China Best

As I mentioned in the Dave's Famous BBQ post, I asked my daughter what she wanted this week and the other was to eat sushi. She's never had sushi, though she thinks that California rolls are sushi, which they are not.

Not ever having real sushi, I thought it best to take her somewhere that serves a variety of food choices including several different kinds of sushi and some Chinese food. This led me to China Best in the St. Thomas Shopping Plaza in Owings Mills.

China Best has an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet, which in sushi world means crap sushi. It's not really crap, but it's not super great either. There were about 15-20 different kinds of sushi to choose, including several salmon, tuna, and white fish. There was one trey of shrimp sushi and one with octopus. However, about half of the choices were either shredded fake crab meat or whole fake crab meat. Most of the rolls included cream cheese or avocado. One tray had some hot melted sauce on top. I'm not sure what it was, but it was tangy, like a Thousand Island dressing, but at the same time slightly salty like a cheese.

My biggest complaint about the sushi is the size. These rolls are huge. I have a difficult time getting them in my mouth. My daughter didn't even try to get them in her mouth. She had to cut them in half. I've had sushi at several other restaurants and they are always smaller. But for some reason China Best seems to think they need to be the size of McDonald's hamburgers.

In addition to the sushi, we also had a cup of Hot and Sour soup. It wasn't too bad. I've had it before at China Best and it tasted like ass, meaning it was probably from the bottom of the 5-day old pot and slightly watered down. However, this time it was plenty hot and contained generous portions of mushrooms and tofu.

We finished the meal with our orange-flavored fortune cookie. Mine read, "Help, I'm being held captive in a fortune cookie factory."

The decor of the restaurant is old. I don't think it's been updated in 20 years. Maybe 30 years. It's very dark. The buffet is about $8 per person. Since it is close to work, we use China Best as the 'I'm hungry and want a ton of sushi' choice. On the other hand, if we want quality sushi, we will go to either Edo Sushi or Yuki sushi.

My daughter liked the sushi, so the next time we will try one of the other places.