THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Great Chef Garden

THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Great Chef Garden Restaurant Review:

The intrepid eater has a new home in St. Louis. Almost underneath the new overpass of Woods Mill Road at Manchester Road sits a very un-typical Chinese restaurant. The light blue interior is marked by glass-bricked arches and a tank of non-edible fish, making the overall effect rather serene. Serene, however, is not what you get on the weekends when it bulges at the joists with large numbers of Asians from grandparents to toddlers helping themselves from an immense U-shaped buffet. Much of it involves the unfamiliar, things like seaweed with sesame sauce, Shanghai fried fish, beef tendon, jellyfish, but there are more common items, too, stir-fries, noodles, green beans, soups, the much-loved (deservedly, in this version) roast pork. There must be 70 items, all told---even pizza and chicken wings and crab Rangoon for the kids. Sweets, too, including a melon tapioca soup that you can't help but enjoy. The food is fresh, because the turnover is so fast, the variety fascinating, the quality high, and the people watching is pretty swell, too. Buffets every lunch and dinner, special dinner buffet Friday through Sunday evenings, dim sum Saturday and Sunday mornings. Plan to wait if you come at peak times.