Lucky China

4038 Butler Hill Rd
St Louis, MO

Angel set us up for a weekend getaway at the Hampton Inn, a deluxe room with jacuzzi. This is the way we occasionally spoil ourselves. A simple plan. Get a great room, pick up some Chinese takeout, plug in the portable DVD player and binge watch season three of the TV series 'Justified'.
Most of that we could do at home, though not the jacuzzi part. However, the whole point was to get away  from distractions for one freakin' night. When you run a small business out of your home it is very, very easy to get distracted. Especially if that small business is populated by living, breathing, barking, furry animals.
The reason for this particular weekend was that my birthday was on Sunday.
Adam's was the day after, so leaving him alone at the house was as much a treat for him.
Angel had assumed the hotel was in Arnold. So we drove there. Oops, that's a Drury Inn, we were booked in a Hampton. So she fired up Tina, her new Tom-Tom GPS device and saw that we were about three miles away.
So up Lemay Ferry we went, just across the Meramec River into St. Louis County, then onto Butler Hill road and there it was.
The Place:

She'd checked ahead for a decent Chinese takeout place, but it was back in Arnold. So when we checked in, I asked the very helpful lady at the desk if there were any nearby Chinese places. She handed me a list of about twenty nearby restaurants with phone numbers. There were six or seven Chinese places on the list.
We saw a Walgreens from the hotel, Angel said she needed to pick something up anyhow, so we took a chance and just drove to it, hoping we'd see something on the way or nearby.
Just across from the Walgreens was a small shopping center, sure enough, in big bright red letters: 'Chinese Food'.
This is of course, kind of risky. Some Chinese places just aren't as good as others. Most don't have web sites so it's a little tough doing advance research. We didn't know this area very well either, so we didn't even have a recommendation.
There was a multi-page menu taped to the front window so we studied it first. It seemed to have everything we were after, so we crossed our fingers and marched in.

The Food:

A young Chinese man stepped up to the counter. Behind the counter, sitting on the floor, was an adorable little girl of about three or four, or maybe five or six, I can't tell anymore, poking away at an E-tablet. She also had earbuds in so she was completely absorbed and never even looked up.
Angel pointed at things on the counter menu, choosing three combo meals.
Three?
Yeah, three. It's the way we do things when we want a buffet but we want it at home. So she first asked for General Tso's, because sesame gets really, really sickly sweet after a while. next was the 'Cashew style' otherwise known as 'Springfield style' for those of us who know the center of the American style Chinese food universe. Then she picked a new one, Shrimp in Lobster Sauce. I liked the sound of that.
Each combo meal came with a couple of sides so when you do this, you get a pretty good variety. Fried rice, white rice and in this case, crab Rangoon.
We'd pre-packed a few paper plates and some real silverware, because we've done this before.
There was of course, about a ten minute wait. That's when I decided that we might be reviewing the place, if and only if it turned out to be good. This was a vacation and I didn't want to spoil it by blogging, so I hadn't planned on reviewing anything. But I had a feeling. So I went out front and started taking photos, just in case.
Soon enough, the food was brought out in a single thick bag by a young lady whose English was still a little rough, but we could make out that it sounded like what we ordered.
We got to the room, and laid out the spread on the buffet table. Well, okay, it was a desk, but a really wide one. As Angel opened everything I fiddled with the portable DVD and got it going on the big, swiveling, wall mounted flat panel.
I said it was a deluxe room, right?

"Wow." she said. I looked down. The containers were opened and what it was, well, 'pretty'. We're more accustomed to 'dump it into the bucket' joints. This actually looked arranged.
The glaze on the General's was beautiful, the bright steamed broccoli (blech!) lined up between the chicken and the rice. The rice itself was highlighted by some generous chunks of chicken.
The cashew style was generous with finely chopped veggies, it even had some of those tiny ears of corn. The Shrimp was enormous and bathed in a soup like sauce.
The wontons were all identically hand folded into a floral style.
It was almost too pretty to disturb.
We each filled our plates with a little of almost everything and pressed 'play' on the portable DVD.
Deputy U.S. Marshall Rayland Givens started off all fists and guns and hillbillies pushing dope and shooting each other. Perfect.
The best thing on the buffet, at least the thing that stood out the most, was the rangoons. They were crispy on all sides. Most places can't keep the bottoms crispy, Lucky had this perfect. All of them, the bottom as crisp as the edges.
It was all very, very good. Noticeably good, stand out good.
Summary:
I was planning to take the weekend off. The only reason I reviewed this place at all was because it was just that much better than most Chinese places. You know the ones I'm talking about. Everyone knows a place or two that they've tried once and decided never to go back to, even if that meant driving a little farther.
Hillsboro has one of those. We ordered there once, never again. I've never reviewed it or uttered it's name and I don't plan on ever reviewing it. I just don't care for Chinese food when I know it is going to be disappointing.
But Lucky is a standout. If there weren't thirty other Chinese joints between my house and Lucky's I'd make it our new go-to place. We will certainly go there again whenever we make it back up to that particular area of South County.


Epilogue:
In the morning we had some complimentary coffee, packed up and headed out. We decided to find some breakfast. Angel had located a Denny's down the road. I mean, road breakfast = Denny's right?
So we went in to the really crowded and busy place, were seated and offered drinks. I needed more coffee, we'd watched a LOT of 'Justified' the night before. Angel asked for orange juice.
We glanced at the seasonal menu appendix. Not being a fan of 'pumpkin' as a flavor, in anything, we both quickly passed on that card.
In the main menu, I thought for a moment about the country fried steak, but settled for a grand slam instead. Four breakfast items any combination. I went for biscuit, bacon, hash browns and two eggs, over medium. Angel also asked for hash browns to go with her scrambled eggs, ham and English muffin.
I thought about asking for juice too, the coffee didn't seem to be very good. Not old or bitter, just not right, maybe too weak.
The eggs weren't pretty like those you get at Waffle House, they were dull and flat. There was about a pound of butter in a ramekin for the one biscuit and there were more hash browns than anything else. A disproportionate amount. As far as feeding the eye this was not as pretty as the pictures. It looked rushed and unenthusiastic. The hash browns were done, but just barely. We like them crisp at least a little bit. They weren't bad, but they sure could have used a little more time on the grill. The eggs, a little less, it was barely runny. We were fed, but not quite pleased.
Waffle House would have been a much better choice.

Post-Epilogue Final Wrap-up and. Conclusion:
 Overall it was quite a nice weekend getaway. We had a good time, had time to really relax, got plenty of uninterrupted sleep. We were still talking about the previous evening's 'buffet' on the short drive home. We were packing leftovers.
So if anyone asks, I'm proud to say we 'got Lucky' that night and recommend everyone we know to do the same.

Canton Inn

205 W Sunshine St
Springfield, Mo.

I don’t often offer a review of a restaurant that I’ve not recently been to, but this place merits a distinct exception. First some background for those of you NOT from/in/around Springfield Mo.

I lived in Springfield from 1985 through 2001. Most of my adult life in fact, for nearly as long as I lived in my original home town in Kentucky. So perhaps I’m a bit biased. Springfield, if not uniquely famous for anything else, is at least very well known for Chinese restaurants. Don’t believe me? Well, the New York Times does.
There are lots of Chinese joints in the Queen City of the Ozarks, noticeably so. Even non-Chinese places serve Springfield style cashew chicken there.

Many of the places come and go, change locations, ownership and names. Several have been around for a long time. Some are great, some are merely so-so. At any rate, Springfield has more Chinese restaurants, per capita, than any other city in the U.S.

I’m not a huge fan of Cashew Chicken itself, though I’ve had a lot of it. I prefer sweet and sour. But that’s not the point.

According to Angel, Canton Inn, near the corner of Sunshine and South Campbell, has the best eggrolls in the city, which equates to the best anywhere in the world. I can’t disagree. It’s also pretty cheap as you can see here.

So when she announced that her and Adam were heading down to see the new grandbaby, of course I asked for take-out. We do this whenever anyone heads down that way.

Sure enough when she got home she was packing a grocery-sized bag full of wontons, eggrolls and crab Rangoons.

The Chinese places in Jefferson and south St. Louis county areas don’t often offer wontons, and none of them make a great eggroll. Canton Inn’s offerings are not only very good, they travel well. She’d also brought a sweet and sour chicken meal in a box. I had that for dinner on Sunday, but wasn’t too impressed. The sauce had congealed and even the microwave would not cure that. The rice was, well, rice.

On Monday I decided to go nuts. I took the remaining wontons, rangoons and eggroll, laid them out on a cookie sheet, and stuck them into the oven, which was set to about 225 degrees. I then thawed and chopped up some chicken breasts and thighs. I also started the rice cooker.

I make rice and chicken a lot. Much tougher and messier is the other stuff, the deep-fried sides.

I breaded the chicken chunks in my usual blend of flour, corn meal, garlic powder and pepper. I filled the big skillet with a little oil, about an eighth of an inch or so, and set the thermometer in it to keep a consistent temperature range. The chunks are small so they have to be watched very closely. Over-cooking or too-high temperature will ruin them.  I made two skillets full, some I flash-glazed in bottled sweet and sour sauce, the rest I left plain. These bowls were also set into the oven. Angel has her own Springfield style cashew sauce recipe and would make some once everything else was done.

I filled up one bowl of plain rice for Adam and set it in the oven as well.

To finish up the rest of the rice I added chopped bell peppers, onions, celery, slivers of carrot, a chopped fried egg and some shreds of leftover turkey (dark meat preferred). Stir that together with a couple dashes of soy sauce and you end up with a pretty decent pile of un-fried rice.

I also steamed up some frozen pot stickers. Angel likes them, I think they’re okay. I can make a decent gyoza (pot-sticker favored in Japan) myself, but it takes a lot of time and is also pretty messy.

By the time all this was done, the eggroll, wontons and rangoons were hot and ready to serve.  Dinner time.

The wontons were crispy and filled with just a little meat, the rangoons, also still crispy were packed with what appeared to be actual crab  meat and a dollop of sweet cream cheese. With the Canton Inn sides the whole meal was dreamy.

As I said before, there are a lot of Chinese dining choices in Springfield. Some big and fancy sit-down and tablecloth places, many are small, hole-in-the-wall affairs. Canton Inn is small, old, and hardly sparkly. There is inside dining, less than ten tables, so it’s cramped, and it’s always busy. The service is fast, the staff is always bustling, and there are typically lines waiting at the counter for take-out. It’s not the biggest, the shiniest, nor is it necessarily the best. It’s not even a buffet, but it is certainly very good and very much representative of Springfield-style Chinese. The sides travel very well and are always top-notch.

Springfield Missouri gave us a Wild Bill Hickok shootout, Bob Barker, Brad Pitt, Bass Pro Shops, Route 66, The Ozark Jubilee, and many other reasonably memorable and significant other things. It is home to the largest public school district in the state and to Missouri State University.

Without a doubt though, the most important item to ever emerge from my first adopted home town is the Chinese style food. In my reasoned, expert opinion, it is better than anywhere else I’ve been, including San Francisco, Japan and Korea, and most definitely markedly better than any you’ll find in Maryland, D.C., Florida, Texas, Illinois and Kentucky. (other places I’ve lived).

If you ever go through there, or know someone that will be heading that way, I strongly advise you to try it out, and Canton Inn is as good a place to start as any.

Oriental Buffet

774 S. Truman Blvd.

Festus, MO.

Angel had a hankering for Chinese and there was no use trying to change her mind, not that we objected. We decided to return to the new-ish Chinese buffet in Festus, the one that we visited just after it opened. At that time the place didn’t fare very well, but it was new and I’ll always excuse first-week issues.

The Place:

In a strip mall just south of Highway A on Truman Blvd. It sits near the Great Clips, the place I get my hair styled. Inside it was still clean and neat, no used or mismatched furniture. The front counter was inviting and surrounded by Chinese bric-a-brac, jade statues, cork carvings, the usual. To the right of the counter stood a three foot long yellow, jade-looking Chinese style ship. The various nooks and crannies of the ship were stuffed with coins and dollar bills. I immediately concluded that the money would be used to fund terrorism. Angel rejected that perfectly rational notion, she’s naïve about the ways of the real world.

We were immediately seated near the back. Our table was directly beneath a speaker and Chinese-ish music played quite loudly. I’m not that familiar with Chinese music but this sounded like it was being played on slightly off-key harmonicas and zithers.* Our drink orders were taken as we stood behind our respective chairs, tea, tea, Coke. The young Asian lady nodded her head politely and scampered off. We bee-lined it for the buffet.

The Food:

We all three bypassed the sushi counter because nobody should have to eat that stuff. There was a dessert bar and a salad bar that we also passed up. There were two bars for main courses, the typical chicken, shrimp, pork, beef, rice and noodles, and (blech!) fried frog legs. I served up just a small portion of the things I like, a couple of chunks of General Tso’s a couple more of the honey-glazed chicken, a small portion of the brownish rice, seven or eight noodles, a rangoon, some bacon wrapped krab, and some (as labeled) buttered ‘popatoes’. (fried potato chunks). I stopped only when the plate was crowded but not overflowing. Angel and Adam were already at the table, there was very little conversation. The tea had been delivered, it was awful.

The food was in many cases just fine, there were some exceptions though. The rice was bland, uninteresting. What veggie bits there were in it tasted just like the rice. The noodles were better but maybe a bit too sweet. The chickens were all tender and fresh, quite tasty. The ‘house beef’ was awful, dry, tough, leathery, chewy. The rangoon was limp and the filling was a bit too sweet. The bacon/krab thing was quite good, it’s hard to screw up bacon. The krab it surrounded was completely tasteless, Adam called it the tofu of the sea. Angel asked me about the rangoon, I replied that it was a bit flaccid. (obvious joke deleted) She responded that the reason she didn’t get any was that they’re always that way, as if they’d been baked or steamed rather than deep-fried. I finished my plate and just sat for a moment, Angel did as well. We discussed the various items and the merits of each.

From my vantage point I could see the front door. In walked a young lady in a high maintenance hairdo, a little too much makeup, and wearing what I can only describe as a party dress, shiny, frilly, cut low at the highest points and high at the lowest points, exposing more cleavage and gams than you would normally find just around town. Very shortly after she walked in the door opened and in walked a clutch of three or four others in similar style. Angel noticed me staring (ogling), and turned to look, Adam did too, as I fully expected him to.

“Must be something going on.” Angel said. I continued staring because I’m a guy and that’s just what we do.

“Yep, I just can’t imagine why they’re here” I answered.

“Prom?” Angel asked?

“Too early in the year” Adam replied.

“What do you mean ‘prom’?” I snapped.

“What do you think they’re dressed like that for?” Angel fired back accusingly.

“Duh, hello! They’re prostitutes and they’re dressed for work!”

Adam laughed, Angel didn’t. “Keep our voice down, they’re not prostitutes, they’re just kids”

I laughed. “Like you would know, look at them all primped up beyond reasonable neighborhood standards, showing more skin than any innocent person would ever, and they’ve got boobs. They’re not kids, they’re prostitutes!”

“They’re teenagers, teenagers have boobs too.” She scolded, scoldingly.

“Not where I come from they don’t! Not the good Christian teenagers anyhow. Not that I ever saw.”

The girls/prostitutes walked past then disappeared into a back room.

“Where did they go?” Adam asked.

“Hello, party time! They went to the party room.”

“Just shut up.” Angel abruptly concluded the conversation.

We went for seconds, as my first portions were rather small I pretty much just got more of the same. Less rice, more noodles, another rangoon because a limp rangoon is always better than no rangoon. Angel and Adam got stuff that included broccoli which disappointed me. I don’t really like to be seen in public with broccoli eaters. They said it was good but I assume that’s what they are programmed to say by the talking heads on the Food Network. Some of those fanatics, food-fascists, are worse than Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck in their mindless ranting about ‘fresh, healthy veggies.’

The prostitutes came and went, always attached to cell phones, likely checking in with their pimps, johns, tricks and parole officers. They seemed happy but I knew that it was a just a façade, I watch the lifetime channel, I know how tortured and drug-addled they really are. It troubled me that this nice restaurant was a front for such illicit activities. Angel was too, I was sure, as she didn’t want to even think about it. She merely told me to shut up every time I brought up my displeasure and righteous disgust.**

Angel and I went back for dessert, she got brown pudding and a little cookie that she all but spat out when she realized it was made almost entirely of coconut. I was smarter and got the bananas with red sauce, some apple salad, and some yellow pudding. I was quite pleased and spat nothing out.

Summary.

We discussed this meal at length and reached a consensus. Some of the offerings were quite good, some not at all. At a buffet you can pick and choose, so it’s pretty hard to be completely disappointed. The bill came to thirty four dollars and change, a real bargain. For this price, even if only a couple of items are appealing to you can eat as much as you want. The tea was terrible, I highly recommend asking for plain water instead. The chairs were stylish, but too soft, like a living room chair that hardly anyone ever actually sits in for any length of time.

All that being said, this buffet is geographically closer to our home than any of the others we’ve tried, and none of the others in the area is really all that much better. It is likely in the future that when we crave Chinese that we will return. It’s cheap, close and some of the food doesn’t suck. I’ll rate it a three out of a possible seven chopsticks. Springfield MO. is still the Mecca of Midwestern style Chinese food.

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*Zither: (n) a musical instrument consisting of a flat shallow sound-box with metal strings stretched across it that are plucked. (Encarta Dictionary)

The Chinese version of this is called a ‘guzheng’, which is probably the incorrect spelling, not that it matters, I wouldn’t pronounce it correctly anyhow. The earliest guzheng was found in the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, in Suizhou, Hubei, China, dated around 433 BCE. Which is probably why it sounded off-key.

** The fancy-dressed ladies. The following morning I returned to the area for a haircut. I was serviced by the chattiest lady in the joint, she just went on, and on, and on. At one point she queried one of the other stylists in her sing-songy, shrill voice: “So Brandi, how was homecoming last night?”

I passed this information on to Angel when I got home. “Oh that explains it.” She said. I was baffled. “That explains nothing!” I shouted very quietly. “Why would they allow prostitutes at a homecoming?” She, of course, had no answer for that.