LITTLE ROCK — Soon, someone will make me very proud. I don't have children to fulfill this prophecy or anything, but that was the prognostication from the fortune cookie I got at No 1 Buffet, which offers a veritable field of food at its daily lunch spread, advertised as cooked in Szechwan, Hunan and Cantonese styles.
Being somewhat of a cultural and culinary doofus when it comes to China, I'm not sure I could tell one apart from the other, but I do know that when I see a whopping eight buffet tables, there are plenty of good reasons to assume the establishment’s self-proclaimed superiority might just be deserved.
Speaking of that name, while the red lettering above the door clearly says "No. 1 Buffet," on the take-out menu the spelling is "No 1 Buffet." Now, that could simply be a stylistic choice to eliminate the period from the commonly accepted abbreviation of the word “number” to save ink. However, without the period, one could also choose to read “No 1” as “no one.” This, of course, might not be the most glowing of endorsements, as generally when you run a business, you do want people to frequent it.
Secondly, I'm going to go out on something of a limb here and just say that when it comes to buffet Chinese, such superlative rankings can really only be relative. By that I mean that I tend to think of such places as a category unto themselves. To compare, say, a country-style buffet or even sit-down Chinese to a Chinese buffet is to compare apples to oranges in my book. Or in this case, apples to Mandarin oranges.
If you stop reading after that, I won't blame you.
But as far as Chinese buffets go, there are no real surprises here. A short drop south from Interstate 30 off either the Geyer Springs or Base Line Road exit, the establishment is fairly easy to get to, with its own traffic signal to turn in. The parking lot is a bit wonky in its access from feeder roads, but certainly offers ample space.
The entrance, it must be said, feels somewhat convenience store-like, with a glassed-in foyer and a bank of gum ball machines. Stepping through that leads to a wide entrance that feeds into a massive one-room dining room subdivided by wooden booths with the buffet tables filling up the central avenue. I don't know the exact history of the building, but my first thought was that it used to be a Ryan's. The same thought was independently confirmed by one of two dining companions.
Upon closer inspection, it appears that four of the central tables are dedicated to what you might call entrees and sides. Though some Chinese places will segregate the obviously non-Chinese options, No 1 leaves no one out. The mac and cheese shares a steam table with the fried rice. The chicken strips don't have to hide from the sweet-and-sour chicken. It's all about inclusion and diversity here, which may also be said for the patrons. On a recent Tuesday, it looked like a mostly blue-collar crowd, but there was certainly no lack of diversity in age or ethnicity — a veritable buffet of humanity, all in one spot.
As for those other four buffet tables, they're dedicated to things like salad (though the dressings get more play than actual toppings), fruit and desserts. Of course, it wouldn't be a Chinese buffet without soft-serve ice cream at one end. And at the other? A sushi counter.
For those who miss the buffet, which ends at 3 p.m. and begins daily at 10 a.m., even though the place lists opening at 11 a.m. every day, there is an extensive menu that includes all the usual Chinese food you'd expect, from Moo Goo Gai Pan to ambiguously named specials like the “Happy Family.”
I'm guessing my fortune cookie was meant for one of them.
THE DISH:
Lunch Buffet ($6.75): For someone who always struggles with what to order, the buffet is almost always a good way to go, and I took advantage by trying a little bit of a lot of different things. The real winner here, oddly enough, was the jalapeno chicken, which, unsurprisingly, was poultry stir-fried with peppers and onions. Not a bad dish, if likely not a native Chinese one. Another interesting oddity was the seafood biscuit, which a dining companion aptly identified as a shrimp wrapped in a meatball. The taste was also something like that; not bad, it just took some getting used to. Clear losers were the General Tso’s chicken, which was overcooked and very tough. Another was the spicy shrimp, in which the shrimp themselves were mushy and not all that spicy. Sticking with basics, though, the things like fried rice and sweet-and-sour chicken were just as you'd expect: edible and even tasty, but hardly gourmet. It's a buffet, and an economically priced one at that. So, you get what you pay for.
Lunch Buffet ($6.75): After a childhood void of Chinese food of any variety, I've grown to enjoy a good Chinese buffet about once every three months just for the pure gluttony of it. Like most Chinese buffets, No 1 Buffet was hit and miss. But that's the joy of it — sample as much as you can and find the few items you really enjoy. Here, it was the fried rice, which was perfectly good but made even better by adding Sriracha sauce to the equation, and the jalapeno chicken, a nice, spicy mix of exactly what it sounds like. I went back for second helpings of each; a clear stamp of approval.
No 1 Buffet
8815 Base Line Road
(501) 570-7988
Hours: Monday to Thursday 11 a.m.-9 p.m., Friday to Sunday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.