Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant

To say we did a lot of driving on this road trip would be a understatement.  Most of it was pretty boring with nothing interesting to see or do.  Furthermore, the choice of restaurants was so poor on our drive from Fremont to LA, we didn't even bother stopping!  So on the leg that involved heading from Bryce Canyon over to Salt Lake City, we already knew that fast food might be our only hope.  However, I had a silly idea...  Why don't we stop in Fillmore and eat a Chinese buffet?  Viv looked at me blankly.   Yes, this was not exactly the most appetizing nor smartest idea I've even come up with.  But I made enough of a case for it and therefore we stopped at Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant...  in the middle of nowhere...

When we arrived, a big tour bus carrying Chinese tourists was just leaving, so I guess it was a good sign???  Well, the place definitely could use some TLC, especially the washrooms, but oh well we were committed to eating there.  There were 2 buffet stations with an array of usual items and a few strange ones mixed in.  One of which was the pig's feet as well as pig's stomach.  Personally I love both, but I'm not sure how many others would agree with me.  They were fine with little gaminess and the desired texture of gelatinous while tender.  Some more familiar items included fried chicken wings, fried rice and beef & broccoli.  Nothing remarkable about any of them except that the wings were pretty large, juicy inside and crispy on the outside.

The other section featured a mish mash of things including orange chicken, tomato and eggs, spicy garlic eggplant, spring rolls, stir-fried thick noodles, mushrooms, tofu, fried rice, shanghai bak choy and mustard greens.  If we had to rate the appearance of the food on scale of 1-to-10, I would give it a 5.  Yah, not the most appealing food to look at but it did eat okay.  The noodles were not overly greasy while being chewy and mildly seasoned.  The veggies were mostly overdone except for the broccoli.  Seasoning on that was also rather conservative.  On the other hand, the eggplant was fairly garlicky and spicy.  We weren't super fond of the orange chicken as it was a bit dry with a soggy exterior.  It also could've been more impactful as it lacked tang.

At the very least, there was variety and the food was fairly traditional, which was surprising.  There was no question that the food wasn't outstanding, yet it was not terrible either.  Considering its location, I guess one shouldn't expect too much.  Now the place used to be a lot cheaper, so we didn't feel that the pricing was necessary inexpensive either (given the variety and quality of food).  Ultimately, it did the job for us and we didn't have to go for some random fast food.

The Good:
- It's okay given the circumstances
- People seemed pretty nice
- Some traditional Chinese dishes

The Bad:
- Not as cheap as you might think
- The place needs a deep cleaning