LITTLE ROCK — “Fu” in Chinese means “good fortune, blessing and happiness.” Fu Xing (pronounced “Foo Shing”) is the ancient Chinese name for one of the stars on Orion’s Belt, also called “Star of Blessings.” It supposedly represents the god in charge of Chinese agriculture.
No matter what it looks like to non-Chinese, it’s a propitious name for a Chinese restaurant, and so there are Fu Xing buffets scattered across the country and abroad.
Fu Xing owner Amy Weng, who operates Super King Buffet off East McCain Boulevard in North Little Rock and Dong Hai on Base Line Road in Little Rock, has renamed and somewhat renovated what used to be the China King Buffet on Rodney Parham Road.
But the result may not be as propitious as the name.
There is plenty of food, more than six dozen options, including sushi and dessert stations and a Mongolian grill.
But we found few items worth either the hefty price ($6.75 for lunch, $9.25 for dinner). And that’s notwithstanding that old buffet bugbear of keeping the food hot.
It’s well short of the current local gold standard for Chinese buffets, Panda Garden on Shackleford Road in Little Rock and New Asian on Maumelle Boulevard in North Little Rock.
Like most buffets you’ll find a lot of chicken; a bit of a surprise here was the number of shrimp options.
One of the six stations offers a range of fruit, including orange quarters and that peculiar institution of Chinese buffets, sliced bananas in a sticky-sweet Day-glo red syrup, plus some cold seafood items - peel-and-eat shrimp, raw oysters and cooked mussels. One station mostly offers fried items - egg rolls, spring rolls, chicken wings, sweet-and-sour chicken and shrimp.
The two stations farthest from the main dining area offer stir-fried entrees, including Mongolian chicken, chicken and broccoli, sesame chicken and vegetable lo mein, and a selection of standard-to-odd seafood items, including baked salmon in a slightly spicy reddish glaze and bacon-wrapped and stuffing-wrapped shrimp.
The salmon was worth going back to the buffet for; so was the just-spicy-enough spicy stir-fried shrimp. And we did go back for more stirfried clams, in their shells and in a slightly gelatinous brown sauce with enlivening hot green peppers.
We might also make a second trip to the buffet for the hot and sour soup, which was well heated in both senses of the word (we wanted to try the wonton, but all the wontons had been fished out before we got there).
If you’re feeling adventurous, lift the lid of the bamboo steamer next to the soups and pull out a leaf-wrapped lump of sticky rice (a dim sum staple), which also has sticky bits of chicken and ground beef.
We wouldn’t go back for any of the stuffed or cheesy seafood items. The shrimp stuffing tasted like a mixture of bread crumbs and maybe sausage; if there was any actual seafood in the stuffed crab, we couldn’t find it. The salt-and-pepper shrimp were rubbery to an extreme, and also colder than stone. The gummy cheesy mussels were a total waste of shellfish (the cold mussels were a much better option).
Except for the soup, most of what we got off the buffet on our second visit was tepid at best unless it had just come out of the kitchen. That’s something the staff needs to address and can easily fix, because on our first visit, everything was piping hot, and that was fairly late in the evening. (We didn’t try the Mongolian grill, where you pick out the raw ingredients and the counterman cooks them for you on an open flat grill, but that’s one way to guarantee you get a hot meal.)
We took the counterman’s word at the sushi station that the nigiri (fish-on-rice items) and rolls had only been out for 20 minutes and sampled a little. The fish was fairly fresh but the rice underneath was over-chilled and consequently pretty gummy. The counterman did provide, unsolicited, a dollop of sticky-sweet eel sauce and sesame seeds for our eel, a nice touch.
There are a couple of unusual dessert items, including a sort of sweetened cream cheese in an edible “purse” shell, but it was more notable for its novelty than its flavor. The shell might have originally been crisp, but by the time we got to it, it was unappealingly chewy.
The “beautiful new renovation” mentioned in a recent ad mostly consists of a new coat of paint on the exterior, some new flooring in the entranceway and some new carpeting in the main dining area, to the left of the door.Otherwise it doesn’t look much different from when it was China King. Dining areas to the back, not in use except in cases of customer overflow (male customers pass through them on the way to the restroom), haven’t been updated at all.
The wait staff is large and eager to please, perhaps a little too eager - one waitress, with a somewhat limited command of English, parked herself at our table and tried to engage in some friendly chit-chat that led to lots of smiling miscommunication. They did, however, remove dead plates and refill drinks promptly.
Speaking of miscommunication, friends at another table reported that their waitress gave them a drink choice only of water or Pepsi; they had to discover for themselves that the restaurant serves wine and beer (and other soft drinks).
There is a limited menu for takeout orders.
Fu Xing Buffet Address: 9210 N. Rodney Parham Road., Little Rock Hours: 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m.
Friday-Saturday Cuisine: Chinese buffet Credit cards: V, MC, AE, D Alcoholic beverages: Wine and beer Reservations: No Wheelchair accessible: Yes Carryout: Yes (501) 223-0888
Weekend, Pages 38 on 06/24/2010