Is There a Decent Chinese Buffet in Schaumburg?

So I am in Schaumburg today, and chinese food is all I can think about. Given that Chinatown is not an option, what would be reasonable in terms of driving distance in the Woodfield mall area? Buffet would be preferred, but if you feel strongly about a particular place and it isn't a buffet, that is ok too. Thanks for any help.

Buffet ----- decent???? Good luck. I always find buffet, especially Chinese, to be the same ole awful stuff, at least in the burbs. drive 10 minutes north and go to Heng Wang in Palatine.

Yeah I know what I was asking was pretty "oxy-moronic" but I thank you for your suggestion. For whatever it is worth, I dug up good things about Yu's Mandarin on Golf.

Yu's Mandarin is probably your best bet. Less than 10 minutes west of the mall.

Actually, if memory serves me, there's a pretty decent place at the Northeast corner of Higgins and Roselle. I can't remember the name, but the food was fresh and relatively cheap. Yu's is more expensive, but the quality is better, too.

radiator wrote:Actually, if memory serves me, there's a pretty decent place at the Northeast corner of Higgins and Roselle. I can't remember the name, but the food was fresh and relatively cheap. Yu's is more expensive, but the quality is better, too.

I go for training classes in the area once a year or so, and always make this place a lunch destination. It's small, quiet, and the small buffet usually has two really good items, and some good fruit. Have no idea what the name is, but yes, it's on the NE corner of Roselle and Higgins tucked away in the back of some strip mall.

Is it Ho Luck?

With apologies for the tangent, how is it that a cuisine so ill-suited to buffets somehow managed to adopt them as a hallmark? Indian makes sense, what with all of the simmered dishes that often improve when they have time to rest. But stir-fry suffers horribly if it sits for five minutes, to say nothing of hours in a chafing dish. Was it initially a matter of "value"? A way of getting people to try dishes in what was at one time a very unfamiliar cuisine for many people? I'm mostly just musing -- it's never made any sense to me.

Dmnkly wrote:With apologies for the tangent, how is it that a cuisine so ill-suited to buffets somehow managed to adopt them as a hallmark? Indian makes sense, what with all of the simmered dishes that often improve when they have time to rest. But stir-fry suffers horribly if it sits for five minutes, to say nothing of hours in a chafing dish. Was it initially a matter of "value"? A way of getting people to try dishes in what was at one time a very unfamiliar cuisine for many people? I'm mostly just musing -- it's never made any sense to me.

I so agree with you, but the one on Roselle/Higgins is definitely NOT one of those places that has 50 items on it. It usually has like 6 hot entree type foods, a soup, some fruit, and a two fried appetizer type things. I'm not saying this makes it good in any way, but in my mind and palate, it makes it better than most of those chinese buffets that are just vast wastelands of 50 types of really bad food. I mostly liked the place because it was decent, and not overrun by the corporate lunch crowd since it was fairly hidden. I have found two really good items on the buffet each time that I've gone -probably about 6 times ttl. I found it to be a fair value everything considered.

Is that Chinese place next to the DOT drivers license renewal facility still there or not? In the mall where Tower Records used to be.

radiator wrote:Actually, if memory serves me, there's a pretty decent place at the Northeast corner of Higgins and Roselle. I can't remember the name, but the food was fresh and relatively cheap. Yu's is more expensive, but the quality is better, too.

This would be Jockey Wok and Rolls. Corny name, decent Chinese food. They also have dim sum carts on the weekends.

http://www.jockey2go.com/

Edited to add: On the website, they say the lunch buffet has thirty items. I've been there several times and think that's an overstatement. If memory serves, they usually have about 6 entrees, a couple of appetizers, a couple of sides and a few desserts (Jello and fruit).

Kim

Funny thing is...I actually ended up at Jockey on the day that I posted. Admittedly, many of the entrees tasted similar, but for 7 bucks, it was enough to satiate for the time being. I'm not sure I will be back, as I do want to try Yu's. The day I was there, they had the stalwarts such as General's Chicken and some sort of <insert> Beef, but some of the other non-standards were surprising, at least in my unexperienced chinese buffet eyes, such as salt and pepper crab legs, smelt, and salt and pepper shrimp (sometimes taking the salt literally). Not that they were terribly good, but it hit the spot.