Cook Out: Where Loaves of Bread and Wine Become Burgers and Shakes...sort of...

This was one of the places that locals gushed about when I got here. The fact that there's one in my backyard (no, literally...if I step out the rear sliding door of my townhouse, I can be at the walk-up window within two minutes) meant that it was just a matter of time before I ate there. Every day, around 3:30, the smell of burgers fills the air, as they start bracing for the dinner rush. And I'll give them that--the burgers are fresh. We're not talking about the frozen patties that other chains use. It also seems that each patty is inspected for thorough cooking. I've noticed over the years that the patties are split up the middle, probably to insure  they're not too pink.

The delivery system and concept are simple: drive through or walk up. There's no eating area...unless you count an adjoining parking lot, like our townhouses. It's as fast as fast food can get: get in, get the food, get out. The menuboard requires both a graduate degree and 20/20 vision to read. It's dense and a bit difficult to navigate. They simplified it about a year ago, but it's still tough to get through the first few times. This is further complicated by the fact that the location I go to is staffed by obnoxious teenagers who don't like to be given an order twice and hate being asked to confirm orders. I rarely have someone get my order right the first time I give it, and even more rarely get someone who's not annoyed when I ask them to confirm it...just to make sure that "extra pickle" doesn't translate to "no pickle" somehow.

Yea...come unto me for coronary disease...

Cook Out deals in the standard burger joint fare: burgers (or chicken breasts), barbeque, hot dogs, shakes, and sides. And to be honest, the food's fairly-priced for the portions. Their signature item is the "Tray"--a make-your-own meal that gives a pretty large reign over the menu (shakes extra, of course), for under five dollars. But their other signature is the subtle placement of bible verses and a little Lee Greenwood-influenced patriotism on the fry bags and shake cups. Now let's be honest here, few things say "'Murrika!" like inexpensive, artery-clogging burgers, fries, and shakes. But the only time I want Jesus involved in my meal is if he can take my cheeseburger tray, double fry, and milkshake and make it feed me more than once. Yes, it's their right to do it, but it's a bit disjarring for the nonreligulous.

Little sticks of artery-hardening goodness...

The food's decent. Like I said, the burgers seem to be cooked on the premises and either kept in a warmer or microwaved until they're server. The usual toppings are free, and things like tomato, cheese, and bacon will run extra. The burgers themselves do have a nice grilled taste to them that blends well with the toppings. The meat's good, and the toppings are fresh.

The Mexi-Dog

I can't tell if the fries are fresh or frozen...and I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing. The hot dog offerings are decent--the "mexi dog" in particular, with chili, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and a shot of Texas Pete to keep it local.

The burgers...they're kind of a big thing...

Cook Out's shakes, while legendary in local food culture, are overrated. I'm sorry, but they just are. When people gush about the shakes, what I really think they mean is the sheer combinations of them, more than the quality. The shakes themselves are just soft serve ice cream with toppings and a few moments in a blender. I'd use an arctic-themed reference, but Dairy Queen and McDonalds grabbed trademark on the words, and their lawyers are better than mine...but you get the idea. Quality-wise, it's just soft serve ice cream. What Cook Out specializes at is the clever combination of flavors. Most, you can get pretty easily. Cookies and cream, Snickers, mint--all obvious mix-ins. But shakes like the cobblers use canned fruit and vanilla wafers, and the cheesecake shakes use fruit and some cheesecake. So there's a little creativity. Seasonal shakes (watermelon and egg nog) are cute on a menuboard, but didn't translate well when I've tried them over the years.

Cheeseburger dissection

When I was a little boy, I had a relative, Uncle Gene. Gene wasn't really an uncle as much as one of my paternal grandmother's in-laws for whom there may not have been a family title...so he just got "uncle" by default. Nice guy, as I remember, but he always had these little, red mini-bibles that he carried with him. At every family gathering, Uncle Gene was handing out the little, red mini-bibles to the kids present. I just came to expect it. When I think about Cook Out, I think about Uncle Gene--nice guy, but a little unwarrantedly preachy. Likewise, with Cook Out, the religulousness is just to be expected. The burgers are excellent, the fries pass muster, and the shakes are disguised soft serve, but the overall meal (or at least its price) makes enduring the "'Murrica!" and bible verses (I guess I should give them credit for avoiding the John 3:16 cliche) tolerable. Like Uncle Gene's little red bibles, I endure it and focus on the real reason I'm there--hardening my arteries and bringing me one step closer to that massive coronary that's looming in my future.

"What is a Food Blog?"

When I started blogging about food and restaurants in the area, I wanted to keep it local. I mean, if Applebees makes a pre-cooked, microwaved entree that's REALLY awesome, I might go out of my way to try it and write about it...assuming, of course, that I'd ever be caught dead in an Applebees. But really, my goal is to get to know an area through its eateries. Note, I said eateries, not necessarily food.

National chains and franchises are comfortable because they're familiar and identical. Save for the occasional regional variations (like the time I had "McRamen" at a Hawaiian McDonalds on a family visit in 1987), every McDonalds is going to be the same--decor and menu. If you're of a certain age (read: old), you may remember a scene from the movie Gotcha, wherein our hero, having escaped "bad" Germany into "good" Germany runs right to a Burger King to order an "American" Whopper. His whole point was to reconnect with a familiar place after a brief trip behind the iron curtain. So at least for right now, I'm avoiding the big chains. That's not to say that I won't hit a chain or franchise, but there's no need to write about the nationals. I'm looking for the smaller places that people might overlook or not be familiar with. For me, local eateries are a part of a city or region's identity.

Even though I grew up in Flint, Michigan, my mother's family was from the south...like deep south, Batesville, Arkansas. At least once a year, we'd visit my maternal grandparents down there. This is a part of the south so southern, I saw men in KKK robes, on the side of the street, having a mini-rally when I was driving over from Memphis to visit my grandmother during the Labor Day weekend holiday in 2002.

Yes, 2002.

But digressions aside, one of the things about going to visit my parents in Batesville was completely getting away from the "normalcy" of Flint, especially when we ate out. That was half of the excitement--new places to eat: new food, new environments, and stories from my mother about the places in Batesville where she ate as a teenager. I've long-since forgotten the names, but I remember having burgers and fries at a little greasy-spoon she'd visit after school as a teenager. I remember fried catfish at a seafood place we went to during a family reunion. When I think about Batesville, those are some of the things I think about--places I'd never have eaten at were I not there. The environment helps to make the impression.

So I was thinking about jumpstarting this blog last spring. I sent the link to an acquaintance. "OMG, your food blog sucks, man! You never talk about food!" I was a bit taken back...because I recalled talking about food. I mean, I didn't throw myself into armchair "food porn" mode, where I'm sitting at my Macbook like a fatter, ruddier, even more abraisive Godon Ramsey, deconstructing flavor profiles like an WASPy, NPR-fueled culture snob might try to break down a wine...despite the fact that science has proven that most of 
us just can't tell flavor nuances to that degree.  Maybe it's just because I'm more of a glutton (seriously, food in my proximity rarely lasts long. I don't inhale, but I'm not a slow, delicate, dainty eater either), I've never developed that pinpoint palate that allows me to articulate food like that.

Let's be honest here, food pretension was hip way before hipsters, Alton Brown, and a glut of bad reality cooking TV shows made any middle class white person with access to the Food Network and a box of wine (funneled into expensive bottles, to show off for friends) into an instant food critic. I'm pushing 350 pounds these days. You don't get there with a shi-shi, restrictive palate. You get there by eating. So when I think about food, I'm not looking so much at the buzzword of the moment as much as a few guiding questions:

• Does the food taste good? If so, why? If not, what's wrong?
• Do I want to go there again and eat more?

That's it.

For me, a food blog is about more than just the food. It's the whole experience--from my thoughts and feelings going into it, to the environment itself, to the staff, to the food. I mean yes, I could do a "food porn" style blog. I could easily be the Bob Guccione or Larry Flynt of southern flood blogging, but I think that the experience of food is about more than what's on the plate. It's more than just the organic chemistry. It's the experience. Part of the old India Mahal's charm was the divey nature of the interior. Part of Tijuana Flats' charm is the unique art deco scheme for each location. Part of Strombolis' charm was its cast of characters behind the counter, the prominently-featured brick oven, the cheap and tacky sponge painting on the bathroom walls....and a gawdy mural that the owner installed. These things all give the food character. They're all part of the experience.

When an Old Friend Gets a Facelift: Wild Cook's Indian Grill

I'll admit it, I was one of the few people that loved India Mahal. Yes, it was a dive, but that gave it character, and its character gave it a local-hole-in-the-wall feel. So I was a bit crushed when I saw that it had closed and changed ownership--a sign on the door promising that a new incarnation, Wild Cook's Indian Grill, would be opening soon. Seriously, India Mahal had chicken and lamb saag that I'd offer up a few newborns for--it was that good. I thought for sure that I'd never have it again.

First impressions are hard to shake. Last Friday, my partners and I drove by, saw that it had reopened under its new name, and stopped in. No sooner had we walked in, we were told the Friday buffet was no longer going on. Moreover, as I was met by two bubbly white women, I looked around and saw several hipsters and heard modern alternative music playing. It was like that summer vacation where your preppy friend becomes the emo-goth princess...but insists that it's legit and not just a phase.

I turned around and walked out...then fumed as I thought about a "plan B" buffet for the night.

I'm a fat man. I'm an emotional man. I love food. I own these parts of my person with no shame. So I may have gotten a bit emotional that Friday night...or it may have been my negative-number blood sugar and need for a virtual troth to correct it. Either way, I thought today that I'd make another attempt at Wild Cook's, to see if they at least had a lunch buffet.

New seating style in the back

Look, India Mahal was a dive. We all know that. As I learned, it was a repurposed filling and service station, so it was never designed to be a dining space. Lawn sheds next to the building housed most of the food. The interior had....character--if by "character" you mean christmas lights, subdued (another way of saying "extremely dark) lighting, a fusebox marked "ELECTRICAL ROOM," and an AC so poor it complimented the food by providing a humid, toasty Indian climate. Free sense-o-rama dining!

The rear dining room

The big change was the badly-needed facelift on the property. No details were left unnoticed here. Obviously, the dining area got the most attention--no more christmas lights, no more "ELECTRICAL ROOM" door, no more darkened, humid, hot room. The new paint is bright, a purple and green, and the new AC unit was keeping the hot Raleigh summer at bay. But even smaller things brought a new gaze to an old space. The front windows are now bare, and it's very easy to see where the door of the old filling station was. The hallway leading to the bathrooms is now lit, and has a huge mirror at the end, opening up the formerly claustrophobic space. The bathrooms could still use some work, but the new owner has at least started to tidy and clean it up. The booths in the rear were converted into a cushioned, open seating area. In spite of the changes, there are still little touches of India Mahal there, like the art sandwiched between the table and glass covering it.

The new buffet area

Though the kitchen was open for orders, it seems that the buffet was the main draw for lunch, and I had no problem with that. The old hot tables have been replaced with new, elegant-looking clamshell style servers--with new tags replacing the old, hastily-written ones. The cold line, with the salads and chutneys, is gone, though it appears that most of the hot line has remained the same in terms of offerings.

The TV was still on the old column that it had been mounted to before the change in owners. They were playing Indian music videos. My recent "thing" has been to sneak out and catch the Bollywood films at the local Regal Crossroads 20, so I thought that it gave the atmosphere a nice, modern touch. I don't dislike traditional Indian music, but if Wild Cook's is looking to break away from India Mahal's old image, they're better served by hipper, more modern music. It still creates atmosphere, but not the cliche.

Plate one...

Of course, my big concern was the food. I saw some new offerings (like a kidney bean curry), but I also saw a lot of the old India Mahal standbys...including lamb saag. To my surprise, most of the food was almost the same, though with a bit more heat in the spices. The breads were decent, though the naan did taste a bit overdone--not quite burned, but just on the brink of it. Though the taste of the sauces on the tandoori and butter chicken was familiar, the quality of the chicken was different. The chicken legs on the tandoori were more plump, and the firmness on the butter chicken didn't have that mix of softness that you see with frozen dark cuts of the bird. The lamb saag was the same lamb saag I'd grown to love over the years--just in a bright, well-lit, air-conditioned dining room. Then I looked up to see a familiar face--one of the old India Mahal cooks--the same slacks hiked up well over his navel. We smiled and exchanged nods.

Plate two...

But while the staple dishes were there, a few things had changed. The absence of a cold line meant that a few features of the meal had to be redone for the new buffet. The meal began with a small salad (with premade, restaurant-grade dressing) brought out from the kitchen, and as I sat down, my waitress brought out a complimentary fruit sampler and chutney. The chef had been experimenting with the chutney and wanted feedback from customers.

"Wild Chutney"

Now, I was impressed. In years of dining out, aside from the awkwardly-scripted interactions at hibachi steakhouses, I'd never had a chef get hands-on with diners like that. The chutney (a creation he was calling "Wild Chutney") was amazing--solid heat with a playful touch of mint. As I hit the buffet a second time, to sample what I couldn't the first time, the chef came out and introduced himself. Again, I was impressed. He did acknowledge that he wanted to try bringing even more flavor into the restaurant--like salad dressings in particular. I guess he's aware that diners know the dressing is from a commercial bottle, and I'm anxious to see what he'll do in the coming months. It was really refreshing to see a chef engage diners as an artist, and not just a shrouded figure in the kitchen, lording over the stove. That personal engagement really made an impression! I'd read reviews elsewhere about the "grumpy old men" who ran India Mahal, and never really noticed that. They weren't outgoing, but they were always attentive to customers' needs. However, this level engagement with the chef--both the chutney and conversation--really enhanced the meal. We talked a bit more about what he wanted to do in the coming months with the menu.

Oh, lamb saag, I thought I almost lost you...

He also mentioned that most of the old India Mahal recipes had stuck around, but he was turning up the spice on a few. I could already tell that he'd modified the heat, as my sinuses were clearing quickly after my first plate. This is not a bad thing for me.

Sadly, though, he said that the evening buffets were discontinued. As long as lunch was an option, I can live with that. He also mentioned that he wanted to give his staff a break once a week, so he was closing Sundays. Again, I can live with that.

Kulfa--buffet serving

With the cold bar gone, desserts came out of the kitchen--included with the buffet.  The rice pudding and gulab jamun were still offered. I figured that since Wild Cook's was using most of the India Mahal recipes (as well as one of the chefs), these hadn't changed. Instead, I opted for kulfi, which I had never had before. For a fat man, the portion was small--I'll admit it. But what I had was astounding--a frozen mix of pistachios and sweetened milk. I've since learned (come on, I try to do a little research here...oh fuck it, I was looking to see if I could make it at home, it was that good) that it's usually served in ramekins, but the presentation threw me a little--a small paper Dixie cup. Again, don't get me wrong, the food itself was amazing. I'm just not sure that the paper Dixie cup is the best delivery method here.

It's not that I wanted to dislike Wild Cook's when I went back today (lamb saag addiction knows no enemies, and any potential pusher is just that), I just didn't have that same sense of excitement that I had the Friday before...the one quickly dashed when it seemed that a favorite eatery had been turned into Raleigh's next-big-hipster-fad-diner. Bluntly stated, they had to work to win me over, and they did just that. The quality of the food is still there, and getting better. The dining room has been vastly improved, and a new, enthusiastic chef has brought energy to the joint. Though the location alone means that Wild Cook's will have to live in India Mahal's shadow for a few years--Wild Cook's Indian Grill took the best of its predecessor's qualities and polished the rough edges. For veterans of Raleigh's Indian restaurant scene, it's worth a revisit. For newbies, it's a good place to jump on--especially with the lunch buffet.

4/5 on Yelp

China Hibachi Buffet, or "The restaurant in which the panda has his 'Bee Girl' moment"

Once upon a time (okay fine, it was 2001…but doesn’t a decade qualify for that opening?), there was a new Asian buffet in Orlando, Florida—or at least it’s more shi-shi suburb, Altamonte Springs—named Crazy Buffet. Unlike most buffets in the central Florida area, Crazy Buffet sought to slog off the lowbrow food troth image of their contemporaries and bring an element of upscale class to the all-you-can-eat circuit. The restaurant was elegantly decorated. In the evenings, live piano music greeted diners as they waited for tables. The food was a step above the usual fare in terms of its quality. Crazy Buffet sought to bring upscale Asian dining to a market where the local Mongolian barbeque restaurants were considered high class. It featured a three station sushi bar, grilled steaks, a hibachi grill, a Mongolian barbeque station, as well as a solid spread of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese delights.

But then, tragedy struck. Crazy Buffet became a victim of its own success. What was once the well guarded secret of Orlando’s semi upper crust soon leaked its way down the socioeconomic spectrum. Pressed shirts gave way to shorts, t-shirts, and flip flops. Couples and adult gatherings gave way to hordes of children running through the buffet area. It was like that episode of The Facts of Life, where Jo opens a pizza business and eventually had to start cutting corners as her orders escalated. Demand exceeded production capabilities, and management started making cutbacks to keep the tables turning over regularly. The crazy wok (their name for the Mongolian barbeque) vanished. One of the three sushi stations was mothballed. The Chinese food selection was simplified, and the duck station found itself relegated to weekends only. Eventually, Crazy Buffet became an ordinary Chinese buffet with a sushi line. Sadly, in researching this entry, I learned that Crazy Buffet closed in August--either a victim of the economy or health inspectors, depending on the site.

My biggest regret about my move to Raleigh was the lack of an all you can eat sushi place. Don’t judge me, we’ve talked about my relationship with sushi before here. Until last week, the best I had found were some places with moderate to decent BOGO specials. Then, when talking to friends at a holiday party, one of them mentioned a new Chinese buffet in Cary with a sushi bar.

I was skeptical. I’d had Chinese buffet sushi before. In Orlando, several Chinese buffets boasted “SUSHI!” on their marquees. It was like asking Santa Claus for a Generation 1 Optimus Prime or Megatron (you remember, the one that transformed into a gun, before he was Brady-Bill-ified into a tank, truck, or whatever vehicle was available) and instead getting a box of Go-bots under the tree. And not even the good Go-bots from the TV show, like Leader-1, Turbo, Cy-kill, or Cop-turr. We’re talking the D-list of Go-bots here: Scooter. All you could do was begrudgingly take the offering while nursing a quiet inner loathing as you braced for the first school day after the holiday, when your friends returned with Cybertron’s finest…while you had the store brand equivalent of transforming robots. Yeah, the sushi on those buffets was always that disappointing. Save for one place near NCSU that only offers a very limited sushi spread on a lunch buffet, I’ve never had good sushi at a Chinese buffet. But, as I’ve said in the past, a fix is a fix.

I pulled into Hibachi China Buffet in Cary with my roommate, promising myself that I wouldn’t allow myself to get my hopes up at the thought of sushi. If I pulled a Go-bot, I pulled a Go-bot. It was almost like a clichéd scene from a movie. Through the framed glass doors, I saw crowds congregating in front of the maitre’d, obscuring my view. As I opened the doors and stepped through, the crowds parted and revealed the buffet in all its glory. I felt myself falling in love all over again.

It was like stepping into Crazy Buffet, circa 2001, all over again. All that was missing was the pretentious waterfall, the lacquered driftwood bar tables, and a piano player laboring his way through “My Heart Will Go On” for the third time that night, in hopes of perhaps fishing a tip from one of the couples waiting for a table. My Sotalol-restrained heart almost skipped a beat.

When I eat at ethnic restaurants, I like to apply what I call the “minority test” as a means of preliminarily gauging the quality of the food—minority not because of the people eating there, but because as someone who’s as non-ethnic as you can get (a fat white guy of mostly Scottish stock, with a splash of Irish), if I’m made the minority by virtue of the presence of native diners, then that says something about the quality of the food. I’ve been to many Asian buffets where the only Asian people were working there, while the diners looked like they'd just stepped out of an Old Navy commercial. The night I visited, I saw a very heavy distribution of Korean, Japanese, and Chinese families there (including a large group in the back room), so my hopes already started raising as we were led to a booth.

No "you'll shoot your eye out" here

Once placed at a booth, I surveyed the lines. It was like that scene from The Simpsons where Homer visits the land of chocolate. Everywhere I looked, I saw the familiar foods of Crazy Buffet. We passed the cold line, with the salads and desserts. We passed two hot lines. Neon signs drew attention to the hibachi grill and a noodle soup station. Then there, against the wall, the reason for the visit: the sushi bar. Looking it over, I almost fell to my knees, crying a glutton’s tears of joy. In front of me, on piles of ice, I saw trays of sushi—nigiri and rolls, both basic (like simple, single item nigiri and California rolls) and more elaborate rolls. I marveled like Ralphie pressing his nose into the department store window in the opening scene of A Christmas Story, when I overheard the chef talking to customers as they loaded their plates up.

"Think he'd roll me some eel, cream cheese, masago, and scallion?"

“If you have any special requests for sushi, please let me know.”

Special orders don't upset them...

In my years of making all-you-can-eat sushi entrepreneurs in central Florida cry over lost profits, I’ve never had any of them offer up custom rolls. Ever. With one sentence, I went from love affair with Hibachi China to “In eight hours, we can be in Vegas, in front of an Elvis impersonating justice of the peace,” and I hadn’t even put chopsticks to my mouth yet.

So of course, the sushi bar was my first stop. The nigiri is pretty standard fare, with things like shrimp, tuna, salmon, crab (or “Krab” for purists) stick, and similar offerings. The rolls seem to be left to the chef’s discretion. If you’re adept at deciphering the cross-section of rolls, it can be a fun little adventure in interpreting a chef’s creativity. For example, fried sweet potatoes were in one of the rolls I picked up. It’s random…in a good way. Also worth noting: China Hibachi solves the dilemma of the Philly roll by making both variants—the salmon-cream cheese and the crab stick-cream cheese. The actual amount of rice on the rolls was a bit sparce. Maybe I’m just used to a thicker layer of rice on the rolls, or maybe the chefs were just hurried in a dinner rush, I’m not sure. In spite of the waifish appearance of my rolls, the sushi hit its mark for taste—the fish was fresh and the rice was neither over nor under seasoned. I’m working on a wish list of things to see if the chefs will make for me next time as I write this.

My next stop was the noodle station. China Hibachi offers four types of noodles served with a variety of broths, meats, and vegetables. I do have to admit that my impaired hearing (thanks mostly to an adolescence and twenties surgically attached to a personal stereo) made it a bit difficult to hear the chef, so I ended up doing some pointing and gesturing in between rounds of “what?” but I wound up with a bowl of shrimp udon after a few minutes. The udon was thick and perfectly firm—neither mushy now chewy. The broth had a nice spicy heat to it that stayed in my mouth for a few minutes after.

The hibachi station was more of the offspring of a hibachi grill and Mongolian barbeque—with a selection of meats, vegetables, starches, and sauces that are put into a bowl and handed off to a chef for cooking. The hibachi chicken plate I assembled was okay, but it was nothing spectacular.

The hot station offers up a variety of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean dishes. Because I was close to full, I sampled a few stand-bys, to gauge them against other places. The coconut shrimp was sweet and well cooked, neither drowned in sauce nor soggy. The sesame chicken was some of the best I’ve had in ages—with large, meaty chunks of meat in a tangy sauce. Usually, the meat in dishes like orange, sesame, or General Tso’s chicken is too heavily fried when I have them on a buffet, some places almost fried to dryness. The sesame chicken at China Hibachi was perfectly cut and prepared. Finally, the seafood delight (shrimp and crab stick with vegetables, in a brown sauce) was on par with what I’ve had in the past—passable, but there was nothing that made it stand out.

On one of the hot stations sat the added bonus for the weekend—dim sum. There were eight bamboo steamers, each with a small card in front of it. Some of the dishes were familiar, like shumai dumplings, shrimp dumplings, shrimp rice (served in leaf wrapper), while others were a bit more exotic. For example, when I saw the steamer marked “Phoenix Claws,” I obviously wasn’t expecting parts from a mythological critter, but I also wasn’t expecting chicken feet.

The desserts were standard fare—eight flavors of hard serve ice cream with the almost ubiquitous assortment of pastries: the same cream puffs, Napoleon, cream cakes, and other pastries I’ve mentioned in the past.

I’m not hiding my bias here. China Hibachi is a restaurant I’ll go to for the sushi and consider the rest of the buffet as either filler or bait to convince my sushi-phobic friends to join me. The sushi is freshly prepared and tastes amazing. The hot food has highs and lows, but no low enough to make me reconsider it. The desserts, tragically, are the same desserts that I’ve seen at cheaper buffets.  I think I'm just going to start calling them "Chinese Mafia" desserts, in honor of my former roommate. Honestly, I’d love to know where the distributor of these desserts come from. I’ve seen them from Florida to Michigan. The restaurant has promise and potential. The fact that it was packed the night I visited it suggests that it’s got a prosperous future ahead of it. However, I’m reminded about the cautionary tale of Crazy Buffet, which used a near identical model to build a successful business on…then proceeded to cut corners and quality until it was a shadow of its former self and eventually collapsed under its own success. China Hibachi has established a solid mark of quality for buffets in Cary, and I’m hoping that they strive to keep it high in the months and years to come.

Akari Express, the C student of NCSU's sushi scene

Rice, seaweed...goldfish? Why not?

My entry into sushi culture was far from ceremonious. If anything, it bordered on disastrous instead.  In the spring of 1987, my uncle’s frequent flying had earned him a free trip to Hawaii, which he gave to my father.  Never one to deny his sons the chance to experience America (which just conveniently put him on the beaches as well), he bought tickets for my younger brother and I, and we soon found ourselves in the islands.  I’m not a big fan of sun, surf, and sand.  Though I had a physique that could make many a marine mammal jealous, I was never big on baking myself on a large towel in between rounds of saltwater marinatings.  So instead, I wandered around the various shopping districts, where I was amazed at the unique fusion of American and Japanese cultures.  In particular, I was obsessed with the ubiquitous presence of sushi in the area.  Up to that point in my life, my sole experience with sushi was the scene in The Breakfast Club where a defiant Molly Ringwald defends her lunch choice to Judd Nelson: “You won’t accept a guy’s tongue in your mouth, and you’re gonna eat that?“  It was more of a food daredevil experiment, really.  I wanted to see if I could eat it and get a rise from my father and brother, who registered their disgust as soon as they saw their first plastic sushi model at the first Japanese food stand we passed.  I’ve never been one to give up a chance to eat something for attention.  One of my great thanks in life is that during my undergraduate years, none of my friends had goldfish around when we drank.  Between the intoxication and my John Blutarskyesque appetite, yeah, I’d have likely gone there…

Small, green, and candy like...what could go wrong?

Days of denials passed, as my father and brother refused to indulge my requests to stop at a restaurant wherein I might get my first fix.  Then finally, we stopped in a buffet for dinner, and there on the cold bar was a plate of sushi.  After I confessed my virginity, the waitress was happy to help me.  She explained each piece as she put it on the plate, and then she put a lump of salmon-colored slices and a small green pellet on the plate.  I returned to the table, my father and sibling both staring with a combination of curiosity and revulsion.  Remembering Ringwald’s character, I poured soy sauce over each piece, grabbed my chopsticks, and adeptly put the first piece between them.  With each piece, I announced the contents and ate it, to my collected family’s disgust.  Then finished, I began to work on the salmon colored slices.  Spicy and sweet—must have been an edible, post sushi digestif, I rationed.  So then, I put the green ball in my chopsticks (another post-sushi digestif, I thought) and drew it to my mouth.

If my positive reviews in the preceding minutes had at all broken down my father and brother’s reluctance to sushi, the next thirty seconds would forever scar and scare them away from it.  I mashed the green ball between my tongue and the roof of my mouth and wrinkled my face as I proceeded to gasp and reach for any fluid in a glass—my water, my soda, my brother’s water and soda, my father’s water and soda—I didn’t care.  In those moments, my only concern was in addressing the oral Chernobyl I was experiencing.  Wasabi, the waitress called it when she came by moments later, with a convenient pitcher of water.  To this day, I believe that the entire crew of the restaurant was watching behind a curtain somewhere, snickering as money changed hands in a bet as to whether or not I’d eat it.  Swing over to Waiter Rant.  Restaurateurs, cooks, and waitstaff can be dicks like that, especially with tourists.

But I was always the resilient fat kid, never one to retreat in the face of failure.  When I fell off my bike, I got back on it and rode again.  When a middle school guidance counselor told me I was too dumb for college, I fought my way through high school, an undergraduate degree, a masters degree, and a doctoral program (and you thought you were obsessive?) just to prove myself in my mind.  While dating, I went through enough evil exes to make a bisexual  Scott Pilgrim sequel before I found the right partner.  Never quit, never retreat.  So in the years that followed my wasabi-fueled indoctrination into sushi culture, I continued to sample it where and when I could.

Being just a bit gluttonous, I’ve never been much of a food snob.  My rule (usually) is that if something won’t kill me, I’ll at least try it.  Some of my college kitchen creations stand testament to that.  When you’ve earned the title “Iron Chef Ramen,” it becomes a badge of honor to the degree of things you’ll create to consume.  However, having had some truly bad sushi in my past, I do harbor a few prejudices here and there when it comes time to break out the chopsticks.   The biggest and most egregious offenders seem to be the restaurants that offer sushi as an add-on to another menu—like the legions of C-grade Chinese buffets that began putting sloppily-slapped sushi on cold lines across the country in the last 90s and early 00’s.  Either the rice was poorly prepared, or the fish itself bordered on rancid.

I became aware of Akari Express while I was playing on the Urbanspoon app one afternoon.  It was near one of my part time jobs, and fit my one-star criteria, so I stopped in for a late lunch (or early dinner…whichever category 3:30pm falls in to) one day in between gigs.  Akari Express seems to have been born Miyako Express and underwent a small identity crisis at some point in the recent past, thus the new name.  It’s in the upper level of a strip mall across the street from NCSU—a bit hard to find the first time there.  The restaurant itself is small and simply decorated, with just a few banners and other knick knacks to provide a setting.  But let’s be honest—with one-star Japanese, most people aren’t there for lacquered fixtures and elaborate décor.   

The menu is simple—barely large enough to cover the front of a standard piece of paper, a small assortment of: sushi, yaki soba, tempura, udon, teppanyaki, and a few side items.  Most of the seating consists of tables, though the presence of barstools in front of the sushi station suggests that patrons could sit there for a more traditional experience.

I was a bit taken back by the pricing on the sushi. It seemed a bit higher than average, probably padded to accommodate for the BOGO specials throughout the week, allowing for the illusion of getting a deal.  Moreover, it seemed that everything on the menu was ala carte.  Salad?  Separate.  Soup?  Separate?  There was a single sushi combo special (a Califormia roll and a Geisha roll), but there was nothing beyond that for thrifty customers, much less a lunch crowd.  My first impression with the staff wasn’t stellar either.  The woman who took my order was a bit brusque when I asked some questions.  She seemed impatient and standoffish, as if I was taking her away from the television behind me.  Not one to want to anger the person who was likely making at least part of my meal, I quickly placed my order, and looked around the restaurant while I waited for my food to arrive, which took about ten minutes.

Both the miso soup and salad arrived in Styrofoam containers.  The soup was hot and had a nice flavor, unmarred by the rancid, oily taste that sometimes hinders miso.  The salad, however, was disappointing.  The greens were fresh, but the dressing had no real flavor to it—no sweetness, no ginger tartness, nothing.  It was a faintly-flavored pulp that lubricated the otherwise dry greens.  Given that I was paying ala carte pricing, I expected something better—or at least enough taste to warrant not bundling it in with a meal and charging $1.99 as a side.  Even grocery store ginger dressing has more flavor than Akari’s ginger dressing.

The sushi was solid, in terms of taste.  The rice grains had a faint hint of vinegar and stuck together well—neither falling apart on the chopstick nor feeling like a rice brick on the mouth.  Trying to get some variety in the meal, I opted for the sole sushi special—the California roll and Geisha roll.  The California roll was as generic as every California roll I’d had in the twenty-three years before.  The only way to mess this roll up is with aged ingredients.  Fortunately, the crab stick was fresh, and the avocado had a nice green color to it.  Safe, generic sushi, that California roll, ordinary in every way. But at least it was a good benchmark of the freshness of the food.  The Philly roll (this one being the salmon-crème cheese variety, and not its crabstick cousin) was also plain and ordinary.  For $6.50, I expect more—either a larger roll (instead of the smaller, inside-out roll) with a bit more filling or a little something extra.  Even sesame seeds would have justified the pricing more.

The Geisha roll was the unique roll I chose for the meal.  Each restaurant has a few signature rolls, and I try to find something to break out of the spread of nigiri and rolls common to every place.  Akari Express has two, the NC State Roll and the Geisha.  The Geisha roll combines tuna, masago (flying fish roe—that’s eggs to the initianated), scallion, sesame seed, in a fried roll, topped with an eel sauce, spicy sauce, and butter sauce.  In spite of its almost overwhelming ingredient list, the roll delivered, both with a nice blend of textures and flavors.  The deep frying left the roll crisp on the breading but still soft inside. The heat from the spicy sauce stayed with me for several minutes after.

The sushi is good, in that it’s mostly a smattering of safe offerings that will appeal to the most mainstream of diners.  Unfortunately, it’s also expensive for the caliber of food served up.  Ordinary rolls that would cost $4 elsewhere run up to $6.50 at Akari Express, and taste exactly the same as the $4 roll.  The ala carte menu makes a one star meal quickly inflate to two star territory. They seem to be taking advantage of their collegiate proximity and pricing for car-locked students.  The homogeneity of the menu was broken up by two unique sushi rolls, which seem to be the only the only thing that makes Akari Express stand out from its competitors.  The signature roll I had was a nice stand out, but can’t justify the pricy nature of the food itself.  Perhaps if Akari rebrands itself again to try and begin with a fresh public image, they’ll either think about lowering their prices for the caliber of their menu or raising the menu’s quality to reflect the pricing. 

China Queen, or the Chinese Buffet-Chinese Mafia Connection?

Years ago, a former roommate of mine theorized that most Chinese buffet restaurants were run by the Chinese mafia. We’d been on a tour of several local buffets in the central Florida area when he looked up from his plate with the same gaze of epiphany that gave birth to Facebook, Pokemon, lint rollers, and the Macarena. He noted that most of the restaurants we’d been to seemed to have identical interior décor, identical menus, and even identical desserts—the same spread of chocolate-drizzled éclairs, macaroons, orange or green tea cakes, and dried-out Napoleon squares. That had to be the only explanation in his mind—the Chinese mafia had infiltrated the US through our biggest weakness: our love for unlimited quantities of sweet and sour pork, peel and eat shrimp, and soft serve ice cream sundaes with topping bars. What was scary was that ever since that conversation, I’ve cast a suspicious eye on any Chinese buffet I’ve been to—whether in Florida, Michigan, or here in the Triangle. What’s scarier is that the waterfall paintings, menu pictures, and even the dessert spread is almost always identical from place to place to place. The homogeneity is almost McDonalds-esque.

That doesn’t mean the food’s identical in quality from buffet to buffet, though. The Chinese buffet is the fat guy’s bar. It’s the one place where we can go, hide in a corner, and drown our stresses and sorrows in a sea of fried meats, salted carbohydrates, and soggy vegetables and feel no shame, as everyone else in the restaurant has mass consumption on the brain as well. It’s like that moment in Blind Melon’s “No Rain” video, where the little, dejected Bee Girl sees a welcoming gate in a field, with a troupe of dancing bee people on the other side, where she cavorts and finally finds her place in life. At a Chinese buffet, we’re all kindred spirits in gluttony, chubby bee people dancing together in a field of steam tables and MSG harmony…so long as you don’t mind having to hip check someone who tries to snatch the last egg roll when you’re reaching for it. And much like the Bee Girl, most of us have to search before we find “our” buffet—the place we don’t mind bellying up to. When I moved here, I tried to find a few places, and really didn’t find one that jived with me. It was the classic Goldilocks effect: too far, too expensive, too __________.

So when I first got the Urbanspoon app, I locked in west Raleigh and did some spinning, to get a feel for the area. China Queen kept coming up in the Chinese category. Then I learned that they were a buffet. A visit was destiny.  After all, having survived not one, but two trips to Raleigh's Crystal Palace (I won't bother going there again just to get fodder for an entry. I'll save us both the time: it's ghastly. Bad food, obnoxious crowds, and a wait staff that could take lessons on people skills from the DMV. Yes, it's an extreme buffet...extremely bad), I figured that I had nothing to lose, and might find the buffet that had thus far been elusive in the area.

It looks like China Queen used to offer the buffet for both lunch and dinner, but has since cut it back to lunch hours only. Paper covers up information about what used to be the evening buffet, and vinyl stickering on the door advises customers that the lunch buffet ends at 3:00pm. The restaurant looks like two strip mall stalls joined together with a door frames. One side houses the takeaway business, with a few tables for people to wait at, and the other side houses the dining room and the buffet. I took a booth, placed my food order, and went to investigate China Queen’s offerings.

True to my roommate’s theory, CQ’s buffet looked like it could have been one of a number of Chinese buffets from my past. The spread of food was almost identical—the expected collection of soups, carbohydrates, meats, with side dishes, and the obligatory peel and eat shrimp. I grabbed a plate and began to load up. When I try a new Chinese place—buffet or not—I always administer two tests on the overall quality of the food: the General Tso’s test and the hot and sour soup test. Just because the items are identical, that doesn’t mean the preparation quality is. So I take two favorite items and use them as a common base line against which I can compare the new restaurant.

For most Chinese places, General Tso’s chicken is a piece of fried chicken briefly sautéed in a spicy ginger-soy sauce. I’ve noticed that the same fried chicken stock can also become sesame chicken or orange chicken as well—it’s just a question of the sauce that the fried meat is sautéed in. I guess this is one of the tradeoffs for fast-food or buffet Chinese food—the versatility that can allow a chef to replenish supplies on the steam tables quickly. I don’t like my General Tso’s to be blazingly hot, but I do like a little heat on the meat. It’s always tragic when those red pepper pieces are at best a decoration. Also, a little steamed broccoli is a must—even if it’s one or two pieces to add a splash of color. CQ fell short on the General Tso’s test. The meat had no notable spicing on it—just a piece of orange chicken tinted brown from soy sauce. The pieces of meat were a bit too small for the fry time—making them tough and chewy before going in to the second phase of cooking. General Tso’s chicken jerky, I guess. The lack of broccoli doomed the dish. It’s not that it was bad. Instead, it was average. There was nothing remotely special or redeeming about the General Tso’s chicken.

Conversely, the hot and sour soup was solid. It hadn’t been on the line long enough to get a skin or otherwise thicken. The blend of broth, tofu, sliced mushrooms, and wood ear fungus played well against one another, with just enough spicing to leave some heat in the mouth after swallowing. It passed its test.

The other hot food I chose was average at best. It wasn’t that it was bad—there were just no entries that stood out, no “wow” items. The lo mein and fried dumplings were both a bit dry, probably having sat out under the heat lamps for too long. The egg roll was obviously just a premade roll that was reheated. And there, at the end of the cold bar, my Chinese mafia desserts—the same puff pastry, orange cake, and Napoleon that I’d seen at buffets across the eastern US for years.

While the hot food was average buffet fare, the sushi was amazing. I’ve had more than my fair share of Chinese buffet sushi, and I can honestly say that most of it was barely passable—something quickly put together with instructions from a book at best. For most Chinese buffets, sushi is one more thing to put on the buffet line to justify the “super” or “mega” title that so many are using these days. I’ll openly admit that I was braced for disappointment when I brought the plate back to my table, and I’ll also openly admit that the sushi was the turn that really started to make the visit worthwhile. At China Queen, the sushi was Japanese restaurant quality—perfectly prepared. The big disappointment is that the spread of sushi is small, three types of rolls that I’ve seen—a veggie roll, a California roll, and a shrimp tempura roll. Honestly, CQ has a great opportunity to do a sushi roll buffet and really carve out a niche in the Triangle, if they were up to it—add about six or seven more varieties of rolls, dish up miso soup and a nice ginger-dressing salad, and put on a sushi buffet. As far as I know, that’s one thing the Triangle is painfully lacking right now (EDIT: Not anymore, a recent entry in Cary has filled that void). If I didn’t feel guilty about clearing the plates out (hey, I’m a fat guy with a conscience at the buffet), I seriously could have had the chef making rolls for an hour.

A trip to a Chinese buffet should be like a visit with an old friend, with all the familiarity and acquaintance of any long-standing relationship. As I thought about my former roommate’s Chinese mafia analogy, I started to realize that’s what made them so comforting—the sheer homogeneity to them these days. Now admittedly, my first relationship with a buffet was a special one—an incredible restaurant in Tallahassee whose General Tso’s chicken set the bar for all others. But that’s the fodder for another entry. It seems that every Chinese place I’ve been to since has looked the same, from the menu, to the decorations, to the buffet desserts. The only thing that changes is how a chef might make the food itself. China Queen’s hot buffet line is painfully average, not standing out in any way, and finding itself easily outclassed by the sushi spread on the cold line. But that doesn’t mean that it’s bad. I mean, not everyone gets to be an astronaut, right? China Queen’s lunch buffet is as much an offering of fifty-item comfort food as the most maternally created meatloaf. Just because I was unimpressed with the General Tso’s chicken (then again, can anyone truly top our first love anyhow?), it didn’t mean that there were enough items on the like to make up for the disappointment. Unfortunately, though, it does mean that I’m back to looking in the triangle for my own “Bee Girl” moment with a local Chinese buffet.

Hibachi Xpress: the tastes of a hibachi steakhouse without the fire and flying knives...

When I was twelve, my father seeded my love for Japanese food (which led to my sushi-curiosity which I’ll elaborate upon another time) by taking our family to a Detroit-area hibachi steakhouse called Kyoto.  My younger brother and grandmother shared an adjoining birthday, so the extended family tended to gather in mid-November to celebrate both.  Kyoto was still relatively new then, so the concept of hibachi style dining was new to all of us, save for my father, who found the restaurant.  Since we were a large group, we were spared the awkwardness of having to sit with strangers, but the show was impressive.  Flashbulbs popped (remember, kids, this was 1984) as the chefs flung food and knives, and indulged their own inner Beavis and Buttheads with alcohol and lighters on the grill.  At twelve, you have to take the entertainment you can get—and if it involves people playing with fire for you, all the better.

Don’t get me wrong, I love hibachi cooking, but the showy aspect of it gets tiring after a while.  I mean how many onion volcanoes can one see before the applause becomes less than genuine?  How many times can a cheeky chef fling cooked shrimps at the stuffiest person at the dining table (not that I’m at all bitter about it after all those years, mind you) before it becomes predictable?  A big portion of the hibachi dining experience (and cost at the end of the meal) is the show itself.  Sometimes, you just want the damned food…without the clang of knives on a table, hot flashes, and the astronomical check that follows it.

Hibachi Xpress is a Raleigh-based chain with several stores in the surrounding areas.  I’d been to the one in Apex this past June, and found myself impressed with the food, but left feeling a bit…dismayed by the store’s condition, a run down and grungy space in a strip mall.  However, after spinning the Urbanspoon app the other night, I saw an impassioned plea from the owner, who was responding to his critics and asking for a second chance.  As a fat guy and armchair glutton, who was I to deny such a heartfelt appeal…especially when I saw their prices?  The fact that their Cary location was also two minutes from home certainly played in their favor.

The Cary location is in strip mall adjacent to the Crossroads shopping center.  A stark contrast to its Apex counterpart, the Cary store is elegantly and tastefully decorated, with several LCD televisions (though most were showing ads for local businesses), tiled floors, vinyl tablecloths, and pagoda-styled moldings, with a dominant earth tone color scheme.  Yellowed lighting softens the mood, but regretfully doesn’t compliment the browns and reds in the store.  In spite of its elevated presentation, Hibachi Xpress is still a fast-food style restaurant.  Orders are placed at the front counter, prepared behind the glassed-in grill area, and set out for customer pickup.  Service items are disposable—with plastic utensils, paper sauce cups, pumps that dispense the various sauces, and a self-service soda fountain, making the restaurant a bizarre nexus of one star dining in a two or three star setting.

The hibachi chicken (which was done a great injustice by the yellow mood lighting) was well prepared—blending carrots, mushrooms, zucchini, and broccoli with the meat.  As should be expected with hibachi, there was a nice hint of sesame, soy sauce, and butter in the dish, which played into the ginger sauce.  Unfortunately, the ginger sauce itself was watery—with no actual ginger pulp.  I suspect that the pumps that the management chose to dispense sauce may have unintentionally filtered out the actual ginger.  They had no problem with the white sauce, but the ginger was tough to get out when I pushed on the knob.  Again, nothing wrong with the actual flavor, just not the expected texture for the sauce.  The fried rice was a bit heavy and greasy.  The flavors were solid, but I’d have liked something a bit lighter and fluffier for the actual texture.

Philly Roll

I’m seeing an irony so far in writing this blog—the named or signature dish of a restaurant may not be the best.  Hibachi Xpress is no exception here.  While the hibachi chicken was decent, the sushi shone.  Hand rolled to order, H-X so far has the best bargain on sushi that I’ve seen in the Triangle area.  I’ve been to a few places in the last year with a BOGO (buy one, get one…either free or half off) special, but for non-special pricing, H-X has the best quality sushi for the price that I’ve seen in the area.  The menu has three grades of rolls, priced at $3 (vegetable rolls), $4 (veggie-meat rolls like the California, Philly, and Orange roll), and $7.75 for the higher-end rolls like Dragon rolls and Spider rolls.  Again, everything is rolled fresh to order.  In my case, I ordered an Orange roll and a Philly roll.

Orange Roll

The great joy (and sometimes annoyance) with sushi is that not every chef presents the rolls with the same ingredients.  Some rolls (like the California roll, for example) are pretty standard so far as their ingredients go, while the waters are a bit murkier with the contents of others.  Of course, the real fun is finding the various house specialty rolls at each restaurant—like the Seminole Roll at Kitcho, the Tallahassee restaurant where I first really had a chance to eat sushi on a regular basis.   H-X’s offerings seem to be standard fare for a sushi menu, regretfully. I saw no sign of specialty rolls, so I chose a few old favorites. The Orange roll is made up of avocado, crab stick, and cucumber, covered with flying fish roe.  The Philly roll is a bit more controversial in composition.  When I was an undergrad student in Tallahassee, the local restaurants made Philly rolls with only crab stick and cream cheese.  Elsewhere, the Philly roll blends salmon and cream cheese.  H-X presents their own take on it, blending crab stick, cream cheese, and avocado.  The rice is well prepared, neither too loose nor too moist.

Walking into Hibachi Xpress, it’s almost hard to remember that it’s a one-star fast food place.  The staff is both fast and friendly.  When the register rush died down, the woman working the register circulated around the tables, checking up on customers—not something one expects from one-star dining.  The décor is stylishly elegant, themed, but not obnoxiously so.  Unfortunately, the yellow lighting doesn’t compliment the earth tone-heavy color scheme.  H-X blends chic décor with self-service convenience and food that’s a solid substitute for the hibachi dining experience, with the sushi posing a solid threat to the star attraction.