Grand Forks: A History of American Dining in 128 Reviews

by Marilyn Hagerty

  I have twice eaten lunch at the Great Wall Buffet, which opened April 20 at 3555 Gateway Drive, a location that had been empty since a similar restaurant was closed several months ago. Now, under a new lease and ownership, the restaurant is busy, and its huge buffet table offers more than 100 choices.

  The staff is attentive, friendly and accommodating. They welcome you and seat you promptly and offer you a cup of tea or other beverage, which is included in the cost of the buffet.

  I joined Ruth Holweger (RH) for lunch on my first visit to the Great Wall. We sipped tea and chatted before going around the buffet. We marveled at the array of food available and agreed it was more of a Chinese-American buffet. You find such things as pizza rolls here.

  RH was saying the choices were “incredible,” and she especially liked the crab salad. We went back and selected some fruit for dessert, and I had the obligatory almond cookie to end a Chinese meal. I noticed there were six kinds of ice cream along with Jell-O, tapioca pudding and other desserts.

  You get an amazing amount of food for $5.95 during the lunch hours, from 11 A.M. to 4 P.M. And there is a 15 percent discount for senior citizens and disabled people (but I notice you have to ask for it). The dinner cost is $8.25 for adults. Children age 6 to 10 pay $4.75 and from ages 3 to 5, it’s $3.50.

  The Great Wall Buffet is well-arranged, with a series of four dining areas set off by glass dividers with etchings of animals, fish, flamingos and flowers. The buffet table in the center is well tended, and a wall mirror gives the illusion of a large space. There are new chairs and tables with laminated light wood tops. Windows on three sides of the building make the restaurant bright.

  Great Wall was just as busy on my second visit for lunch as it was the first. On that day, I found some stuffed mushrooms that were delicious. I noticed a lot of heavy-duty eaters go there. It’s too bad that some people take food they don’t eat and leave it on their plates. In all fairness, they should take only what they can eat, since they are free to go back for more. Some customers prefer to come in and fill a box to take out.

  The restaurant says it specializes in Cantonese, Szechuan and Hunan cuisine, though that might be a stretch. There is no distinct style of Chinese cuisine to the buffet. Customers seem to favor the sesame chicken, honey chicken and sweet-and-sour chicken. I especially liked the sliced strawberries in a light sauce.

  Some customers like to use the wooden chopsticks and ask the staff how to go about it. I like to try. Most use the eating utensils that come wrapped in small, lightweight napkins. These napkins, of course, are too small to be much good. I noticed one man with the napkin tucked into his shirt collar like a bib.

  Linda Chan, who is listed as owner on the restaurant’s license, originally is from mainland China and came here from New York, where she attended a two-month business school in Chinatown. She has taken over ownership, succeeding Hong Peng, who was forced to close the restaurant last year after charges of hiring illegal aliens.

  Chan, whose Chinese name is Wen Yu, says she has eight on the staff, all with American citizenship or American green cards and proper documentation for working here.

  Great Wall continues to operate at this location in Grand Forks.

  Paradiso Completes Expansion, Almost Doubling in Size

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  MAY 18, 2005

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  With its ongoing remodeling project, Paradiso Mexican Restaurant on South Washington Street now has seating for 350. And that makes it one of the largest restaurants in Grand Forks. The restaurant is planning a grand reopening and has a new menu coming out in June.

  Paradiso has a new reception area and additional dining rooms. I was seated in a new dining area with nicely tiled wainscoting when I went there for lunch the other day. The booths have high backs, and the place has new leaded-glass windows, new lamps and new artwork.

  I ordered the Luncheon Taco Platter ($4.39), a large corn tortilla filled with seasoned beef and served with lettuce, Spanish rice and refried beans. This was plenty to eat and good enough to order again. The tortilla was crisp and thin. The meat within was lean and well-seasoned. The Spanish rice has a nice tomato taste with a touch of garlic. Even the refried beans were tasty—and I am not a big fan of most refried beans.

  Sia Anvarina, the general manager, invited me on a tour of the kitchen when I interviewed him after lunch. It is huge, and well-arranged with four different entryways. In the back, Michael Briones was tending a huge vat of Spanish rice and keeping check on chicken cooking in another enormous pot. Briones has been with Paradiso 11 years.

  Most people who go often to Paradiso have their own preferences for enchiladas, burritos and tacos. Fajitas are far and away the bestsellers, with 900 to 1,400 going out the kitchen each day. When Anvarina eats in one of the Paradiso restaurants in North Dakota, he orders the Santa Fe Salad. It’s made with char-broiled mesquite chicken breast with greens, Mandarin oranges and red onion rings and poppy-seed dressing ($7.99).

  Paradiso started in Grand Forks in 1975 and first was known as La Campana. Anvarina has been associated with the Mexican restaurant for 25 years. He also is general manager for the Paradiso restaurants in Fargo, Bismarck, Jamestown and Minot. With its renovation, Paradiso almost has doubled in size from 3,000 square feet to 5,500 square feet. There is space for parking in two lots. The restaurant has 140 full- and part-time employees. As many as 40 to 50 people show up every day to get a free dinner on their birthdays with proper identification.

  Paradiso’s four North Dakota locations, including the one in Grand Forks, continue to operate.

  3rd Street Slowly Builds Up Clientele

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  SEPTEMBER 7, 2005

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  In November, the 3rd Street Cafe will mark its first year of business. It’s been a godsend to people working downtown who want a place to grab breakfast, and a convenience for people who like to meet for lunch or coffee downtown.

  The cafe is in the location occupied, in pre-flood days, by the Dacotah, which had been a gathering place. Laurie Bergman, who owns and operates the 3rd Street Cafe, is excited about the way her business slowly is building.

  Before she went full-time into the cafe business, she had worked 10 years as a car saleswoman. She knows it will take time and effort to keep building on volume. She offers breakfast specials between 7 and 9 A.M. during the week. She gives one free lunch a week in a drawing from business cards left by customers.

  Improvements have been slow and steady. When it opened, for instance, Laurie had a friend use water paint to put the name of the cafe on the window, and it kept washing or fading off. Now, there is a permanent painting on the window and on the door. When it opened, there were wooden booths and tables. Now, there is a second row of booths that are soft and comfortable. Now, the tables have real cloths on them. There is a valance across the bottom of the front window. It has taken on the look of a place where you can find home cooking.

  When I went in recently around noon, I ordered two scrambled eggs and an English muffin. The waitress said, “Sorry, we don’t serve breakfast after eleven.”

  “OK,” I said. “I’ll have a cup of chicken dumpling soup and a half of a ham on rye sandwich” ($3.79). This actually was a better choice, anyway. The sandwich was small, but great. So was the spear of dill pickle that came with it. The chicken dumpling soup was Grade A, except that it was not hot enough. I found out later I really could have had breakfast. The waitress was new and didn’t know.

  I stopped in again for breakfast on my way to the Farmers Market on a Saturday. I knew 3rd Street Cafe serves breakfast until 2 P.M. on weekends. So I ordered two scrambled eggs, sausage and an English muffin. The waitress said, “Actually, we are out of English muffins.” I said, “Fine. I will have wheat toast.” The breakfast was good.

  The cafe bakes its own pastries, and is proud of its pie, made by Laurie’s mother, Marlene Hanson. The lemon pie, though, is a specialty prepared by Jenny Brandon of the waitstaff. Laurie also
is enlisting her father, Duane Hanson, for soup making. With her brother and sister, Rick and Becky Hanson, Laurie has operated the Kegs Drive-In for the past four years.

  Lunch or “dinner” specials are featured on weekdays in 3rd Street Cafe. Recent offerings have been hamburger macaroni hotdish with Jell-O and a roll ($4.89) and roast pork with applesauce and mashed potatoes and gravy, vegetable and roll ($6.49). With cooler weather, chili will be offered every day.

  Dinner choices include chicken, walleye, shrimp, hamburger steak, liver and onions and chicken strips. Prices range from $6.19 to $6.49. And there are burgers and sandwiches.

  Pluses include nice-quality napkins, nice table settings with underlining plates, and generous servings of vegetables and coleslaw. There are very nice large salt and pepper shakers made of glass with chrome tops. Service is not swift, but then, this is not fast food. Sometimes, food listed on the menu is not available.

  3rd Street Cafe closed and was replaced by an Italian restaurant, Bella Vino.

  Panda Buffet Features Unique Mongolian Stir-Fry

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  NOVEMBER 9, 2005

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  “Hi, how many?” asked the waitress at Panda Buffet on Columbia Road. It was a day in late October, and I was meeting Marge Leigh (ML) for lunch at this popular restaurant.

  “Two,” I said, as I sat down on one of six straight chairs to wait near the entry. Although the place was fairly full during the noon hour, it was relatively quiet. You could hear some music, probably Chinese, in the background.

  ML arrived, and we had a table by the windows on the north side of the restaurant. We formed a game plan. I decided to go for the Mongolian stir-fry, which comes with the price of lunch ($6.49). ML said she would just pick and choose from the extensive buffet.

  I waited briefly while the chef took ingredients selected by a customer ahead of me and fried them up on the stir-fry grill. The choices for combinations include lo mein noodles, bean sprouts, shredded cabbage, onion, pineapple, peppers, broccoli, crab meat, water chestnuts, squid, pea pods, tiny corn cobs and tofu. I chose greens, water chestnuts, pea pods, tofu and thinly sliced beef. Then, I watched the chef whip and turn and flip my selection onto a plate. He does it with flair.

  You can choose your style of Mongolian dish, too. You can specify 1, 2 or 3 to tell the chef whether you want to go light, medium or strong on garlic, teriyaki and Mongolian sauce.

  The chef at the stir-fry grill was kept busy with customers’ orders. The average time to cook stir-fry for a customer is a minute and a half, according to John Chang, manager of Panda Buffet. Chang was born in mainland China but grew up in Virginia and New York. He has been in Grand Forks for two years. He enjoys his job, but he finds Grand Forks a “quiet place.”

  Most of the 10 employees in Panda Buffet are from China. Chang says, “Everyone here has legal status.” And he notes that officers from the Border Patrol sometimes come in to eat.

  Along with the stir-fry, I picked up some favorite foods from the buffet. There is a vast choice here of noodles, meatballs, vegetables, pickles, olives and mushrooms. You find pizza, french fries and wings, which ML said were very good. The layout is described as “International Super Buffet” and includes Chinese, American, Italian, Japanese and Mongolian barbecue.

  Before we even started eating, we asked for extra napkins. Although Panda Buffet has moderately strong napkins, it takes more than one when you are into this heavy-duty eating. We ate; we tasted; we talked. And we went back for more. You can do that at buffets. You should take all you want, but eat all you take. There’s no point in wasting food.

  It’s hard to resist one last trip to check out the dessert area. There, you find a little of everything: pie, bars, puddings, gelatin, cream puffs, éclairs, macaroons, crescent moon and almond cookies. I took two of the almond cookies. They are slightly sweet sugar cookies with an almond on top.

  Panda Buffet includes all-you-can-eat lobster for $9.99 on its buffet from 4 to 10 P.M. Friday and Saturday. The lunch buffet is served daily between 11 A.M. and 4 P.M. at $6.49 for adults and 40 cents a year for children younger than 12. The dinner buffet runs from 4 to 10 P.M., for $8.99 and 50 cents per year for children 12 and younger.

  The pluses at Panda Buffet include the wide array of food and the option of having stir-fry prepared as you watch. You can select a healthful meal, and you also can indulge in some favorite foods. Service is quite good. It’s an everyday kind of place. Also on the plus side, I was asked only twice on a second visit to Panda Buffet if everything was OK. The servers seem energetic and friendly. They look good in white shirts with black vests and trousers.

  On the minus side, the restaurant seems a little untidy. There are weeds growing alongside the building. Inside, near the entry, there is a station for collecting dirty dishes, and here you see cleaning supplies and rags that could better be kept out of sight. And in the women’s restroom, there are more cleaning supplies sitting around. It would be better to keep them in a closet or cupboard.

  While there is a fork and spoon wrapped up in a napkin for each customer, there are no knives. And a knife would be handy for some of the items, such as the long green beans that are too crisp to cut with a fork. True, there are chopsticks in a container. And some day, I am going to master the fine art of using them.

  Panda International Super Buffet continues to operate in Grand Forks.

  Suite 49 Establishes Itself as a Force in Less than a Year

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  NOVEMBER 23, 2005

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  If memory serves, the halibut served by the Golden Hour, a popular downtown restaurant that closed years ago, had a crunchy golden crust. And the Golden Hour halibut that now appears on the dinner menu in Suite 49 in Grand Forks is pretty close to that prepared by Mrs. Oliver long ago.

  I couldn’t resist ordering the halibut ($14.95) when I went to dinner at Suite 49 earlier in November. I was with Donna McEnroe (DM), who had a half-order of crab legs ($18), and Eleanore McEnroe (EM), who ordered shrimp alla diavolo ($14.95). The entree is a new item among the 15 choices for pasta.

  Dinner at Suite 49 is an upscale experience because of the full menu of unique offerings. With dinner entrees, you get a choice of soup or salad, a vegetable and your choice of roasted herb, horseradish mashed or baked potato.

  The strength of this dinner is that the salad is excellent, and the vegetable of the day is prepared to order. The bread that comes with it is toasted and thinly sliced focaccia. And the potatoes are above average. I once tried to eat a couple bites of the horseradish mashed potatoes and couldn’t resist finishing the whole serving.

  It’s actually hard to decide what to order because the menu is inviting, with clever—but not too clever—names for various items. Chef Nathan Sheppard offers, for example, Drunken Rooster, Pork Chop Carambola and a New Walleye Scampi. There’s an 8-ounce filet and a 16-ounce ribeye, too, and steaks have been a popular choice of Suite 49 customers.

  Suite 49 is sleek and streamlined-looking, with 18 flat-screen plasma televisions. There are big, roomy black booths and tables. When it opened a year ago in December, Suite 49 was projecting a sports bar image. But it has developed as more of a dining and entertainment center, according to Eric Martz, general manager.

  Suite 49 is open Tuesday through Saturday. There also is a private dining room. Proximity to Ralph Engelstad Arena means there is a ready-made crowd whenever there are special events or games.

  In its first year, Suite 49 has established itself as a place for lunch, dinner and evening entertainment. There are people who go for lunch of the white chili, which always is on the menu, and a salad. Lunch fare includes a new Thai chicken salad, blue chip taco salad and a new salmon and avocado salad. Beef or bison burgers are offered in various forms. Blueberry bread pudding and Sailor Jerry spiced rum apple crisp are among the dessert offerings.

  The ready welcome you get in the entry is another strength of Suite 49. Along with all the pluses, though, there are
minuses. While we enjoyed our waiter, Bobby, there was some confusion about our orders. This was not his fault. It happens because the waiter takes the order you give him on an electronic gadget and it goes right into the kitchen. This is good. It saves time. It was a problem, though, because a different server delivers the order.

  DM had asked if her crab could be removed from the shells, and Bobby said yes. When the order arrived, the server was not aware of the earlier conversation. I had asked if I could substitute soup for a potato and was told I could. When I got home and re-read my bill, I could see I paid extra for it.

  No big deal. Still, it was a little disconcerting. Also, I felt a tad rushed. When I go out to a full dinner, I like to take my time and pace the meal. I like to wait until everyone is finished before the plates are cleared. And yes, I realize there are some people who want them whisked away.

  I will go back to Suite 49 as soon as a friend suggests it because overall I like the unique menu that an independent restaurant offers. All in all, Suite 49 offers an above-average eating experience.

  Boot Marches Through 52 Years of Business in Grand Forks

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  JANUARY 25, 2006

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  It was 6:30 P.M. on a Friday evening in January, and I was meeting some friends at the Bronze Boot. We were taking our chances at seating. The Boot doesn’t take reservations, except for groups of six or more. Fortunately, it didn’t take long until we had a table near the open-pit broiler.

  The fact that the Bronze Boot is packed on weekends is a testimony to the steaks and seafood it serves. The supper club with a boot on the top was established in 1954, and it has been in business longer than any other restaurant in Grand Forks. It has become a legend, like Whitey’s of East Grand Forks, which is the granddaddy of all area restaurants.