In general, a good idea, but don’t apply it to Vegas. I’m from Louisiana and have lived on the Atlantic caost, so I knows me some seafood. And I can honestly say the best seafood dinner I ever had was in Vegas. Biggest shrimp I’ve ever seen. Those casinos fly it in fresh every day and only the primo stuff. They can afford it. (I guess this would only apply to the nice casinos, not “Vegas Bob’s glutton buffet w/ loobster”).
Anyway, for me, a buffet is all about variety. Sure, I’ll be sure to include crab legs or whatever, but I’m more of a sample-everything-that-looks-good guy. Even salad (which I eat almost every day anyway).
We eat at buffetts because you can get so many different things, not to maximize our eating dollar. I’m all about having prime rib and Orange Chicken and pad thai and Chili Verde for dinner, not eating 4 lbs. of crab legs.
I love to eat a lot of variety, so I tend to do that when I’m at a buffet…a little bit of everything. We very rarely go to buffets, though, because my husband is very price-conscious. I don’t know if he goes for the more expensive items (never noticed)…what he does is eats and eats and eats and eats. He doesn’t consider it worth the money until he has practically eaten himself sick!
We once had my son’s 11th birthday party at a buffet. It was about $15 or $20 per person - no child discount. One of his friends ate nothing and one of them just ate bread. So it goes.
BTW, the food sucked anyway, i.e. there was no expensive food. Haven’t been back.
Yeah, like a lot of other people, I’ll mostly eat whatever seems to give me the best mix of flavors and what I think I’ll enjoy most. But I’ll also factor in the cost of getting this stuff at a later time (and what I’ve had within the past little while) as part of the equation.
Y’know, now that I’m 40 buffets just don’t hold the attraction anymore. A regular restaurant meal leaves me stuffed to the gills nowadays. I used to go to the Chinese buffet and eat 6 plates of General Tso’s chicken and potstickers, nowadays I’m full at one and a half plates. If I eat two plates “to get my money’s worth” I feel sick. Curse aging!
That’s probably the real reason we don’t go to them much anymore…my husband can’t eat as much as he used to, either. And he figures, if he only eats one plate, what’s the point of the buffet?
I’ll definitely only eat things I like, but any decent buffet will have more things that I want to eat than I possibly can eat. So, it’s selection.
Given that, I’ll go for non-starchy food (unless some starchy food looks particularly good) so I’ll have room for a greater variety. No salad, unless it is a place that is mostly a salad bar. No bread. Lots of meat, seafood and veggies.
Thanks to the Supreme Court, in any state. So long as it’s a private, and not public, buffet. (and, assuming the brad is willing)
When I go to buffets (rare now, since I’m a 40-year old too), I eat the dishes that I think I’d like – and avoid the ones with huge lines of people trying to “get their money’s worth.”
That means when we go to my brother’s hoity-toity country club for the occasional holiday buffet, that I’m avoiding the prime rib line. By the time all the heavyset, sweaty men in line are satisfied that they’ve piled enough artery-hardening meat on their plate to feed a small African nation of orphans, there’s only a few scraps left for everyone else. And those are cold.
I’ll just get the chicken cordon bleu and braised beef, thanks.
Well, here’s the point. You pay a certain amount of $$ to eat at a buffet, let’s say a certain buffet with seafood and prime rib for say $15. If, for example, you’re only going to eat one plate of fruit- why did you come to that buffet and pay the $15? Why not either eat someplace cheaper for that one plate of fruit, or just buy some fruit and eat it?
I eat what I can (no meat or shellfish, because those aren’t kosher), and pick what I like- I don’t even think about what it costs. That’s the point of a buffet- you can eat what you want, with none of what you don’t want, and you don’t have to think about what stuff costs.
If the choice is between lobster tails and macaroni+cheese…which food is going to win? look, i’m not a pig, but I’m certainly go for the good stuff and not fill myself up with rice/pasta/potatoes!
I’m not a poor person, and I can’t afford to eat lobster tail or prime rib, even on special occassions. As such, I find the “I’ll pick out & eat the expensive things because I’m poor” comments tacky… not because of the act of picking out the expensive item, but because of the snotty justification. Middle class and upper-middle class people can’t afford that stuff, either.
That being said, my choices aren’t really based on raw cost, but more like on perceived scarcity (which often is related to cost–I never order filet mignon or crab legs off a menu, for example, because it’s way too expensive). For example, mac & cheese is out and so are dinner rolls because I can get them at home. I’ll choose the crab legs/prime rib over ham & chicken because I wouldn’t get crab legs or prime rib otherwise. However, this is not only related to cost; I’ll also get plenty of casseroles because while I like them, I almost never cook those.
Once I went to a Chinese buffet and I saw a family who was eating plate after plate of crab legs. The parents were telling the kids to get the crab legs only; the kids weren’t allowed to eat anything else! Now that’s tacky.
Well, I do zero in on things not in my everyday diet. Sushi & other lovely examples of seafood? Of course. But I generally make several trips to the buffet, not overfilling each plate; and I vary my selections.
I wouldn’t pass up a lovely piece of rare prime rib–but I wouldn’t reject the potatoes, either.
A bit of nice salad helps digestion. And fruit is a good way to end the meal–after a sample of something chocolate.
(However, I’ll generally reject the “free” mimosas. The sugar in the orange juice kills the appetite too quickly. Just the cava, please.)
We don’t do buffets anymore for several reasons - I am a very picky eater as is my son, I don’t eat but MAYBE one plate, and they’re too expensive anymore to be worth it. Last buffet I was at was a Sizzler I think. Or a Ponderosa. I can’t remember. No - wait - it was Old Country Buffet - but it was for breakfast.
In any event, IF I were to go to one for dinner, I’d be eating the shrimp/steak/good stuff - because of the perceived cost benefit - I might as well “get as much as I can for my money”. If it were breakfast, I’d be pigging out on bacon ('scuse the expression) and sausage - they’re the expensive things. And biscuits and gravy just because they’re good.
Does this make me tacky? I don’t know, nor do I particularly care - I just want to get the most from the little money I may have.
Because I’m dieting and my husband and kids aren’t. One kid wanted pizza, and his friend wanted mac ‘n’ cheese, and the baby will eat anything she can get her fists on but she’d prefer noodles of some sort and my husband is a very picky eater. So here’s me with my $15 salad so’s I can eat in peace and quiet for once.
For my family and me, eating out is as much a social thing (and a “Mom doesn’t have to clean up”) thing as a food thing, and I’ll pay to keep everyone happy and my kitchen clean once in a while.
But, dieting aside, I’ll eat what appeals at the buffet. I’m not trying to “win” here. I’m trying to eat what I want without cooking it myself.
