Asian Palace, the Chinese buffet at NW39th and Portland, was one of the first “big” Chinese buffets I remember opening around these parts. There were plenty of Chinese buffets around town before it, but most of those were strip mall-based hole in the wall joints with limited seating and limited menu choices. When Asian Palace moved foodin to the original Casa Bonita location, real estate was no longer an issue. The restaurant is huge — so big, in fact, that the east side of the dining area is never used. Where the competition had two hot serving areas, the Asian Palace has six.

Back in the mid-90s Susan and I hit the Asian Palace fairly frequently, but over time other Chinese Buffets popped up that were newer, bigger, better, and closer. Google Maps lists seven Chinese restaurant in Yukon alone: Kim Son, New China, two Hunan Expresses, Golden Gate, the Great Wall, and the Yukon Super Buffet. Excluding all of those, if you take I-40 east from our house to visit the Asian Palace you’ll pass Lin’s Chinese Buffet, Panda Express, China One, Jin Wei Buffet, the Golden Palace Buffet, and China House before you get there. Most of those places are newer and, unfortunately, all of them are better.

The fam and I decided to give the Asian Palace one last chance today. Upon entering, I immediately noticed all the hints of a place that’s not doing well. The sushi and Mongolian BBQ areas were empty and unmanned. The large wishing well/fountain was waterless. Near the rear of the restaurant, large sections of carpet had been removed, revealing the concrete floor below. When we ordered our drinks, the kids had to work their way down the list to find something they would drink (they ended up with Sprites, after we learned they didn’t have root beer or lemonade).

I’m willing to overlook a lot of things if a restaurant has good food, but unfortunately the Asian Palace no longer delivers in that category either. Almost everything on the buffet was old, cold, burnt, or some combination of those three things. Susan said her Egg Fu Young was so burnt she couldn’t eat it. Most of the meat-based dishes I tried (Kung Pao, Pepper Chicken) were full of cold meat — and what meal wouldn’t be complete without someone else’s hair in it! (I didn’t say anything at the table, as I think Susan was looking for a reason to leave by this point.) I did find sushi on the buffet and it had obviously come straight from the freezer (the first one I tried had tiny pieces of ice in the middle). The kids fared a bit better with their meals … then again, they only eat sweet and sour chicken, Jell-O, and sugar bread, all of which I’m guessing are pretty tough to screw up.

Dessert consisted of small slices of cake (obviously right out of a box) and soft-serve ice cream (vanilla only; the handle for the chocolate was broken off). They didn’t even have “bananas in red sauce,” which I thought Oklahoma state law required every Chinese buffet to carry. We also never saw any fortune cookies.

I didn’t make a scene or even complain to the waitress (wouldn’t have mattered; she wouldn’t have understood). On our way out I took one final look around and let out a small sigh. There’s simply too many other (and better) Chinese restaurants for us to ever return to the Asian Palace.