Photo: B.A. Nilsson

Star of Asia

By B.A. Nilsson

Buffalo Wagon

Wolf Road Park, 6 Metro Park Road, Colonie, 689-0938. Serving 11-10 Mon-Thu, 11-11 Fri-Sat, noon-9:30 Sun. AE, D, MC, V.

Cuisine: pan-Asian

Entrée price range: $7 (lo mein) to $22.50 (Chilean sea bass)

Ambiance: good of its kind

What gets on my nerves about P.F. Chang’s, that teeming chain, is the combination of hype and bustle. It preys on our deep-seated sense of being lonely and frightened, and thrusts its diners into a realm of nonstop sensory assault. This, of course, is perfect for mall shoppers, whose ears are dimmed by the constant noise and senses dulled by the visual explosions. At some point, you cry “Enough!” You’re looking for a meal, for sustenance, an experience that ought to be a pleasure. You don’t care what your server’s name is, and you don’t need a menu with pictures. Escape. Take a P.F. flyer.

Shrink the livestock in front of that restaurant, turn down the noise, put some room between the tables—in fact, put in the Japanese concept of minimal design accents—and you’re only a scant mile up Wolf Road at a three-month-old eatery called Buffalo Wagon. Yes, the name connotes cowboys or chicken wings, but it’s a salute to the water buffalo, a bulwark of ancient China. The name also suggests a chain restaurant, and the facade and Web site both display that slickness, but it’s a singular entity.

The restaurant occupies a location that has been home (if I’m remembering correctly) to a Chinese buffet and a short-lived Mongolian grill, but it looks as if it were made for the space. My family stopped in on a recent Friday evening and liked the feel of the place immediately. Perhaps it’s a tiresome observation at this point, but we noted that we were among the few Occidentals dining in a fairly busy room.

We passed the sushi bar en route to our table, and I looked with longing at the row of empty seats facing the three busy sushi chefs. But I am wedded to one to whom raw fish is anathema, and obediently trudged to a more conventional seat.

Service here didn’t have the handing-you-off quality I expect in such places. Our hostess fussed over us for a bit as she welcomed us and determined our beverage order. And while most of the meal was under the purview of a single server, dishes emerged from the kitchen on the arms of others. They arrived at a good pacing, too, and items were cleared and wrapped with wonderful efficiency.

Menu diversity seems to be the order of the day with Asian eateries. Amid a capacious array of the expected, ranging from Peking duck ($38 for two) to Cantonese lo mein ($7), lurk dishes from Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, along with a lengthier list of Japanese items, including tempura and teriyaki preparations. And keep in mind the $6 lunch specials (11-3 Mon-Sun), which give a brief, best-of accounting of the regular menu.

My daughter and I kicked off with sushi and makisushi. The former consisted of brilliant little slabs of tuna ($5) and salmon ($4) over vinegared rice, the latter a spicy, creamy salmon roll ($5.25) with cucumber and scallions. The orders were combined on an attractive platter and boasted a breezy freshness. And there’s much, much more on the list, in addition to daily sushi specials.

One of my cook-at-home specialties is cold sesame noodles in spicy peanut sauce, so I gave the competition a chance and ordered the $5 appetizer. While the sauce didn’t taste like out-of-the-jar peanut butter, as sometimes is the case, it was too thick to easily combine with the noodles, which is more work than I usually care to inflict on a starter.

Order a chef’s specialty, as I did, and it comes with soup, so I can report that the hot-and-sour brew is superior to most in the area. My wife ordered the chicken and creamy corn soup, which is served for a minimum of two ($5.50) and could easily portion out to one or two more. It has the consistency of egg drop soup, yet hits the flavor areas of corn chowder. An odd combo, but an endearing one.

The menu of Cantonese dishes divides them by main component; thus, beef, pork, poultry and the like each gets about a dozen preparations. Seafood, too, with the bonus that there’s a tank at the rear of the dining room where you can watch your soon-to-be dinner swim.

Pork chop in Peking sauce ($9) is open to interpretation. Here, it’s deep-fried cutlet pieces tossed in a dark, sweet sauce with accompanying vegetables and enough depth of flavor to keep from the candy-counter characteristic of, say, General Tso’s chicken.

You’ll find your eggplant and tofu dishes (including, heaven help us, General Tso’s tofu) in the vegetables list, all priced around $8. From the adjacent noodle-dishes list, my wife chose a preparation that combined pan-fried noodles with shrimp, chicken and beef for $9, and professed herself quite pleased. But that was when she wasn’t spearing sneaky tastes of my crispy shredded beef ($14), in which the meat is battered and fried, unexpectedly but deliciously crunchy and probably, what with its sweet sauce, bad for you as hell.

The dinner yielded a sizeable shopping bag of weekend lunches and a few menus tucked into our pockets. Another good, non-chain restaurant on Wolf Road is excellent news indeed.

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