Twin Dragons Grand Buffet

Flavor: Chinese-American in all its glory

Ambiance: Grand Central Station with eggrolls

Back when eating Chinese was still an exotic pastime, menus at most Chinese-American restaurants instructed diners to order “one from column A, one from column B”—a mix-and-match approach that meant two chop sueys would never grace the same table.

But as Americans became more proficient with their chopsticks, they started to chafe at being told they couldn’t have both the chicken chow mein and the egg-flower soup. Their hunger for salty Cantonese dishes was becoming insatiable: They wanted all of column A, most of column B and a stack of almond cookies for dessert.

If you listen closely, you can almost hear Norman As-sing’s ghost saying “I told you so.” In 1849, As-sing opened Macao and Woosung on a busy San Francisco street corner in hopes of luring fellow immigrants and thrifty panners who hadn’t yet struck gold. His restaurant, considered the nation’s first Chinese buffet, offered customers all the grub they could eat for a buck. As-sings’s innovation apparently inspired a raft of Bay Area imitators, but the fad was long forgotten by the time Chinese food began to catch on nationwide. It wasn’t until after World War II that the true Chinese buffet emerged.

Now there are now thousands of Chinese buffets huddled around America’s exit ramps and standing sentry at its strip malls. It’s awfully easy to assume that these restaurants, with their lacquer-framed pictures of pandas and similarly outfitted steam tables as long as bowling alleys, are all the same.

But there’s more than one way to fry a wonton. While many buffets are content to stock their serving lines with meat-heavy concoctions slick with grease, there are places that justly pride themselves on superlative renditions of such marginalized dishes as chicken lo mein, moo shu pork and shrimp egg rolls.

Twin Dragons Grand Buffet in Brevard is one of those spots. Its offerings eclipse not only the items languishing on other local buffets, but many of the dishes proffered by the region’s sit-down Chinese restaurants, which presumably make their food to order. Its astoundingly fresh pan-Asian fare ranks among the best Chinese-American available in Western North Carolina (which may sound like a backhanded compliment, but stick with me).

The maximum capacity at Twin Dragons, an impressively gargantuan building with a pagoda façade, is 388 people. I know this because I read the sign issued by the fire marshal. But I probably could have counted diners and reached the same tally: The restaurant has little trouble filling every one of its seats. The last time I lunched there, the soup line included Spanish-speaking construction workers, an elderly couple and a group of men in business suits. At $6.25 per person, Twin Dragons is irresistible even to those who aren’t obsessed with finding a good bowl of hot-and-sour.

Fortunately for those who are infatuated with the vinegary soup, Twin Dragons’ rendition is supremely passable. Too often I find myself having to jam my faux-porcelain Chinese soup spoon through a molasses-like muddle of overly thickened soy sauce, but Twin Dragons’ hot-and-sour is refreshingly brothy. It’s a better starter than the Tom Yum soup, which was marred by an oily finish and cautious seasoning.

Bravery surfaced elsewhere on the buffet, most notably in the form of a trayful of grimacing pink crayfish and a superb Shanghai cabbage dish. The darling cabbages almost seemed to have bolted through the steamer and found their own way to the line: The kitchen rightly resisted mussing up their flavor with salt or sauce. They tasted as fresh as they looked.

Another vegetarian entree—Buddha’s Delight, a mélange of water chestnuts, carrots and cauliflower—was also sit-up-and-take-notice good. The tofu was crisped, but not overcooked. There may be little in the way of healthy eating at most Chinese buffets, no matter how good, but indulging in Buddha’s signature dish at least feels virtuous.

Other standout dishes included a delectably tender Mongolian Beef and a Hot and Spicy Chicken that nearly lived up to its billing. I also liked a nuanced Ground Pork with Green Beans that might have become a salt lick in lesser hands.

With dozens of dishes on offer, statistics say there’s bound to be a few losers in the bunch. And, indeed, there is evidence of cut corners. Crab wontons—the go-to dish for many Chinese-American food aficionados—are sparsely stuffed. A Seafood Delight of corn niblets, square-cut carrots and watery baby shrimp that could have been swiped from an airline shrimp cocktail smacked of freezer cleaning. I tried the French fries, pizza and pork chimichanga—accompanied by a neglected canister of skinned-over guacamole—but there’s no reason you should.

The plump chunks of chicken in the fried rice pave the way for forgiveness. Twin Dragons also serves up a better-than-average lo mein, which—while slightly overcooked—can be twirled on a fork without sending splatters of grease across the table.

A meal at Twin Dragons entitles you to a fortune cookie, but most diners have bigger plans for dessert. “Ah, the sinful section,” one buffet-goer remarked to me as he dutifully nabbed a section of pineapple before venturing deep into Sugarland. You know the part in every diet infomercial when a voice announces, “Yes! You can still eat all this!” while a camera pans over a stomachache-inducing array of desserts? I’m willing to wager those shots are filmed at Twin Dragons.

The cake buffet alone would make a church-potluck planner blush: There’s peach cake, strawberry cake, raspberry cake, chocolate cake, birthday cake (with almost 400 people in house, chances are someone’s celebrating), tres leches cake and marble cake. Don’t like cake? There are red, green, orange and Chinese jellos; puddings; sesame balls; fruits, including lychees and longans; macaroons; and cream puffs and ice cream, which can be garnished with M&M’s or gummy bears, assuming you’re of age (children under nine are prohibited from approaching the tubs of candy).

But that’s about the only rule at Twin Dragons, where diners are encouraged to get their fill of Chinese-American classics without columnar constraints. Considering the sometimes sad state of Chinese food in the mountains, that’s a directive worth following.