Panda Express

612 S. Truman
Festus, Mo.
On the Web

Easy pick. Since it sits beside the Walmart in Festus, we knew it was coming. I was actually looking forward to reviewing it, for all the wrong reasons. More on that later. You may know Panda from the many, many mall installations of the brand. The first Panda Express opened in 1983 by the Cheng family. Master Chef  Ming Tsai Cherng had been operating the very popular Panda Inn in Pasedena, California for ten years prior to he and his son, Andrew, opening the first Express in the Glendale Galleria. Pioneers in the 'Quick Service' Chinese food market. Today, there are over 1700 Panda Express locations. All locations are wholly owned by the parent company, there are no franchises.
I was already in Festus, I'd just had my head examined, well part of it anyhow. it was my eyes. Regular readers are aware of my ongoing issues with my eyesight. My eyeglass prescription ran out a few months ago and I've been mentioning (whining) it to Angel for quite a while. She has been encouraging (nagging) me to get some new ones. I, of course, get my optical needs met at Walmart. It turns out that there was a problem with my existing prescription, it was too strong. My eyesight had actually improved, probably due to my lowered blood pressure, cholesterol and weight over the past two years. I went out on a limb with the new frames, they are completely different than anything I've had the last thirty years or so.
Angel had a really busy day so we'd set this plan in place earlier in the week. I'd pop in and order a bunch of stuff, take it home and lay it all out buffet style.
The Place:
As I said, next to the big Walmart in Festus.

Brand new, so 'clean and tidy' was almost a given. The decor was nice, subdued, not plastic-y. As you go in you pass a few tables and step up to the line. The ordering/serving line is in front, glass fronted so pedestrians can't spit or sneeze into the food. The offerings are in steamer trays, much like you'll find at a buffet. Overhead is a menu with prices.
Desteny (yes, that's how she spells it.) stepped forward after welcoming me. I was still studying the overhead when she asked if she could help. I asked her about portion sizes adding the part about the in-home buffet.
She pointed out a combo, a Panda Feast, with three meats and two sides. This feast goes for thirty bucks.
The Food:
I okay'd her suggestion. We started with the meats. Not that there were a lot of them to choose from, compared to a buffet, or even to the nearby family owned Chinese place, Lam's. I went with things that were similar to what we would get at a buffet.
Orange Chicken, Beef Broccoli and Black Pepper Chicken.
The sides were a cinch, Fried Rice and White Rice. (Adam prefers the white.) I surreptitiously added two egg rolls and two orders of cheese rangoons. This brought the total up to thirty nine and change. Desteny asked if I wanted to round it up to forty and donate the change to some sort of children's charity. Sure, I was in a charitable mood.
Behind the serving line was the prep area/kitchen. Part of the Panda philosophy is to let people see the food being made to assure the customers that it was clean and was not made from cats.  I can appreciate that, there's a Springfield Mo. favorite called Cashew Chicken that somehow picked up the nickname Cashew Kitten.
I'm sure no one cooks with cats anymore. . . (I told you I was feeling charitable)
She scooped up the chosen portions into stereotypical red and paper boxes. No wire handles, which  was disappointing since I like totally pointless things.
The egg rolls looked overcooked and the rangoons looked as though they'd been sitting under a heat lamp for an hour or two.
I paid up, grabbed my package and left, racing home to put the stuff in the fridge. . .it was a bit early.
By the time Angel got a break and Adam limped out of his room for the first time that day (he works nights), an hour had passed, but the stuff in the boxes was still pretty warm. I plucked some rice, the two chickens an egg roll and a couple of rangoons out of their boxes and wrapper and populated a plate. I set the reactor two one minute to heat it back up, but not actually cook it further. If a Chinese feast suffers from reheating, it was not real Americanized Chinese food to begin with.
Angel was already feasting, watching Jurassic Park, again. I think that movie is on all the time somewhere, she seems to find it a lot.
I joined her in the adjoining recliner, because that's how we dine at home. Adam joined a couple of minutes later.
The Orange Chicken, PE's biggest seller, was sweet and there was a very slight hint of flavoring, it might have been orange. After two or three nuggets though, the sweetness started to numb my tongue. By the end of the five or so chunks I'd selected, I was queasy. Don't be fooled, it may say 'orange', but this caramelized sticky coating is mostly just sugar. The pepper chicken lived up to its name. Black pepper, lots of it. Too much, by a mile. I could only handle a very small portion. I didn't try the broc and beef but the word I got from both Angel and Adam was "Where's the sauce?" and "I think they forgot something."
The rangoons were a little greasy, not especially crisp and after chewing, there seemed to be a dusty aftertaste. It was as if the wonton wraps were hard frozen and thawed a few times, breaking down the structure of the dough. The egg roll, besides being over-fried, tasted very heavily of ginger. I can't handle that as a primary flavor. If you like heavy handed ginger, you might think more highly of it than I did. The rice was bland. Angel noted that it was too crowded with veggies, especially corn. "Who puts corn in fried rice?" She asked rhetorically, I hope.
As I polled the room, one thing was abundantly clear. No one was really impressed with anything. The highest praise for anything peaked at 'Okay.'
Adam did say, trying to be positive, "It was good for what it was."
In other words, if fast-food quality and service is what you want in your Chinese meal, well, here you go.
Summary:
First  and foremost, before it gets ugly, the service and staff I encountered at the store were very pleasant, attentive and professional. Desteny was excellent, patiently explaining things to an arrogant and ignorant novice.
Through no fault of anyone in Jefferson County, this place represents a disheartening race to the bottom. This is what fast food joints of this particular generation, regardless of offerings, brings to the gastronomic landscape. Everybody knows that the soggy, flat, lifeless burgers you get in a Happy Meal looks nothing like those McD's ads you see on TV or even in-store banners. . I mean, it's right there!
Fast, cheap, greasy or sweet, turn the customers as quickly as possible, as cheaply as possible. Make every item at every one of the thousands of locations taste exactly the same, no innovation, no tweaking, stick with the lowest common denominator script. Panda Express is to Chinese food what Taco Bell is to Mexican cuisine. It's an embarrassment. It's an admission that we will gladly trade away the idea of  'quality and value' for 'fast and cheap'.
This is the 'value' Panda Express brings to Festus. Within five minutes of this location, I know of at least four more Chinese places, two of them buffets. You can get some really good, fresh(er) Chinese food, just as quickly and definitely for the same price or less. At Panda, I paid $40 for this family feast, I can 'all-you-can-eat-buffet' three people for less than that, in very close proximity.
Come on folks, we deserve better.
BTW, There's a new restaurant going up in the Desoto Walmart parking lot! Taco Bell.  Yeah. . .

China Buffet

3833 Lemay Ferry Rd.

St. Louis Mo.

 Angel’s choice, you just don’t dare get between Angel and her occasional, well documented hankering for Chinese. The Festus buffet joint is fine, but only that. There’s a couple of better places up the road. One stands out, the China Buffet on Lemay Ferry Road in South County. (South County refers to South St. Louis County, just across the Merrimac River from Jefferson County)

‘Lemay Ferry’ obviously refers to a water crossing, in this case a very old one. In the early - middle bits of the 19^th century Jean Baptiste Gamache ran a ferry across the Merrimac in an area known as Flamm City, (I’m not making this up) and later sold it to Jacque LeMais, also an industrious fellow of French ancestry. There’s a lot of French names in the area. Jacque moved the ferry up the river a bit and renamed it to an Americanized version of his own name, Lemay. (Similarly there are several familes in the region that started as Courtouise or Courtois and ended up as Courtway.)

The Place:

An unremarkable strip mall building in an unremarkable strip mall, this one anchored by a large K-Mart store.  Parking aplenty, even on a Saturday evening, because K-Mart just isn’t the big draw it once was.

The inside wasn’t fancy, just a lot of tables and serving lines fronted by a modest, utilitarian counter. Most, if not all the staff appeared to be Asian, probably Chinese, though not necessarily. A hostess approached us immediately and asked the only things she needed to for the entire evening, “How many?” and “to drink?” This was asked and answered before we even made it to the table, “Three, tea, tea, Pepsi.” No need to even sit down, beeline to the buffet lines.

The buffet lines were bigger and better stocked than most of the other local Chinese buffets. In the past Angel had noted that the offerings at CB were fresher than the others as well. One thing is for certain, there’s plenty of variety. Six or seven kinds of chicken, three or four of pork, as well as a few beef. Then there’s also fish, shrimp and mussels (snot on the half shell). Also the expected pot stickers, egg rolls and rangoons. There’s also an American section, macaroni, fried chicken, potatoes, etc.  A treat here is the egg foo yung (literally ‘lotus egg’). It’s like an omelette, eggs fried with ingredients, meat and veggies, in any combination that suits the cook. I’m not sure what exactly CB puts in theirs, but it’s good. The chicken is mostly strips or chunks, fried then glazed with sauces. The names are not always helpful, Mandarin, garlic, spicy, sesame, etc. So you take a couple of chunks of each to find the one that works. In this case, they were all good, only the ‘spicy’ had noticeable pepper-heat, and even it was not overpowering. The sesame was good, but it is so sweet that it can saturate the taste buds. On my first plate I had the chickens, some noodles, and some fried rice. I like my own fried rice better, but this wasn’t too bad. I also grabbed four ‘garlic shrimp’ non-breaded, steamed.

Angel’s plate looked different, it had green things on it. Green beans and broccoli. She praised the chicken on a stick, proclaiming it to be very tender. Our experience is that chick on a stick tends to be dry and chewy, too long over the heat. On my second trip I grabbed some and had to agree, this was quite good. Angel also claimed that the beef and broccoli was very good, though I couldn’t agree at all since it had broccoli in it. Adam’s plate was less diverse, chicken, plain white rice mostly, but he seemed quite pleased. Angel had an egg roll, I find eggrolls too filling for a buffet, so I didn’t have one. The rangoons were crispy and not too heavy. I’m reluctant to call them crab rangoons, since I could not actually detect any crab, or even krab. I don’t mind this. Often when I make rangoons at home it’s cream-cheese only and they are quite satisfying.

On the negative side, CB didn’t offer any wontons. Lots of places don’t, I don’t know why. Also the shrimp, though well cooked and seasoned, were not shelled properly and I spent a few minutes behind a napkin, digging shrimp-carcass-shrapnel out of my teeth. Another gripe, though a very common offense; The sweet and sour chicken. All the other chicken types are chunks or strips, only lightly breaded and then fried and glazed with a sauce. The  S/S is different. It is heavily breaded in a pancake-like batter so the result is what looks like miniature corn dogs. The S/S sauce is not that different from the other sauces, but is served separately. Maybe it’s a please-the-kids thing. When I make S/S I use the same method for breading (if at all) the chicken as I do for cashew-style, teriyaki or even barbecue. The chicken’s the same, only the sauce varies. If the meat is tender and the sauces are tasty, there’s simply no need to burden it with a heavy breading. (end of rant)

Our second plates were all modest, doubled up with the famous Chinese dessert, bananas in red sauce.

Upon sitting down with round two, the neighboring table was offered to two ladies in Halloween costumes (I assumed) One was dressed as a French maid, the other in an unwieldy bumblebee suit. Immediately The  Blind Melon song ‘No Rain’, in particular, the video for the song, popped into my head. (Things popped into my head for the French maid outfit as well, but prudence demands that I not elaborate.)

The bee-girl in the  Blind Melon video has nothing to do with the song really, it’s just a chubby young girl twirling around and tap dancing in a bumblebee suit for no particular reason.

Partial lyrics:

All I can say is that my life is pretty plain
I like watching the puddles gather rain

And all I can do is just pour some tea for two
And speak my point of view
But it's not sane, it's not sane.

In the 1992 video, the bee is played by Heather Deloach, who is now, at 28, pursuing an acting career and has appeared in bit parts on ‘ER’, ‘Reno 911’, and in the movie ‘Balls of Fury’.

I mentioned this to Angel and Adam, as the evening’s culture lesson, adding the bittersweet recollection about the first time I heard the song.  I really liked it, so I looked up the band on the interwebs and found out the lead singer, Shannon Hoon, had died of an overdose not long after (1995) the song and video became a hit.

No, I’m not a big music fan, you know this, but the music I do like I tend to know a lot about. Ask me about ABBA sometime, you’ll be mighty impressed.

Summary:

As we wrapped up, a small male child leaned over the half-wall that separated our table from a row of others. I found this very rude in itself but then he exacerbated the interruption with spitty gun noises, then he started stomping and yelping. I can’t blame the restaurant for this, but it was very off-putting.

The staff was prompt, courteous and efficient. Our drinks were always filled in time, the old plates were whisked away quickly, the check and fortune cookies delivered promptly. The food, with only the meager exceptions I mentioned, was all quite good; fresh ingredients, well prepared and plentiful. The bill came in under thirty-three dollars, about average for a Chinese buffet.

I can only compare CB to other area buffets. The best Chinese food in the universe, by far, is to be found in Springfield Mo.  Do not try to debate me on this. The best buffets in the greater St. Louis area (and it gets even worse the further east you go. Hear that Southern Maryland?) pale in comparison to the average place in Springfield. However Springfield is nearly two hundred miles away from our humble abode and is not exactly convenient. Angel grew up there, I spent seventeen years of handsome adulthood there, and we know a thing or two about Chinese food as it should be prepared.

But for what it is, China Buffet is about as good as it gets here at the home of the 2011 World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals. (Go Cards!)