By Elizabeth Gillis
Staff Writer

When first visiting China Buffet, located on 203 Plain Street in Lowell, the outside might look about as interesting as a shoe box, but the inside is a whole nother story. The service is fantastic not having to wait though it was somewhat crowded, and the waiters were personable and friendly. From the classy chandelier hanging on the ceiling to the quite Chinese music playing in the background, it was easy to see that this wasn’t just any ordinary restaurant.

There was food styles from Japan, all the way to the many different Chinese provinces like Szechuan, and Hunan. The Buffet set up was fairly basic consisting of three buffet lines to chose from, and also included a sushi bar that had the basic California rolls among other types of sushi.

Some food choices that were sampled were ham chow mien, a seafood combo, honey chicken, green beans, an assortment of sushi, and finished off with some vanilla ice cream.

The chow mien consisted of clear noodles, along with some ham and veggie bits mixed in. The appearance was somewhat bland looking, but what it didn’t have in color was compensated in flavor which was slightly sweet and the noodles had an interesting texture.

Next up was the seafood combo; for those who appreciate a good calamari will definitely enjoy this side dish. It was mainly made up of calamari but also had shrimp pieces mixed in. The overall flavor was smooth and had a slightly salty taste, and had a pleasant looking appearance.

Personally, I’m not much of a veggie person, but there was something about the string beans that made it one of my favorite pieces to sample. The string beans were blended in a modest amount of a debatable salty/ sweet sauce which produced an interesting flavor making them utterly delicious.

Both the sushi and honey chicken were okay; I liked how the sushi had a proper ratio of rice to filling because under most circumstances restaurants tend to make them have more rice than actual fillings. The honey chicken had a bright cheerful orange coloring, but the downside to this dish is that the chicken was completely drenched in sauce so it felt almost like eating the flavoring alone, and not really being able to taste the chicken itself.

For drinks, there were a wide variety of options like tea, sodas, bubble tea, etc., and there were roughly six types of ice creams to select from. The green tea was not too hot, and the cookies and cream ice cream was a nice way to end the meal.

As a whole China Buffet had excellent service, did the job of satisfying the hunger pains, and was a comfortable and roomy place to go out to eat.