A Constant Disappointment: Asia City Buffet

I've noticed that I've only gotten my inspiration so far from places that have blown my mind with high quality and high caliber food in their genre.  To redeem myself, I have to write about a place that I'm constantly disappointed with.

I'm not a food snob, I eat things that are recommended to me from all sorts of places, regardless if they're a take-out window in a dirty strip mall or a high-cuisine seated restaurant.  Asia City is a kitchy nightmare from  a more racist era in dining.  When you walk in the front, you walk by a large fountain and a series of fish tanks, all filthy.  When the close-minded diner thinks "EW, CHINESE!" they are probably thinking of a place like this.  The whole restaurant smells greasy, and there's way too many tables spread across four dining rooms and a gaudy bar.  It's split in half, with the buffet in the middle, and an area for "a la carte" dining, though I've never sat over there.

I've been there about half a dozen times, and it's been going downhill.  They had decent sushi and about half of their hot line was edible when I went there my first time, but since then I haven't been able to trust the sushi, and I only ever fill up on wonton soup dumplings and fried noodles.  Everything tastes like the rest of the stuff they serve, like they never clean their woks or mix all of their proteins, which is scary for a place that serves lots of seafood alongside chicken and tripe.  I haven't been sick from them before, but every time I go back (out of habit, because I happen to love cheap chinese buffet, which this place falls short on too), I feel like I'm playing foodborne illness Russian roulette.

Notable dishes here include their Wonton Soup (impossible to mess up), boiled and chilled tripe (edible), and their extensive dessert selection, with everything from the standard cakes and buffet trays of crap to fresh asian fruits.  Almost everything else is horrific, especially their sushi.  It's $13.99 for dinner, which is insulting considering Hibachi Grill and Supreme Buffet (which closed even though it was extremely busy) was $11.79, and almost everything on their menu was edible and delicious.  It's a shame that Asia City is all the east Ann Arbor crowd has for buffet that I know of right now, because even by college student, "I'll eat anything" standards, it's inedible.

Quality 1/5
Value 2/5

Avoid it unless you really want to fill up on soup at lunchtime.

-C