I have been awaiting this day for months, our departmental pilgrimage to the mecca of all you can eat ecstasy - the newly reopened Joy Luck Buffet at Manchester and Hanley in Brentwood. We first planned on going in September, but it was closed for remodeling then, so we waited until November. But it was still not opened so we had to go elsewhere then and wait one more month. But finally it was confirmed to be open so we could all plan on stuffing ourselves silly there.
Ironically, just yesterday another person from our department had asked me if the Joy Luck was open (since I am the known departmental expert on Linux, web services and restaurants) and I told him it was open and he even invited me along. Although I did briefly consider going there two days in a row, I declined and told him we were going today instead. Later in the afternoon I met his office mate who had accompanied him to Joy Luck and asked him about the experience. He told us the dining area had been redone nicely but to watch out for the booths. When they were first seated they were put at a booth and when they sat down their legs immediately ran into the large pedestals there that are required for the heating plates embedded into all the tables now. I understand why they have equipped all the tables to be "hot pot ready", but I do see how that could be a seating problem for anyone over five feet tall.
Having been tipped off by Dan, we were a larger group so we were seated at a table for 10 where there was plenty of leg room. We did notice that there were three "hot plate" spots on the larger round tables with the lazy susan easily removable to access the hot plate spots so you could have three hot pots cooking at the same time. That would definitely be an experience! However, we were just there for a quick lunch, so it was off to the buffet lines we went. The place was packed and there were people everywhere, so I first had to look around to see what all was available so I could plan my attack.
The food selections looked the same as it had months ago, with one big exception for me -- more sushi rolls! Whereas before I had remembered maybe 4 to 6 rolls, when I first walked over to the sushi section there must have 8 or 10 different rolls available, and plenty of each of them. I was in sushi roll nirvana! I ended up getting just about one piece of every one of them. I have no idea what all of them were, but I did not care. I have yet to find a sushi roll I do not like. I do not know if I am a glutton for punishment or just a glutton for sushi. You can also grab all the wasabi you want, and since we do have wasabi.wustl.edu as a registered DNS hostname in our department, I felt obligated to grab a bunch of it.
Looking at the four main food serving areas in the middle, I primarily only picked Chinese entree selections from the third table, and also some pot stickers from the second one. The first table is all salads, which I was not about to waste valuable stomach space on eating, and the second one was primarily deep fried appetizer foods. The fourth table had "desserts", none of which looked appetizing at all. I concentrated on the third table where they had rice, noodles and the various entrees. The General Tso's chicken, honey chicken and the roasted chicken were all especially good today, and I managed to get seconds on all of those.
I did notice they had removed the soft serve ice cream machine and now just have a freezer with about six containers of regular ice cream. I may have considered that, but instead had some more sushi and chicken entrees for dessert, with a lone pot sticker placed between them to act as a "sauce barrier" to protect the sushi from the sauces on the chicken. What a perfect dessert for the ending to a fine lunch at a decades old but now renovated Brentwood institution! An even better ending was the bill, $6.99 to completely gorge myself with a variety of delectable morsels at a restaurant my picky son would never want to visit. Joy Luck Buffet, welcome back, we missed you!
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