Hula’s Bar-B-Q has been a dining staple in Chico for more than 40 years. Inside are numerous tables and chairs welcoming you in, filled with families and hungry college students. The entryway is filled with shutters as cabinets for their merchandise, including shirts and sweatshirts. The grills are in plain sight, allowing guests to see what they’re about to partake in as soon as they walk in the door.

The ceiling is full of beautiful lamps, setting the comfortable tone that you’re in for a great meal. There’s a single TV, broadcasting the latest sports game, but the focus is on the food. The songs that play are chart toppers, including songs from the Rolling Stones to Foo Fighters. The buffet pulls you in with countless choices of meat and veggies to create your perfect bowl.

Ever since my parents, Chico State alums, brought me to Chico for the first time, Hula’s has been a staple in my life. They would spend countless hours trying to stack their bowls as high as possible during their time as Wildcats. Now that I’m a Wildcat myself, I finally have the chance to beat their record and make my own memories.

The food served at Hula’s is a Chinese stir-fry-style bowl, with raw ingredients cooked right in front of you. The price for a meal ranges from $18 for lunch to $24 for dinner, which is a pretty sweet deal for an all-you-can-eat buffet.

It’s located just off Highway 99 North in the Target shopping center with the address sitting at 1937 E. 20 St. They serve the community daily, with their hours being Monday-Thursday: 4-9 p.m. and Friday-Sunday: 11 a.m.-9 p.m.

This is not the original Hula’s, as the original closed during the pandemic. The Hula’s on East 20th St. — the one I had the pleasure of going to — opened May 2001, giving Chico residents not one, but two Hula’s.

They are wheelchair accessible and also take many forms of payment including cash, cards, and Apple Pay, which is available at the front register.

When you enter, you’re greeted by the blissful aroma of freshly cooked meals and a welcoming environment. I ate with my best friend, a Chico State freshman, to get her input on this restaurant, and the food did not disappoint.

The entire allure of Hula’s is the fact that it is a buffet where you gather a blend of raw ingredients, and the cooks grill your bowl in front of you.

My order consists of raw chicken, raw pork, and kielbasa sausage, which I then smash down with an extra bowl to make room for everything else. Once enough room is made, I pour noodles, white onions, edamame, tofu, mushrooms, and bean sprouts into the overflowing bowl, and then I move on to the sauces.

The sauces I get every time vary, but the ones I got this time were soy sauce, teriyaki, a dash of kung pao, garlic sauce and sriracha.

As they cook the food you gathered, the cooks do their best to acknowledge any allergies or food safety concerns. A customer ahead of me had an onion allergy, and the cook in charge of their bowl took the time to carefully clean the grill and each utensil to have an onion-free workspace.

As the cooks dumped my bowl on the grill, I found myself reeling with excitement. They took their time to carefully curate a beautiful bowl, and I then topped it with pineapple and sriracha and took it to my seat.

Every meal comes with a build-your-own bowl, wonton chips with sweet and sour sauce and spicy mustard, enough egg rolls for the table, rice, and the soup of the day.

The rice at Hula’s is by far one of the best cups of rice I’ve ever had. It’s fluffy, full of moisture, and allows for copious amounts of soy sauce. The soup the day I visited was hot and sour pork, not one of their best. It was watery and lacked flavor.

Within the last five years there has been a change of ownership according to Hula’s manager, Matt McGinnis. There was a change to the menu where instead of the bento boxes and teriyaki bowls, they would focus only on stir-fry and sides.

Our meal ended with a kind smile from the server and a fortune cookie, which we ripped open to discover that “a bright future is upon us.”

Elizabeth Perez can be reached at [email protected]