{"id":722,"date":"2008-12-26T15:57:36","date_gmt":"2008-12-26T23:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/?p=722"},"modified":"2009-09-18T10:40:04","modified_gmt":"2009-09-18T17:40:04","slug":"gourmet-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/2008\/12\/26\/gourmet-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"Gourmet Garden (Petaluma, CA)"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s Christmas Day and time for our annual tradition of Jews eat Asian food on Christian holidays (why? you ask…because we get the day off and nothing else is usually open, though that’s changed in recent years).\u00a0 Normally we go down to Todai<\/a>, a chain of buffets with huge amounts of decent sushi and other Japanese and Chinese food.\u00a0 But the closest one is an hour away and recently changed ownership (less sushi & seafood, more meat, more money).<\/p>\n

So this year we decided to go to Gourmet Garden, a non-chain Japanese\/Chinese\/American buffet with a smaller selection at half the price.\u00a0 The real plus? it’s 3 miles from our house.<\/p>\n

Gourmet Garden Buffet<\/strong>
\n100 S. McDowell Blvd., Petaluma, CA 94954
\n(707) 778-3899
\nhttp:\/\/www.gourmetgardenbuffet.com\/<\/a>
\nOpen: 7 days, Lunch 11am-4pm, Dinner 4pm-9pm
\nParty room, party trays, and takeout available
\nLunch $8.29 (kids 6-10 $5.79, kids 2-5 $3.79)
\nDinner (M-Th) $11.99 (kids 6-10 $7.79, kids 2-5 $4.79)
\nDinner (F 4-9pm, Sat, Sun, Holiday all day) $12.49 (kids 6-10 $7.79, kids 2-5 $4.79)
\nKids under 2 free, Seniors over 65 10% off<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We went once before and I came away disappointed, so was reluctant to go again.\u00a0 On this trip, I realized I had misremembered.\u00a0 The food is actually pretty good.\u00a0 Everything is made fresh and tastes like something you’d get in a home kitchen.\u00a0 The disappointment was simply that most of the food has meat or egg or both and that doesn’t leave much I can eat.\u00a0 There are several safe dishes to be sure, but not the full variety you expect from a buffet.<\/p>\n

Let’s start with the sushi.\u00a0 At Gourmet Garden, the sushi station is the heart and soul of the place.<\/p>\n

\"Raymond<\/a>

Raymond the sushi chef<\/p><\/div>\n

A young smiling man (his picture doesn’t do him justice) named Raymond creates both standard and masterful sushi and sashimi dishes with the few ingredients he has in front of him. Unfortunately, each and every one of the sushi pieces has wasabi mayonnaise, which means Miriam poison (eggs).<\/p>\n

Raymond though is more than happy to make sushi to order.\u00a0 He offered Miriam a vegetable maki roll but she said nope, she wanted one with raw fish, and chose the salmon.\u00a0 He also made me a maki roll with eel and pickled turnip and some salmon nigiri (there’s a sushi FAQ<\/a> with pictures so you can sound as educated as I do).<\/p>\n

\"Sushi

Salmon nigiri sushi and shrimp dumplings<\/p><\/div>\n

Sushi is my favorite part of these buffets and it’s hard not to just be able to choose what I want and put it on my plate (some of the creations were just gorgeous too).\u00a0 So I limited myself to 3 special orders (16 small pieces, which Miriam ate several of) and enjoyed the rest of the food offerings.<\/p>\n

My usual way of working a buffet is to grab an employee (not a server, as they rarely know anything about the food) and get a rundown of what is and isn’t safe for me to eat.\u00a0 Unfortunately, not a single one of the buffet workers I asked spoke English.\u00a0 Several of them spoke Spanish (which I also speak) but were only guessing about the food ingredients.<\/p>\n

Raymond to the rescue again.\u00a0 He knew how every dish was made.\u00a0 He was so knowledgeable, in fact, that I asked if he owned the restaurant.\u00a0 No, he’s just the sushi chef, but he goes through the kitchen to see how all the food is made and then retains it all somehow.\u00a0 After I got permission to take his picture for my review, he asked me to tell my readers that he’s looking to find a young American girlfriend.\u00a0 A sweet man who knows how to cook, not a bad catch.<\/p>\n

\"Plate<\/a>

Plate of sushi and hot foods<\/p><\/div>\n

I ended up with several plates of good food.\u00a0 Above we have (from top and clockwise): salt & pepper shrimp (very good but messy), green beans (moderately spiced), seaweed salad (one of my favorites), family style tofu (I had a craving for braised cabbage as we drove to the restaurant and this dish satisfied it, the tofu was cooked perfectly too), eel maki, and shrimp with vegetables.<\/p>\n

On the plate below we have: steamed cod (the only miss of the night…it was cooked adequately but was too bland, it would have be good with a spicy sauce or mixed into another dish), broiled oysters (delicious if you get them fresh and choose the bigger juicier ones), and more family style tofu.<\/p>\n

\"Plate<\/a>

Plate of oysters, fish, and tofu<\/p><\/div>\n

Miriam asked for, surprise surprise, chicken and I found two she could eat: teriyaki and 5 spice. She also had noodles, sushi, fruit, and several pieces of marinated sashimi, before deciding it was too spicy.<\/p>\n

\"Miriam<\/a>

Miriam polishing off several plates of food<\/p><\/div>\n

I didn’t ask about dairy but I suspect most of the dishes were dairy-free.\u00a0 There was cheese in the salad bar and butter in some of the American dishes. I didn’t bother to ask about gluten either.\u00a0 Though, except for the noodles and dumplings, I would guess that the only gluten we ate was soy sauce (which was in almost every hot dish).\u00a0 A few choices were breaded but they all had egg in them so we didn’t eat them anyway.<\/p>\n

Because it’s a buffet and you can ignore rice and other starches, you can eat here lowcarb.\u00a0 Sashimi, seaweed, vegetables, tofu, a salad bar, meat, and soups.\u00a0 Some of the sauces might be a bit on the carby side for those who need to keep their carb counts way down. Vegetarians have good choices too with a lot of the lowcarb items plus rice, noodles, vegetable sushi, and bread.<\/p>\n

All of the desserts appeared to have dairy and eggs and wheat.\u00a0 They had some (out of season) fresh fruit and several canned fruits including lychees.<\/p>\n

\"Fruit

Fruit bowls<\/p><\/div>\n

The restaurant is all on one level with easy wheelchair access to tables an the buffet area.\u00a0 The buffet stations themselves are a bit hard to reach from a sitting position, but no worse than any salad bar.\u00a0 Nothing was burning inside and there was no noticeable propane or other smells, aside from the yummy food.\u00a0 We did not check out the bathrooms.<\/p>\n

With some careful navigation, Gourmet Garden can accommodate a variety of dietary restrictions.\u00a0 For those with none, you’ll find a decent variety of hot and cold dishes, all fresh and inviting.<\/p>\n

(Note: Prices & website updated as of 9\/18\/09.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s Christmas Day and time for our annual tradition of Jews eat Asian food on Christian holidays (why? you ask…because we get the day off and nothing else is usually open, though that’s changed in recent years).\u00a0 Normally we go down to Todai, a chain of buffets with huge amounts of decent sushi and other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26,32,40],"tags":[48,7,6,8,11,61,51,77,34,33,59,5,12],"class_list":["post-722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-restaurant","category-sfba","tag-asian-food","tag-dairy-free","tag-egg-free","tag-gluten-free","tag-lowcarb","tag-petaluma","tag-photos-family","tag-photos-food","tag-raw","tag-seafood","tag-sonoma-county","tag-vegan","tag-vegetarian"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=722"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":730,"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722\/revisions\/730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}