quite comprehend. After she gave us the list of available drinks (I requested ice water with lemon which ended up coming without lemon), we placed our orders and everyone proceeded to hit the buffet. We did have problems with our waitress keeping up with our drink refills and waiting for our cheque. I suspect she's not been long off the boat with her poor English comprehension.
As my daughter and her boyfriend had eaten her a couple of weeks earlier and told me about some of the offerings that were unique from other local Chinese buffets, I started on one side and quickly had a look around. One of the first things that caught my eye were oysters on the half-shell complete with a plate of lemon slices next to it. I selected three large good-looking oysters and a cold green mussel topped in a sweet-hot chili sauce. On a hot table I selected three green mussels with cheese sauce which seems to be pretty common at Chinese buffets at least locally. I also went to the sushi/sashimi table next to the hibachi grill and selected about six different sushi selections that surprisingly included Ahi tuna and salmon amongst several other types. We are so far from the coast and oysters are so expensive that I had a brief moment of nirvana enjoying them drizzled with lemon juice and salt. If only they'd had some Tabasco sauce to put on them! They were quite tasty and I could've easily eaten a coupe of dozen but wanted to have room to try the other offerings. If you notice my obituary in the paper in the next day or two, you'll know the oysters are what did me in as they are a bit risky! The mussels with cheese were okay but China Star's are definitely better. The sushi was quite good as I like Nori seaweed in a lot of things but the Ahi tuna was wonderful with just a bit of soy sauce without having to swish in a wasabi/soy combination. I also tried one of the fried dumplings with sauce that was pretty good. My daughter said their fried cheese wontons weren't too good but I didn't get the chance to try them. Another intersting dish on a cold table was the whole baby octopus in a sweet and slightly spicy sauce. They were quite tasty but frightened a couple of people at our table! I would really love to have hot squid dishes available at a buffet like this. There's much more to squid than just calamari, trust me. The Chinese have come up with some amazing dishes made from these critters!
Other notable items sampled were the roast duck. It was basically roast duck, skin on, chopped into various pieces and a plate of orange slices and a bowl of a fairly tasty soy/five spice sauce to ladle over it. I'm a big fan of duck and really miss the old Peking Restaurant that used to be in Johnson City, TN. They had a fabulous roast duck that sets the standard for any I've tried since. This duck was cooked pretty well, you just had to be selective about the pieces unless you like picking duck ribs which results in little meat but a whole lot of ribs and fatty skin. By and large I was pleasantly surprised by their roast duck. Another poultry dish I tried at the boyfriend's suggestion was the Hong Kong Chicken. It was chunks of boneless chicken in a somewhat orange, sweet and seasoned glaze that was pretty tasty.
Another dish I love is frog legs and Golden Dragon's didn't disappoint. They were complete hind leg sections cooked in a light seasoned batter coating and were pretty tasty with a lot of meat. If you've never had the nerve to try frog legs, let me tell you that they are quite delicious. If you like chicken, you'll be okay with frog. Same with turtle but that's for a different time. Many Chinese buffets around here at least offer snow crab legs on their dinner buffets especially on weekends. Surprisingly, these weren't available but instead they had basically chopped up sections of blue crab, also with a light seasoned batter. While these looked good and the batter was interesting, there was almost no crab meat left to pick in these sections. As you may know, blue crabs have almost no meat in their legs like their larger cousins the snow and king crabs. Unfortunately, these had almost no meat even in the claws which was a big surprise and a bit disappointing. They also had cooked whole crayfish which were okay, it's just peeling crawdads is such a pain for the small amount of meat in their tails. They did have a number of shrimp dishes and the couple I tried were good. They also have several boiled and fried fish dishes. Another surprise was the small steamed clams. I'm not sure what type they were but looked a lot like Manila clams and were definitely not Cherrystone's. Unfortunately as I rummaged through them, there were a lot of pretty open shells but only a couple that had the clam inside. I don't know if people had picked the clam out and left the shells or what. It was pretty strange and I passed them over.
As I was rapidly getting full from the aforementioned selections, I wanted to try some dessert to round out the meal. They have the usual selection of odd cakes and such but also a large selection of cold fruits like watermelon, grapes and so on. Some I wasn't expecting were there and that I really like including loquats and lychee. Loquats are unique to Asia and have a round orange fruit about the size of an apricot that contains a single large seed. Canners peel the fruit and remove the seed leaving the fruit with a single noticeable hole in each fruit. They taste something like a peach and apricot combination and are very expensive if you ever find them available. Lychees are also an Asian tree fruit that has a somewhat hard red armored exterior and are about the size of a large grape. Canners remove the shell and the single large seed leaving a round white fruit also with a single hole and they taste something like a grape and strawberry cross. Either of these should be tried if you ever encounter them. They also had slices of kiwi fruit on the bar which you don't see too often. On the hot table where they keep the soups, they have the sesame bean balls. I'm not sure what the proper name of these are but they are round, about the size of a quarter, covered in sesame seeds and consist of a pastry that's filled with slightly-sweet adzuki bean paste. This is an old-time dessert as the Chinese until recent years didn't eat very much really sweet things like we've done in the West for way too many years. This particular dessert in pretty much an authentic flavor from the past and are somewhat chewy and I like them!
The biggest problem with the Golden Dragon is that they have so many selections that you would have to make at least a half dozen visits to sample most of their offerings! While I've stated in a previous post that I'm not a big fan of Chinese buffets due to the food almost never being as good as individually prepared dishes, this one does have mostly okay food from what I've tried and nothing was really hideous as has occurred at a few other local Chinese buffets. They do offer a number of American items so that surely everyone in your party can find something they'll find acceptable. For the adventurous eater, I think you may be pleasantly surprised! I'm going to give them a 3 out of 5 stars rating based upon what I've tried thus far and the fact that it's a buffet which is an automatic one star deduction by my methodology. I'd recommend you give them a try and come up with your own opinion that I'd be interested in hearing. Fear No Food!
