Great food and values at local Asian buffets

Max Jacobson

Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2001 | 8:39 a.m.

Asian food lovers can rejoice in a selection of buffets centering on the varied foods of that continent. What's more, these prices are terrific.

Most local Asian buffets serve the cuisine of China, but there are surprises. One is Makino, a terrific Japanese buffet at 3965 S. Decatur Blvd., described last month in a piece on sushi. Another is a wonderful place called Tipanan Sa Vegas, a Filipino buffet written about in this story.

China Star

2590 S. Maryland Pkwy.

The new China Star bills itself as a "super buffet," and it ain't just whistling Dixie. There are four huge stations in this giant buffet, each one separated into around 16 bins. Add it up, and it makes around 64 dishes to choose from. It's like three or four Panda Express restaurants rolled into one.

The variety here is staggering, and the quality of the cooking relatively high. The only caveat is the kitchen's tendency to get a little carried away with oil in dishes prepared in the wok.

The lunch dim sum, especially the pork-filled noodle wrappers called siu mai, and the crisp, meat-filled fried won tons are most impressive. So are the homey soups, such as the nice hot and sour stocked with lots of mushrooms and tofu.

There are a half-dozen varieties of fresh fruit, and several good stir frys to choose from, two of the best being the house special meatballs, which are fine, fatty pork meatballs with a hint of chili, and an eccentric take on kung pao chicken, with cashews standing in for peanuts. A fried food station contains passable deep-fried egg rolls, plus the more American addition of onion rings and tater tots.

The buffet is also a chicken lover's dream. There are spicy Buffalo-style wings, satay (white meat chicken served char-broiled on wooden skewers with a thick peanut sauce), and around six chicken stir frys to choose from. For dessert, there is a nice rice pudding, chocolate pudding and a number of cakes. Such a deal.

Lunch buffet is from 11:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., $5.39 per person; dinner buffet from 4:30-9:30 p.m., $7.39 per person.

Tipanan Sa Vegas

2202 W. Charleston Blvd.

Tipanan means "meeting place" in Tagalog, the main language of the Philippines, and so this spotlessly clean, wood-paneled little place is for the many people in the Las Vegas Filipino community. The buffet is small but many of the dishes, which change daily, are homey and delicious.

This is a most unpretentious place to dine, where you will drink water out of plastic cups. Well, what did you expect at these prices? At the beginning of the buffet line are fried and steamed rice, as well as pancit, wispy rice noodles sauteed with chicken and egg. A condiment shelf nearby contains chili sauce, soy sauce and purple fermented fish paste, which you might have to be from the Phillipines to love.

Look for crisply fried smelts, delicious fried, hacked chicken; and stewed mixed carrots, cabbage and onions as buffet mainstays. Among rotating dishes are kare-kare, a stew of chicken and vegetables in a mustard yellow peanut sauce, menudo, not tripe as it would be in Mexico but sauteed chunks of pork with vegetables, and kilawan labanos, a tasty sauteed white radish and pork dish.

There is always sinigang, or soup, a delicious choice being the one made with chicken and spinach. And if you pay $1 extra, you can have a hot deep-fried banana fritter, a dessert with nearly as many calories as an entire trip to the buffet line.

The buffet is served from 8 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Breakfast, 8-11 a.m., $4.40 per person, including tax; lunch 11 a.m.-8:30 p.m., $5.40 including tax.

Mandarin Buffet House

1510 E. Flamingo Road

This buffet isn't quite as new or shiny as the one at China Star, but it is certainly just as much of a feast, and probably more Chinese to boot. Visit the cold buffet, and there are Chinese cold dishes such as hacked cold chicken and a delicious scallion relish, chewy hunks of marinated jellyfish, and even kimchi, the notorious Korean fermented cabbage.

The owners are from China's Chiu Chow province and serve one of their native dishes: deep-fried shrimp balls, oily but tasty orbs of pure shrimp meat. One of the best dishes on this buffet are the dry-fried string beans, blackened around the edges and enlivened by bits of pickled radish.

The meaty pork chops are rib chops Peking style, flavored with a sticky sweet red sauce that cloys after a few bites.

Fried shrimp in the shell, served at dinner, are rolled in spiced salt. A few of the dishes are to be avoided, such as the dried-out lemon fish, the underspiced Singapore noodles and the lifeless sauteed shrimp. All in all, there are more than 60 dishes here, including almond cookies and a fruit salad that one would swear was Del Monte, served for dessert.

Lunch is from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. daily, $5.49 per person; dinner 5-9 p.m. daily, $7.49 per person.

Chop Chop Chinese Buffet

1 N. Main St.

We shouldn't leave out our old friends. This nostalgia-filled Chinese-American buffet is prepared by master chef Tang, and is sort of a holdover of the Chinese foods we grew up with, such stuff as egg rolls you can break your teeth on, and dense discs of egg foo young that are larded with bits of pork and served in a thick brown gravy.

The thing is, much of what you eat here is quite good, if you choose judiciously. The buffet line has a dozen dishes, and a few of them are standouts. Char siu, slabs of barbecued pork tinged red around the edges, is just about perfect, and so are the rare barbecued chicken wings, prepared with green onion and red chili.

Stir-fried beef with red and green bell peppers and thick slices of onion is one of the stars of the buffet, and so is moo goo gai pan, sauteed white-meat chicken with big pieces of fresh mushroom. The curry-flavored Singapore-style rice noodles make a good side dish, and for dessert there are gooey slabs of sheet cakes, such as coconut cake and a rich yellow cake.

At these prices, can you really ask for more?

The buffet is served from 4-10 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday, $7.95 per person.