Remodeling to start at new Oriental restaurant

By James Clark

I have new information to report about the Oriental restaurant that will be locating in Cumberland Plaza at the spot formerly occupied by CiCi’s Pizza. The owners stopped by the Standard office on Tuesday to tell me they are ready to start remodeling work.

It turns out the information I obtained from some of my super secret Business Pulse spies is entirely accurate. It will be an upscale Oriental restaurant complete with sushi bar and hibachi grill.

It’s called Ming Buffet Grill and this will be the fourth location with that name, although the family owns other restaurants that operate under different names. The other three Ming Buffet Grills are in Memphis, Jackson and Nashville, making McMinnville by far the smallest town with such a restaurant.

‘Our broker suggested that we come here because the shopping center needed a restaurant to bring a crowd,’ said Angela Chen, who is one of the owners. ‘Our restaurants, they are all successful. We have very good quality. We’ve been doing business for more than 15 years.’

Since I first mentioned another Chinese restaurant coming to town, several people have told me they would really support such a business if it sold sushi and had a hibachi grill. I’ve never eaten sushi before, and have long maintained I would try almost anything once, so I might just have to take a bite.

Angela tells me to look for Ming Buffet Grill to be open in April or May.