Recently one of my husband’s and my favorite steak houses closed down. Although the food was consistently good, the service was atrocious and the prices escalated out of control. Because of that, most of their former customers began searching, and easily found alternative steak houses to enjoy.
The building was in excellent shape, however, and it was not too long before a new restaurant moved in. Since it is located nearby, and my husband loves Oriental food, we decided to give the new establishment a try this past weekend.
Peking International Buffet, located at Town Center Parkway in Hampton, advertises the largest buffet on the Virginia Peninsula. Although I’ll be honest and admit that I did not count the number of dishes laid out, I don’t think their assessment is honest. I can easily think of three or four other buffets that I’m relatively certain are not only larger, but are actually substantially larger.
However, if Peking is counting each variety of sushi that they serve as a different dish, then perhaps they are correct. I am fairly certain that they do, indeed, offer the largest sushi bar on the Peninsula.
I wondered how the restaurant was going to take an obvious steak house design and turn it into an Oriental one. The answer was simple. They basically didn’t even try to do that. They changed nothing about the outside wood and brick structure except for the name on the sign.
Inside, they left the steak house style layout, booths, and tables and chairs in tact. They did remove some of the more blatantly western pictures and paintings, replacing them with very small Oriental pictures. Unfortunately, they looked somewhat sparse against the sprawling western background of the walls.
The one obvious Oriental touch added to the restaurant was impressive. It consisted of several life size Oriental figures done in stone. These were placed in the center of the restaurant and do add a great deal to the ambiance that they were obviously trying to create.
Additionally, they piped in traditional Oriental themed music throughout the meal. It was a nice touch, adding to the calm feeling of the establishment.
Certainly, the juxtaposition of the Oriental touches against the obvious western theme gave diners something to talk about and, trust me, they did. We heard customers on both sides of us discussing it with much the same uncertain response elicited from us.
Service was slow and the waitress very unpleasant. She didn’t crack a smile the entire time we were there and, in truth of fact, looked like she wished she could just ignore us altogether. For the most part, she did.
The trip to the buffet bar looked promising with everything from sweet and sour pork to a crab meat casserole to choose from. I basically chose one of just about everything that appealed to me, thinking I could go back for seconds on the items that I liked the best. As it turned out, I didn’t do that; nor did my husband.
While several dishes were sort of tasty, all the food had one thing in common. It was cold. I’m not talking room temperature either. I’m talking just pulled out of the refrigerator cold. That, of course, also told us that every bit of the food consisted of leftovers from the previous day. And much of the food tasted like it.
The chicken wings were dried out and inedible. The meatballs were greasy and disgusting. The crab casserole that held such promise was, at best, passable. Not one single item on the food buffet was fresh or even remotely warm.
Not being a sushi lover, I didn’t try that. However, I suspect it was much better overall because the sushi chef was standing there making new items throughout the meal. At least, it appeared, the sushi was fresh.
My favorite thing of the whole meal were the oranges and bananas, which were cold (as they should be) and fresh. I did not try any of the other desserts, as they didn’t appeal to me. For that reason, I can’t speak to their freshness or their overall taste.
For $8.99 a plate, I admit that both my husband and I walked away from the restaurant still hungry and desperately wishing that we had gone to one of our favorite steak houses instead. One thing is for certain. We will not be returning to the Peking International Buffet.
The restaurant is over priced, poorly run, and needs new servers. This one gets a mere one out of five stars and that is for the wonderful Oriental stone figures, which at least gave everyone something to talk about.
