I will agree that, with my toothache and a tastebud-killing head cold, I might not have been the best candidate to visit a new restaurant and offer my opinion as to the palatability and varied flavors of haute Hunan or Mandarin delicacies. With a head cold, fish tastes fishy and all the other stuff tastes like what it looks like. Don't discount sense memory as a tool. I remember my taste experiences with wonderful Chinese dishes and can offer comparison with what has been sitting in a bin on a steam table for an indeterminate amount of time.

Wok and Roll is a buffet. A buffet lives and dies by offering a broad selection of foods in as pleasing a manner as possible. The top locations offer a selection of seafood on the dinner menu and feature the Mongolian Barbecue. The Wok has unfortunately rolled into the fryer.

Hampton had one of first Mongolian BBQ's in the area. The cooking surface was a large, flat gas-fired circular stone. You picked from fresh veggies and thinly slivered frozen meats, covered them with sauces and oils and handed the bowl to a large man (looking very much like Gengis Kahn) who then rolled the foods around the cooking surface with two enormous chopsticks. When done, he would line up the food and swipe it onto a plate in one skillful movement of the sticks. Wok and Roll doesn't have Gengis or the round stone. They feature a flat griddle that, once you pick your fresh foods, cooks more like what you would expect from a lunch counter grill. The meat selection is not frozen and sits in bowls pressed into ice. It was enough to give me pause. I would question the difference in temperature from what sat at the top of the bowl to what was at the bottom. In any case I decided to pass. I prefer it to be frozen when cooked.

The small selection of Sushi presented was inviting and well done... uh, you know what I mean. However, its location caused one to break through the line of those waiting for a shot at the grill in order to pluck your raw and rice selections and again if you wanted a dash of wasabi.

As to selection of dishes offered on the buffet, there was nothing special to note. There was but one selection of fried rice, one lo mein and a pot of white rice. There were spring and egg rolls and the usual soups. There were no dishes marked with any particular regional style of cooking. You were offered Bangkok or General's Chicken and other typical buffet slections. For those that prefer things spicy, the Wok does seem to offer dishes with liberal doses of the incendiary known as grated Chinese red pepper. Some restaurants will cook with the pepper whole to provide the flavor, but enable those who don' t go for flames shooting out their ears to remove it from their plate. As best I could tell most dishes were well seasoned with nothing too hot to handle.

I suggest they would be better off to keep a closer eye on the steam table temperatures and water levels. A number of the dishes I tried were tepid and greasy as a result of lukewarm temperatures. The desert offerings (almond cookies, puffs, raw peanuts covered with sugar, etc) were average fare.

In summation, if you have a favorite Chinese feeding trough... stay there. Wok and Roll has some stiff local competition. Their lack of crablegs as a part of the dinner buffet menu is an oversight that could hurt them in the long run. The price for the buffet is reasonable for what is offered. Service (where do the restaraunts come up with all the tall, slender, pretty young Chinese girls for whom English is obviously not their first or second language?) is what one would expect for a large establishment of this type.

GRADE "C" AVERAGE