I ran into college classmate John Dolan, who was also dining alone and studying at Buffet City, a predominantly Chinese all-you-can-eat restaurant on LA's Westside with their own website. The food is unspectacular but generally tasty (though virtually everything errs on the side of being overly sweet), and the ingredients are better than one might fear, except for the sushi, which is gross, with the exception of the California rolls. The fare is largely American chinese (e.g. General Tso's chicken) but with some more authentic dishes mixed in: the barbecued squid which I saw for the first time today (my 3rd trip, first for dinner) was just short (by being too sweet) of something you might find at a cantonese joint. They had tasty little egg custard dumplings, and I like their "chili chicken", which is essentially slices of dark meat stir fried with jalapeno.

I don't like eating chinese by myself or with only one or two other people because one can't then get the proper sampling of dishes at a given meal, which is the beauty of the Chinese a.y.c.e.  ¶ 3:53 PM