Lam's Garden: Take-out

510 Bailey Rd.
Crystal City, Mo

Pizza Hut Supreme

Those of you that pay attention to such things might have noticed that there was not an update last week. That is due entirely to the fact that this blogging thing does not pay as well as you might think, which means I have a day job. That job occasionally requires me to work weekends, and this is why for this week, and last week, I was not able to go out with my family.
I was able to work from home, but I had appointed tasks during the dinner hours, so I had to stay put.

Pizza Hut Hot wings

Last week we picked up a couple of pizzas from Pizza Hut in Desoto. We picked up two large pizzas, a Supreme for Angel and I and a black olive and pepperoni for Adam. He doesn't like most ingredients. They also picked up some hot wings.
As I worked I munched on a couple of slices and enjoyed it thoroughly. Even better was Sunday brunch, leftover pizza, reheated.
I didn't try the wings, no  point really since the whole hot-wing thing is wasted on me. I've tried several and just have yet to see what the fuss is about. They're incredibly messy, too spicy, and there's not a lot of meat for the mess. Angel and Adam both said they were excellent though.
The pizza was very good. Plenty of toppings, spread out nicely, crust browned and just starting to crisp. There may be better pizzas around, but for taste, texture, price and location, Pizza Hut is our go-to.
This weekend was a little trickier. I suggested we have Chinese take out.
The Place:
Lam's Garden is behind Dairy Queen in Crystal city. We've gone there a few times, you can see the reviews in the archives.
The Food:

Tsao's (left) and Chicken peppersteak

My only real problem with Lam's is that I prefer a buffet when it comes to Chinese food, and Lam's is not a buffet. I like lots of different things Chinese, but strongly prefer to have a little of several things as opposed to a lot of only one thing.
There is a way around this though, take-out-family style.

Sesame Chicken

Adam ordered what he wanted most, the sesame chicken, Angel ordered what she likes best, the cashew chicken (Springfield style) They also ordered the beef broccoli to share.  I asked for two different things. I like the chicken pepper steak and I like the General Tsao. I didn't care for a lot of either, I prefer a little of one and a little of the other for balance. The pepper steak style is served with a beef-stock like sauce, like gravy, and the Tsao is sweet and spicy. They balance nicely.
Each of the orders came with rice and egg rolls or rangoons.
Angel and Adam fetched the food and brought it home. By the time they arrived I was done with my work, so I got to enjoy it at a leisurely pace. We popped open the boxes, all different stuff and voila! Instant buffet.

Cashew Chicken (pre-sauce)

We each loaded a plate with combinations of stuff, just like at a real buffet.
Most of Lam's offerings are better than their local buffet equivalent. So not only was it a buffet, it was like a premium buffet.
I plopped some rangoons, half an egg roll three styles of chicken, sesame, Tsao's and the pepper steak, then a generous portion of rice. To make it even better I used one of my Japanese plates I bought off of Ebay a few years back.

Beef Broccoli

The chickens were all excellent. The Tsao's was spicy but not too much so. The pepper steak was savory and had large scrumptious portions of peppers and onions that mixed well with the rice. The rice itself was a little bland, it lacked brightness. There were veggies mixed in, but their taste was indistinguishable from the rice itself. Shoving the pepper steak veggies into the pile fixed that problem. The rangoons were thickly loaded but in transport had lost a little crispness. The egg roll was better than many places, but not outstanding. Like the rice, the filling in the roll tasted only one flavor deep. The sesame chicken was pretty sweet, but since I only had a little it also balanced well. Usually in one-item Chinese restaurants I avoid sesame chicken to avoid the sugar high a full plate of the stuff will induce, this amount was perfect.
As I filled up on mine, I heard grunts and groans of pleasure from the others. We all agreed that this was pretty darn good.
Summary:

The result, my pretty plate!

 Lam's makes very good food and serves generous portions. Every dish is a little better than you'll find at most typical buffets, at least locally.
We ordered a lot of food and certainly paid a little more than we would have at a buffet. HOWEVER! We got about two meals each for that price, (Sunday brunch again) buffet's don't allow you to take home leftovers.
The price wasn't really all that bad, all that food for under forty dollars.
I wish their rice and egg rolls were a little better, a little fresher. I'm sure they know how to do that, but I imagine they make big batches rather than to-order. That's what it seems like in taste anyhow. We've certainly figured out how to do this though. The home-buffet was perfect, plenty of choices, of good quality Chinese fare.
I love Lam's now that I know I don't have to actually go there. 

Casey's General Store

10544 Hwy 21
Hillsboro, MO
http://www.caseys.com/

The Place:
Casey's General Store is a regular fixture in many of the Midwest's small towns. There are over 1700  of them, over three hundred in Missouri alone. There is only one in Kentucky, none in Maryland, and Tennessee is about to get its first in Dyersburg. Here though, it seems every little town has one.
What is it exactly? Well there's no way to put this more delicately, it's a convenience store. The one in Hillsboro is next to the car wash. There's nothing fancy about it.
In a small town though, a convenience store is a little more than a highway stopping-off place. Casey's recognizes this. We have other convenience stores in Hillsboro and they are nice too, some bigger and more modern. I'll admit I don't go to our Casey's much, in my opinion their gas pumps are too slow.
Those times I do stop in though they are busy, the customers are locals, and the trade is pretty heavy. It's not that I'd ever said to the family "Let's all gussy ourselves up in our Sunday-go-to-meetin's and dine in at the Casey's!" It's a convenience store.
This weekend presented a logistical problem. Not only was it my turn in the work on-call rotation, but there was scheduled maintenance activity for 4 to 6 P.M.  In the Corporate IT world that means for me, more like 3-7 P.M. since it takes extra time to prepare and extra time to wrap up. The work was not especially hard, but it would require my undivided presence at the laptop on the dining room table. A miracle of technology, I can manage the massive banks of globally accessed, powerful servers from my dining room.
But it also meant I couldn't go out to eat dinner on Saturday, the only day of this weekend that Angel didn't have a houseful of dogs to tend to.
This meant takeout.
This was actually Adam's Idea, or his mother's, I forget which. they get to Casey's more often than I do and made the observation that when they were there it seemed to traffic a lot of great-smelling pizza. I'd neve even considered convenience store pizza, I had images of those ubiquitous quick-stop hotdogs, spinning for days and days, wrinkling up, drying out, growing flesh-eating parasites at an alarming rate. You know what I mean.
But my options were limited. Why not try something different.
So as I buried my head into work they headed out. Adam had pre-ordered the requisite half hour to forty five minutes ahead of time.
They brought the pizzas home, accompanied by a couple of boxes of breadsticks. They also added some breakfast donuts, something Pizza Hut simply doesn't offer.
 The Food:

Supreme

My expectations were low, because of the spinning hot dog imagery, but I was also distracted. I have to admit though, they were some pretty pies. The toppings, those that I could see, were well spaced and rather generous.
Angel and I split a 'Supreme' Adam, who doesn't like many veggies chose a meat-lover and asked for an extra topping, bacon. He added more meat to an all-meat pizza.  The pizzas were still hot, the cheese was still melty. I tore off three slices and added some store-brand potato chips to my plate and went back to the laptop. I had a brief respite waiting for the other guys to do their thing with the systems, so i got to read and wolf down my pizza in peace. Angel and Adam settled into their dining area, the living room in front of the TV. This is just how we do things.
I have to say, it wasn't bad.

Meat lover, with extra meat

It was definitely not St. Louis style, it was more like what I consider Domino's style. The crust was soft, yet not too chewy, the cheese was plentiful, mostly mozzarella  and Parmesan from what I could tell. The meat was tasty. What it lacked though, and sadly so, was big chunks of veggies. There were some there, but if you zoom into the photo you'll see that the veggies are, if you can see them at all, quite small and not at all prominent. This is about the only complaint I have about it.
It was quite good. Not surprisingly Angel declared "Better than Domino's!" Which is our low-water-mark of disappointing pizzas. Many frozen pizzas get that same rating in her opinion.

Breadsticks

Her other comments were that the cheese was tasty, and the veggies too small, and they only offer one kind of crust. I'd equate it to 'hand tossed, not Chicago thick, or New York/St. Louis thin. It's the way I like a crust anyhow. Angel agreed that it was light and not too chewy, she liked it, though she's always been a bigger fan of thin crusts.
Adam was quite pleased as well, agreeing that it was much better than Domino's though the crust was softer than he expected. There was "nothing wrong" with the cheese and the toppings were plentiful and flavorful. Angel reminded me that she really enjoyed the spiciness of the sausage. Adam even rated it as good as Pizza Hut.
I can't say much about the sauce, I barely detected it, so it was neither outstanding or disgusting
Of course the best pizza I've ever had was made by my younger brother Jeff, in Cerulean Ky. He's not a professional cook, but he could be. He makes the dough (with just a drip of honey)  and sauce (from garden tomatoes) completely from scratch and gets the other veggies from the Amish food stand down the road. I don't really expect any franchise to top this piece of culinary art.
On reheating the next day, in our toaster oven since the microwave broke down, it was just as good. I was once again at my laptop, the on-call rotation can sometimes be quite demanding, but still, the pizza was thoroughly satisfying. I even tried the breadsticks, and found them quite good as well.
Summary:
At fifteen bucks per pizza that's not a bad deal. Because a pizza, or two in our case, can easily cover more than one full meal. The nearness of Casey's to our humble abode adds significant value as well. Pizza Hut and Dominoes are in Desoto, some ten miles further down the road. We make a pretty good pizza ourselves, but not on a whim. So I imagine that we will do this again. In fact I'm pretty sure of it. Casey's isn't the best pizza in the world, nor the cheapest, nor the fastest, but it is nearby and quite satisfying.
It isn't for everyone though. If you live in a city, or otherwise outside the Midwest, you simply won't find it. But for the three hundred locations in Missouri alone, it's probably as good as you will find without driving a lot extra. And there is nothing actually wrong with it.