Satire: Mangino prepares to battle Chinese buffet

By By Eric Schaumburg

Wednesday, October 5, 2005

Peking Taste Restaurant — Kansas football coach and Chinese buffet connoisseur Mark Mangino prepared a game plan for attacking the all-new Friday Buffet at the popular local Chinese eatery with his assistant coaches.

“All right, we have scouted the place and it appears they are running a new 3-4 chicken-beef layout,” Mangino said while going through notebooks outside the restaurant. “We should exploit it from the left because I’m almost positive that is where they’ll place the fried rice. I don’t want to be surprised and go in and find the white rice on the opposite end of the fried rice. It’ll totally throw off the entire meal.”

With hours of studying menus and sampling dishes hanging over their belts, Mangino and staff seemed confident as they waddled into the buffet but the feeling was not to last.

While everything appeared to be going the team’s way at first including a fresh steaming tray of egg rolls and free drink refills, the meal took a turn for the worse when the seafood surprise was declared “off.” As the meal progressed, Mangino’s game plan seemed to fall into more and more disarray.

“Dammit! We’re being blocked up front by kids at the yogurt machine,” Mangino yelled to his staff. “We’ve got to bring coverage coach Johnson from the side or that crab Rangoon is as good as gone.”

Mangino also seemed upset by the level of sweetness in the sweet and sour chicken.

Overall, the meal ended on a sour note when the restaurant ran out of food at 8:30 p.m. and had to close. In the parking lot, after the meal, Mangino said that he was disappointed at what he called the “timidness to attack.”

“If we want to go in there and actually win, and you know, get our seven dollars worth of greasy Americanized Chinese food then we can’t be afraid to rush the front line,” Mangino said as he grabbed a handful of complimentary mints, the only food left in the restaurant.

Mangino said he was already looking forward and preparing for next week’s buffet, a Sizzler Steakhouse in Manhattan.

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