Moving

One Girls Crazy Outlook on life in Southern Maine



In December 2010 I moved to Southern Maine from a small town next to Bangor (Bangor is right in the center Maine and is one of the largest cities in Maine for those of you wondering if it's in Canada). Here are some crazy stories of outings, hikes, beer and just the general mayhem that is my life. Welcome. Enjoy. Love it.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Tin Tin Buffet

Location: 420 Alfred Street, Biddeford, ME 04005


Price: $$

Sunday we decided that we would take a trip to the Chinese buffet down the street. We had been taking a lot of trips into Portland lately and decided that we would hang out in Biddeford for the day instead.

It was a very good choice.

We got there at around 12 pm on a Sunday. This was a great time to go because by the time we left at about 1:15, the place was jam packed.

It was your typical "Chinese" buffet restaurant. We walked in and were sorta greeted by one of the staff. We were then seated in the middle section. It was a relatively large dinning room with plenty of staff. We ordered our drinks; water for him, Pepsi for me, and were on our way to the buffet within two minutes.

It. Was. HUGE.

When you walk up to the front of the buffet the overwhelming scent of "Chinese" food over takes you. I am pretty sure I gained 5 pounds just smelling this fatty deliciousness.

To the left was a larger bar area that just had salad fixings. This is good for "those people" who can't just splurge that one time. My theory is, if I want a salad I will go to Subway. If I am going to a "CHINESE" BUFFET, you better believe that I am going to walk out of there about 10 pounds heavier.

To the right was the typical "Chinese" food that we American's enjoy. Pork Fried Rice, Lo Mien, White Rice, some sort of shrimp dipped in sauce, coconut chicken, Japanese chicken, general tso's chicken, honey chicken, crab ragoons, Egg rolls.... I could go on and on. If it was "Chinese" food than it was on the buffet.

As I preceded to fill my plate up with the fried goodness, I decided, for some reason, to avoid anything green. My plate looked like this:

This was just plate one. I was so ashamed that I didn't even take pictures of plate two. That also did not have anything green on it.

My boyfriend, however, went with some green. His plate looked a lot prettier than mine, but I don't think it tasted any better than my fried yumminess.




The food was pretty much your typical "Chinese" buffet. The general tso's was slightly soggy, but still edible. The green beans that my boyfriend had were not good. They were much to hard for my liking, but I think he ate them all. The chicken fingers were out standing and you could actually bite them without the entire chicken center coming out of the fried part. The crab ragoons were a good texture, but not really tasty. The fried rice was very good along with the low mien. The red ribs were also very good, although some of them were a little harder and chewier than others. My second favorite was the egg roll.  They were just right. Not to chewy, not to hard and not to much filling so that it fell everywhere when you bite into it. Perfect.



In first place, however, was the amazing coconut chicken. This amazing chicken was deep fried, then slathered in a gooey cocnutty mixture. The chicken was cooked to perfection. It wasn't chewy and had just enough goo to make it perfect. The coconut flavoring was to die for.











Another epically amazing, but typical things about Tin Tin Buffet is the actual "American" food that they provide. Things like pizza, salad, mashed potato, and Macaroni and Cheese are offered to those people who... well don't like Chinese...I guess.

I was overly excited about the mashed sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top. Ya, delicious. They were very good. Wonderful flavor and I was happy to find out that there weren't any chunks! This is always a good thing when eating potatoes.

So, we both had gone up for seconds... due to this we were full... but I still needed to try the dessert. 

Most of it was okay. The carrot cake was okay. The twisty sorta like sugary concoction to the right was pretty good. The sugary nuts in the back were okay. The cookie in the middle was not good. At all. The Jello was... well... Jello.
The white, chocolaty looking thing... delicious. I mean, Delicious. Like, I almost went up and got another one delicious. But, even though my boyfriend ate "half" of it, I decided that I didn't need it.

After out fattening, delicious array of "Chinese" food we were full. The waiter brought us our fortune cookies, we paid at the front, and were on our way out the door in no time.

Not  before stopping at the "coy pond" aka the gold fish pond because coy are actually illegal in the United States. Well, that's the rumor anyway.

It was nothing special, but there was a turtle. It just added to the whole Chinese Buffet experience.

Over all I would highly recommend this place. Although its a little pricey on weekends ($10.50), I have heard that it is only $6 for lunch on the weekdays.

We plan on going back at some point, but we try not to eat "Chinese" food to much because it is very bad for you. However, if you have a craving, this would be the place to go.
By the way, if you are wondering why I am putting quotation marks around the word Chinese is because we all know that this isn't real "Chinese" food. It's not even close. In fact if, Chinese people ate this food on a day to day basis than I am sure the United States wouldn't be the country with the highest obesity rate.

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