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Happy Buffet
Happy Buffet
5600 Van Buren Blvd #A
Riverside, CA
I have been reliably informed that Chinese food is not, in fact, Chinese food. What we have in America is “Westernized Chinese food”. Actual Chinese people stare down their Oriental noses at our imperfect Occidental ways. I know how they feel, having experienced what they consider Irish cuisine in the colonies. However, there is also a substantial difference between Europeanised Chinese food and Americanized Chinese food. For one thing, I suspect they liberally heap spoons of MSG onto Chinese food in Ireland, something they seem unwilling to do (or maybe they stopped it) in America, with a concomitant sacrifice in depth of flavour. But when you’re going to an All-You-Can-Eat place like Happy Buffet on Van Buren, you can’t go wrong, right?
I am not here to assess the quality of the food, which was in no way bad, but also failed to register under any other adjective. These places follow an alternative business model to the usual “serve good food” model that works for other restaurants. These restaurants thrive on a volume-per-dollar basis, and when we were there, they were quite busy, so it must be working. The clientele are mostly white people and Hispanics (presumably all the Asians were at home eating actual Asian food; I wouldn’t know) and everyone seemed to be having a good time.
After a few plates of food, I went to the bathroom. The first thing I noticed was the weird smell. A combination of acid and something else. The second thing I noticed was that the entire wall was covered in ceramic tiles with a wood print. If you’re going to put tiles in your bathroom, why bother with a wood print? I don’t get it. Am I supposed to be fooled into thinking I’m in a log cabin? We may never know.
The third thing I noticed was exceedingly unpleasant, and the source of the acid smell. Someone had thrown up in one of the urinals. People have different reactions to seeing this sort of thing, but I’m very sensitive to bodily effluvia, and I know I’m not alone. Whenever I see someone throwing up, I have a sympathetic reaction, and even seeing the evidence of the crime long after the departure of the criminal made me feel the sort of thing that is incompatible with being in a restaurant. However, as this is surely an isolated incident, I refuse to allow this form part of my general impression of the establishment.
I fought the urge to sprint outside and pour acid into my eyes and found a cubicle away from the bad thing. The cubicles in the gents bathroom in Happy Buffet are either worn out or badly engineered because there is just a little bit too much space between the wall and the door. This means that the latch doesn’t really work. A hard tap (for instance the sort of tae that you might employ if you wanted to see if a cubicle was occupied) would dislodge the bolt, revealing my shame to everyone. As an added bonus, when the door has been “locked” this slightly-too-wide gap also affords passers-by perhaps more of a view than they would like.
After I came out, I wasn’t in the mood for ice cream, so we went straight home.
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