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1428 North State Street
Orem, Utah
801-426-9665

Taste 4 stars
Value 4 stars
Service 1 star

Lunch prices:
Adults: $6.99
Children 11 and under: 50¢ per year

Dinner prices:
Adult: $8.79
Children: 65¢ per year

Distance from temple:
Provo: 6.4 miles
Mount Timpanogos: 6.6 miles

For the first, official temple trip restaurant review, my husband and I decided to patronize a restaurant we have been to many times and quite enjoyed. We chose the Chinese Gourmet, which is located conveniently between two different temples.

Chinese Gourmet is an all-you-can-eat buffet that offers a Mongolian barbecue, six different tables of food, including a salad bar, a dessert bar, a fruit/pudding/jello bar, and a beverage area. Obviously a lot of the fare is not Chinese, and some of the rest is Americanized Chinese, so if you're the kind that requires authentic ethnic, some of this won't appeal to you.

You prepay your meal at the register on the way in. It's a bit pricey to take the whole family very often ($68.00 including 15% tax and tip for my family), but it is not bad for a couple. Beverages are included in the price.

When we arrived, we stood in line at the cashier for six or seven minutes to pay, with no one at the register to accept payments. Eventually, a man came back and began taking orders. Within a few minutes we were seated. The restaurant is generally clean and orderly, but seating is cramped and the restaurant is noisy. It's a nice casual meal spot, but not the place for an intimate meal.

A central feature at Chinese Gourmet is the Mongolian barbecue. This is a “create your own stir-fry” portion of the buffet. First you fill a bowl with your choice of noodles, vegetables and fruits (carrots, zucchini, baby corn, celery, water chestnuts, mushrooms, pineapple, etc.), meat (chicken, beef, pork), and then add any variety of sauces. I recommend the house sauce and soy sauce with some minced garlic.

Next you place your bowl on the counter where the chef takes it to the large, round griddle and cooks up multiple selections at once. When each is complete, it is placed on a plate and set back on the counter.

As usual, I head here first and create a tasty appetizer.

Sam heads to the salad bar. It's a reasonably stocked, typical American offering, but nothing special.

As soon as my stir-fry is done, I head to the table to meet my husband. About a yard in front of me, a waitress drops some plates on the floor and a mass of cocktail sauce splashes off the floor and onto one of my shoes, my pants, and my blouse. The shoes and pants are brown. The blouse, unfortunately, is light turquoise.

The waitress apologized briefly and then leaves to clean up the floor. I stand there dripping in sauce.

I put down my food and walk to the bathroom. On the way I inform the manager that I have just been doused in cocktail sauce. He looks up, but says nothing.

Once in the bathroom, I try to wash my sleeve under the sink. The soap dispenser won't work, so I take off the top and dip my fingers in only to cut my thumb on the plastic edge. Then as I wash, I continue to find more and more sauce. With one arm and half my front utterly soaked, I finally turn fully around and look back over my shoulder to see the damage. I've got sauce on my elbow, my side, and a five-inch blob of cocktail sauce on the back of my blouse.

At this point, no one has come looking for me, so I head back to the manager. I tell him that I cannot wash my shirt while on my body, due to the extent of the damage. He looks at me, then says, “I'm sorry.” I tell him, again, that I can't wash my shirt on my body, that I can't eat covered with sauce, and I have to go somewhere after dinner. He looks at me some more. As I'm wondering why he hasn't offered to assist (perhaps by getting someone to clean my blouse?) I tell him that I need something to wear so that I can clean my own blouse without being required to stand nude in the ladies' room.

Finally another employee is called. I tell him I need something to wear so that I can clean my blouse. He looked at me. Then he left. I stand on display, being admired by onlookers. The guy comes back about five minutes later with a Chinese Gourmet uniform. Correction. A Chinese Gourmet uniform sized to fit a slimmish, teenaged waitress. In the absence of a white cane and/or a seeing eye dog, I am pretty sure he could see that I'm not a slimmish-teenaged-waitress-sized gal.

I told him that there was no way the uniform would fit me. He looked at me.

Finally I turned and went back to the bathroom to spend a romantic evening plunging and scrubbing. I removed my shirt and squeezed into the charming, form-fitting polo shirt. Then I headed back to the sink. Since the sink and adjacent counter were not terribly clean, I first got some paper towel and cleaned up the area. Then I moved in on the stains.

In case you aren't familiar with cocktail sauce stains, just let me point out that a blood-bath would be easier to remove. It took me 20 minutes to get the shirt decently sauce-free, but I doubt the stains will ever come out completely.

By this time, over half of the shirt is soaked. There is no hand dryer. So I return to the dining room, barely breathing in my skin-diver shirt, carrying my ruined, dripping blouse.

The manager looks down as I pass. The waitress who did the deed hides in back. I walk back to the table where Sam is waiting. My Mongolian barbecue is cold. I'm not much in the mood for love.

I arrange my blouse across a chair to dry (yeah, right) and, since we now have only 18 minutes left to eat and since I'm too embarrassed to slink my way to the buffet I eat some of the cold food on my plate.

A bit later, my doting husband goes to the car to get me a coat to cover my near nakedness. Now I can dine freely—in a winter coat in the 74 degree building!

Our waitress (not to be confused with the waitress) comes by and asks how I am. “I have to leave to go somewhere in 10 minutes and I have only a soaking wet shirt with stains on it.” She tells me it was an accident. I told her I understood that the sauce-flinging was not intentional, but that I still needed to go somewhere with nothing but a skin-tight restaurant uniform to wear. Is there some way to dry the shirt? Some way to resolve this? She says there is nothing she can do. I ask to speak to the manager.

After some minutes, the manager the down-cast eyes comes over. I tell him my predicament. He gives me a restaurant gift certificate for $10.00. But the $10.00 is crossed out and “one meal” is written in its place.

We leave the restaurant and run to Wal-Mart. We dash in and buy a $10.00 shirt and rush back to get to the movie. When we get to the theater, the movie has already started.

Just to clarify. We spent $18.85 on dinner. We ended up with about 20 total minutes of eating time before we had to leave. I was forced to dine in a uniform two sizes too small. I left with a ruined blouse and a coupon for one free dinner (meaning that I would have to pay for another dinner unless I wanted to dine alone) that I only received because I complained. I had to pay $10.00 for a replacement shirt. We missed our movie.

Chinese gourmet does have some tasty food. But my note-taking ability was greatly hampered due to the unexpected laundressing duties and the consequent rush to eat.

If you go, wear your grubby clothes and don't miss the Mongolian barbecue. Try those calorie-laden cream-cheesy, fried wonton thingees. The sweet and sour shrimp (or was it chicken?) is generally pretty good, too, although not really “gourmet.” You can eat yummy fresh shrimp to your heart's content as long as you don't pass out trying to peel them. (I think leaving the peels on is the way these buffets prevent you from actually eating something really good.) Pass on the dessert table. Instead go get some of that pistachio pudding, marshmallow, whipping cream, pineapple, fluff delight from the “fruit” bar. (Authentic Chinese at it's best!) Unless you had too much at the last ward picnic.

Alison Moore Smith is a 61-year-old entrepreneur who graduated from BYU in 1987. She has been (very happily) married to Samuel M. Smith for 40 years. They are parents of six incredible children and grandparents to two astounding grandsons. She is the author of The 7 Success Habits of Homeschoolers.