The Jonesville Wal-Mart is a popular place for Hillsdale students – they claim that you can buy anything from hair products to hunting spears. But students with a hankering for hot-and-sour soup can get their fix next door at King Buffet.
The restaurant, which opened in 2003, has become a staple for Hillsdale students and others who want to experience and enjoy Chinese food.
“It’s a good mix of Chinese, American, and Mongolian grill foods, ” freshman Erich Steger, a first-timer at King Buffet, said.
The restaurant offers a smorgasbord of food from various parts of Asia, including a highly popular Mongolian barbecue.
Senior Ian Blodger, now a King Buffet regular, said that the restaurant opened new doors for him.
“I hadn’t really been exposed to Chinese food before my junior year,” he said. “I was really resistant to trying new things, especially food, because I’m kind of a picky eater. But when I went to King Buffet, I actually liked the food.”
Ian said that, at that point, he changed his mind about eating Chinese food and has liked it ever since.
But there’s more to King Buffet than good food, Blodger said. There’s also excellent service.
“The employees who work there are really, really nice,” Blodger said. “and they were helpful in helping me decide what I wanted. Ever since the first time I went there, they’ve always remembered who I was.”
He remembers one King Buffet employee in particular.
“The woman who usually is there — one of the employees — she’s just been really, really nice,” he says. “Whenever I go in, she says ‘hi’ and asks how we’re doing and how our classes are.”
That employee is Li Shao, who co-owns the restaurant with her husband, Jimmy Yang. For Shao, cooking Chinese food is a no-brainer.
“Our family was always in the restaurant business,” she said. “My mom had a take-out restaurant in New Jersey, in Perth Amboy. I was working in the restaurant when I was sixteen.”
Shao moved with her husband to Michigan in 2003 to start their own business — but opening a restaurant in Michigan is different than opening one in New Jersey, she said.
“We have to adjust our taste locally. I think people here, they tend to eat sweeter food. That’s why we use a lot of sugar in our dishes, not salt – if you go down south, people like spicier stuff, but I think in this area, in Hillsdale County, people like their food to be sweeter,” Shao said.
Shao uses the comments of her customers to help determine how best to season her dishes.
“They will give you some very constructive criticism that you have to take. They say, ‘oh, this dish should be…’ and when you think about it, they’re true.”
These adjustments in the menu are not only due to local, but also national preferences. American Chinese food, Shao said, is very different from authentic Chinese cuisine.
“When you find a Chinese restaurant in this area, it’s not authentic Chinese food, unlike when you go to a Chinese restaurant in New York’s Chinatown,” she said. “It’s different; you have to adjust your taste level accordingly to local people’s taste. Otherwise, if you pull one of the dishes from Chinatown, and you display it here at the buffet bar, it’s not going to be popular.”
Many Chinese restaurants, including King Buffet, have created a sort of American-Chinese cuisine – dishes like chow mein, egg foo young, and General Tso’s chicken – that please the palate of the average American and are still indubitably Chinese. And while these dishes have become a staple in the American-Chinese restaurants, each cook puts his or her own twist on the dish, Shao said.
“Most Chinese restaurants have a lot of the same menu, but they do it the way they want it,” Shao said. “It’s still called black pepper chicken at my place, and at other restaurants in different places, but it might come out differently.”
Shao can still trace the origins of many of her dishes.
“People like sweet-sour chicken a lot; it’s very popular. But is it Chinese food? Maybe, because in Canton, they have sweet-sour chicken.”
Shao herself is from Fujian, a province in the southern part of China.
“Fujian is right on the coast,” she said. “They have a lot of seafood down there. In Michigan, because we are up north, we don’t have a lot of choices for seafood.”
But every once in awhile, Shao misses food from home.
“Sometimes when I’m craving for something, I have to go back and cook something for myself,” she said.
