Happy Birthday at Happy Buffet - Part 1
Milpitas, CA
It's Mama Noodleslinger's birthday today but we celebrated yesterday at Happy Buffet in Milpitas, CA. Happy Buffet is located in the former Kowloon restaurant space in Milpitas Shopping Center (Calaveras @ S. Abbott). See, Mama NS loves buffets and she had wanted to do either 1) hot-pot 2) Korean BBQ or 3) buffet. After consulting the Friday Sing Tao and perusing the numerous brightly colored ads, she selected Happy Buffet. Okay, the gist is, this was HER choice!
Mom, Dad, and I zipped down to Milpitas, just in time to beat the lunch rush. The weekend lunch buffet cost $9.95 per person...not too terribly pricey, especially for a weekend. We were seated quickly in a booth on the far right wall. Just a note, the booths have really weak backs. Everytime someone sat down in the booth behind me, I was jostled nearly into my food. Grr...
No photos (grubby hands), but I was surprised at the selection and quality of food - not too shabby! A huge plus is that they replenish the food quickly and come out with other dishes when something is out. Mom had went back for phoenix claws (aka chicken feet) but they were replaced with lotus leaf wrapped sticky rice and chicken (loh mai gai). Their dim sum selection is not huge, but fresh and they had offal (ngau zhaap)!!! (I *heart* organs) I don't think I've ever seen a clay crock of braised offal at a Chinese buffet before - rad!
From what I can recall (what I tried is italicized):
Salad bar: Strawberries, bananas in a strawberry sauce, honeydew, orange sections, pineapply salady thing, lettuce, pickled daikon and carrots, edamame, hard boiled egg slices
Cold appetizers: Peanuts (Taiwanese-like?), seaweed, beef tendon, cold tripe (tendon replacement), kimchi, marinated and sauteed squid tentacles
Desserts: Mango mousse cake, other assorted cakes, soft serve vanilla ice cream
Sushi: California roll, seaweed salad and cucumber roll, spicy tuna roll, ginger and cucumber roll, inari, another type of CA roll but with a stick of surimi
Hawaiian: BBQ pork, BBQ chicken on skewers, BBQ fish (possibly mackerel?)
Dim sum: Chicken feet, chive steam bun, lotus wrapped sticky rice and chicken, siu mai, offal, eggplant, foil-wrapped chicken
Soups: Hot and sour, fishball, and something else (Mom thought it was some sort of cloud ear [wun yee] soup)
For the kids: Pizza (pepperoni), fries
Hot food: Greens (you choy and gai choy), General Tsao's chicken or sesame chicken, deep fried stuffed tofu, fried rice, chow mein, garlic clams, pig knuckles, steamed sole, stir-fried crab, cheese covered mussels, fried chicken (kind of like za zee gai), battered/coated fried fish
My favorites: Hawaiian BBQ chicken, Hawaiian BBQ fish (bony, but flavorful), the fried chicken, fried fish (loved the cornmeal like batter and hot moist fish), seaweed, beef tendon, soft serve vanilla ice cream, seaweed and cuke roll, honeydew, offal (mmm...honeycomb tripe), book tripe, and the awesome squid tentacles, lotus wrapped sticky rice and chicken
My least favorites: Hawaiian BBQ pork (what is this, pork jerky?!), foil wrapped chicken (chicken mash - bleh)
For $9.95 per person, I thought it was pretty good for a Chinese buffet. I was pleasantly surprised by the selection and with the quality of most of the items. Oh, and they are very generous with napkins, unlike other Chinese buffets. =D
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Mom selected a mango/kiwi mousse cake ($16.95) from Sheng Kee on Irving St. in San Francisco. Before I could capture a shot of the cake, she had hacked it apart. =(
I'm not a huge fan of Sheng Kee anymore. I just feel their mousse cake quality has declined in recent years as well as the care in the decorations (this photo is post surgery so it's not indicative). Also, there's not much cake in the mousse cakes. I still think they make a nice sponge cake and a nice quarter-sheet mixed fruit cake for $29.95.
The mango mousse was nice and fragrant but didn't taste of real mangoes. The kiwi mousse (light green) had barely any non-kiwifruit like flavor, the chocolate sponge layer had no chocolate flavor, and there wasn't much white sponge cake to taste. Overall (w/o breakdown): 7/10. Light but meh.
It's Mama Noodleslinger's birthday today but we celebrated yesterday at Happy Buffet in Milpitas, CA. Happy Buffet is located in the former Kowloon restaurant space in Milpitas Shopping Center (Calaveras @ S. Abbott). See, Mama NS loves buffets and she had wanted to do either 1) hot-pot 2) Korean BBQ or 3) buffet. After consulting the Friday Sing Tao and perusing the numerous brightly colored ads, she selected Happy Buffet. Okay, the gist is, this was HER choice!
Mom, Dad, and I zipped down to Milpitas, just in time to beat the lunch rush. The weekend lunch buffet cost $9.95 per person...not too terribly pricey, especially for a weekend. We were seated quickly in a booth on the far right wall. Just a note, the booths have really weak backs. Everytime someone sat down in the booth behind me, I was jostled nearly into my food. Grr...
No photos (grubby hands), but I was surprised at the selection and quality of food - not too shabby! A huge plus is that they replenish the food quickly and come out with other dishes when something is out. Mom had went back for phoenix claws (aka chicken feet) but they were replaced with lotus leaf wrapped sticky rice and chicken (loh mai gai). Their dim sum selection is not huge, but fresh and they had offal (ngau zhaap)!!! (I *heart* organs) I don't think I've ever seen a clay crock of braised offal at a Chinese buffet before - rad!
From what I can recall (what I tried is italicized):
Salad bar: Strawberries, bananas in a strawberry sauce, honeydew, orange sections, pineapply salady thing, lettuce, pickled daikon and carrots, edamame, hard boiled egg slices
Cold appetizers: Peanuts (Taiwanese-like?), seaweed, beef tendon, cold tripe (tendon replacement), kimchi, marinated and sauteed squid tentacles
Desserts: Mango mousse cake, other assorted cakes, soft serve vanilla ice cream
Sushi: California roll, seaweed salad and cucumber roll, spicy tuna roll, ginger and cucumber roll, inari, another type of CA roll but with a stick of surimi
Hawaiian: BBQ pork, BBQ chicken on skewers, BBQ fish (possibly mackerel?)
Dim sum: Chicken feet, chive steam bun, lotus wrapped sticky rice and chicken, siu mai, offal, eggplant, foil-wrapped chicken
Soups: Hot and sour, fishball, and something else (Mom thought it was some sort of cloud ear [wun yee] soup)
For the kids: Pizza (pepperoni), fries
Hot food: Greens (you choy and gai choy), General Tsao's chicken or sesame chicken, deep fried stuffed tofu, fried rice, chow mein, garlic clams, pig knuckles, steamed sole, stir-fried crab, cheese covered mussels, fried chicken (kind of like za zee gai), battered/coated fried fish
My favorites: Hawaiian BBQ chicken, Hawaiian BBQ fish (bony, but flavorful), the fried chicken, fried fish (loved the cornmeal like batter and hot moist fish), seaweed, beef tendon, soft serve vanilla ice cream, seaweed and cuke roll, honeydew, offal (mmm...honeycomb tripe), book tripe, and the awesome squid tentacles, lotus wrapped sticky rice and chicken
My least favorites: Hawaiian BBQ pork (what is this, pork jerky?!), foil wrapped chicken (chicken mash - bleh)
For $9.95 per person, I thought it was pretty good for a Chinese buffet. I was pleasantly surprised by the selection and with the quality of most of the items. Oh, and they are very generous with napkins, unlike other Chinese buffets. =D
_________________________________________________________________________
Mom selected a mango/kiwi mousse cake ($16.95) from Sheng Kee on Irving St. in San Francisco. Before I could capture a shot of the cake, she had hacked it apart. =(
I'm not a huge fan of Sheng Kee anymore. I just feel their mousse cake quality has declined in recent years as well as the care in the decorations (this photo is post surgery so it's not indicative). Also, there's not much cake in the mousse cakes. I still think they make a nice sponge cake and a nice quarter-sheet mixed fruit cake for $29.95.
The mango mousse was nice and fragrant but didn't taste of real mangoes. The kiwi mousse (light green) had barely any non-kiwifruit like flavor, the chocolate sponge layer had no chocolate flavor, and there wasn't much white sponge cake to taste. Overall (w/o breakdown): 7/10. Light but meh.
posted by Manda at
3/19/2006 05:57:00 PM
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