Robin Garr's LOUISVILLE Restaurant Reviews

*** Chinatown Chinese Restaurant
4000 Dutchmans Lane
(502) 896-9888
Remember New Orleans House, Louisville's old temple to seafood gluttony, where you could pig out on all-you-can-eat shrimp, oysters, crab legs and lots more goodies and then finish off with a steak or lobster dinner? Originally downtown, later in the 'burbs, New Orleans House closed its doors a few years ago, a victim of changing times perhaps, or just one of those things.

But I discovered to my surprise recently that the eat-till-you-burst seafood buffet is alive and well again in our city, this time with an Asian flair: Several all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets are now offering an all-you-can-eat seafood repast on weekends, and none does it better than my favorite of the genre, Chinatown Chinese Restaurant.

For its everyday fare, I rate this place in a dead heat with its East End rival New World Buffet. Both understand that keeping stir-fried entrees delectably fresh and hot requires putting out small portions and keeping track of the situation so diners don't get grumpy about empty pans or mushy, overcooked dishes.

You can get standard Chinese dishes of average quality here, but the real shtick is its seven-days-a-week lunch and dinner buffet, an all-you-can-eat extravaganza.

Five large steam tables - far and away the largest Chinese-buffet selection in the city - bear a startling assortment of stir-fries and batter-fried goodies, a couple of Chinese soups and a variety of desserts. The dishes are surprisingly well-made, especially for buffet fare.

If you're hungry and have a powerful hankering for Chinese food, you can get more to eat here for less than just about anyplace else in town.

But the weekend seafood banquet stands alone. Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 4:30-10:30 p.m., a modest $12.99 toll entitles you to not only the full regular buffet but an array of seafood specialties as well. Several smaller tables bolster the regular buffet and offer, in no particular order, mussels with black bean sauce, stuffed mussels and stuffed clams. Squid with garlic sauce and fat peeled cocktail shrimp. Shrimp in the shell; oysters and clams on the half shell. Tiny white scallops, as white and firm as hominy grains. Batter-fried shrimp and bacon-wrapped shrimp, fried catfish and an impressive mound of king crab legs, with hot drawn butter to dip them in.

As with its regular buffet, everything is impressively well prepared and fresh. Particular standouts included the mussels with black beans, a salty, savory dish that ranks among the best items I've been served at any Chinese restaurant anywhere; squid in garlic sauce was perfectly prepared, firm without being chewy, with crisp green peppers in a warmly spicy sauce.

With the buffet bargain, all these huge piles of seafood and Chinese fare, enough to hold us for days, with steaming black tea, came to about $30 plus tip for quick and efficient bussing. $