Fortune Star Buffet Restaurant Butler: Fresh and Cheap!

I am a sucker for a good buffet.

The Fortune Star Buffet and Grill (at 330 Butler Commons, Butler) gives so much more than you'd expect for $6.75 (lunch buffet).

My first plate (of many)

There's a monstrous selection of food
At the salad bar, I'd go for the chilled shrimp, hard boiled eggs sprinkled with paprika, olives, sliced beet, cherry tomatoes, lettuce.

At the next three hot food bars, I'd continue loading up with spinach & cheese, greasy ham pie, white fish, stuffed shrimp, salmon with ginger, stir-fried mushrooms, pork dumplings, buffalo wings, bbq pork, crispy spring rolls, egg rolls, broccoli chicken, beef and steamed mussels. The steamed mussels are succulent and flavorful.

The hot food bars also offer fried rice, lo mein, spicy sausage links, pizza, wontons, sesame chicken, General Tso's chicken, three kinds of soup...

There's a guy who'll hibachi / grill fresh-to-order your selected raw ingredients (shrimp, beef, vegetables, noodles, etc) with your choice of sauces and LOTS of garlic.

The sushi bar has a pretty good selection of sushi rolls, although not sashimi, and my favorite seaweed (wakame) salads liberally drizzled with sesame oil and sesame seed sprinkles.

The dessert bar is well stocked with an assortment of fresh (oranges and bananas) and tinned fruit (usually longans, litchi, peaches), chocolate and banana pudding, marshmallow ambrosia (I think!), two to three selections of pies.

Dessert bar #2 has about 8 flavors of self-scoop ice cream to choose from. And there's also cream puffs, coconut cookies, coffee cake.

The food
It's fresh, attentive cooks constantly replenish the food. It's also good - surprisingly not too salty. Although you will probably still feel very thirsty in the hours that ensue as the food has MSG (monosodium glutamate) in it.

Gracie's Verdict
Fortune Star Buffet gets Gracie's 'Three-and-a-half' Stars, for good food and lots of it, at an unbeatable lunch price of $6.75.  If you compare with Eat n Park's $8 'soup and salad' buffet (and any other buffet really), Fortune Star wins hands down for value.