Chen’s Cooking
Yesterday, we visited a new restaurant, just around the corner - Chen’s Cooking. It’s in Stuttgart Zuffenhausen, so almost within walking distance from my place.
The restaurant is clean, open, with rather modern furniture. Staff is Asian without any exceptions that I would have noticed and extremely friendly and helpful.
We were greeted and got a table (five people); After some time, our waiter turned up to explain the special buffet procedures. They have:
- Teppanyaki: You select raw ingredients for grilling; Give them to a cook and it’s being prepared in front of your eyes, with lots of spices and sauce
- Wok: You again select raw ingredients; They are put into boiling water, then grilled in a wok mixed with a sauce of your choice (you can choose from seven different ones, including Thai-Curry, Tomato, Soy and others)
- Regular Chinese buffet: Choose from different salad ingredients, pre-cooked duck, pork, soup, rice, and so on
- Old-school order by menu: As in any Chinese restaurant, you get a (small) menu where you can select your food
What’s really nice is that you get the complete buffet (incl. Teppanyaki & Wok) for about 9€ for lunch and afternoon and 15€ in the evening. 15€ might sound steep, but you have to consider that a regular soup/meal/dessert dish is about the same price, and the buffet is all-you-can-eat.
You should definitely try all of the stuff the first time you’re there, but not necessarily too much of it all. Teppanyaki is extremely well-flavored in my opinion, though I had the impression the meat (chicken, lamb, beef) could have taken some more time (to be more well-done). The wok dishes are rich in variety because of the many sauces to choose, and there’s some of the taste of meat fondue, which I really love. Also, I urge you to try some of the Tiramisu - it’s not often that you find it’s so good in a regular restaurant; Plus, it has banana flavor, which is a nice speciality.
As some people find that you can judge food places by their rest rooms: It was nice, clean, smelled nice, and it had paper towels. There’s just nothing to criticise here.
One downside of the evening were the quite long times our waiter/waitress took for preparing our drinks. It didn’t seem like they were so stressed, but they still took their time, sometimes needed to be reminded about the outstanding orders. The food is very spicy and full-flavored, sometimes hot, so having something to drink is really a necessity.
But that’s just a small loss. We all really liked the new restaurant and I can whole-heartedly recommend it. Definitely a place I’d like to spend more time at. 
