I have a freind that tells the story of his college roommate and him being thrown out of a Chinese buffet for eating too many chicken wings, they were told, “No more chicken wings! You go home now!”. I suppose thought it could be said they weren’t thrown out but had that the restaurant had run out.
My parents doled out food to my brother and I for years. Their reason? “We will dish out your food until you are old enough to know how much you want and can eat. We don’t waste food.” I was four or five before I could serve myself, and even then there were still times when mom would serve me because she knew that although I loved the dish my “eyes were bigger than my stomach”. Both my brother and I weren’t fat by any means in childhood. That mother needed to be teaching her children how to overcome the phenomenon “my eyes are bigger than my stomach” well before now. Everyone experiences this to some degree, adult or child. This is why you only take a little at first on a buffett, because batches can vary, and sometimes you end up not wanting as much as you thought you did.
Mandarin. Yum. 
And the good thing about buffet is, you can make sure you get the size that’s appropriate for you. When I go to the Indian buffet at Coxwell and Gerrard, I might get two helpings, and even that’s exceptional. It’s limited more by time needed to eat than quantity taken.
Still charging for taken but unused food kinda makes sense, even if it does only go into the city composting system. Taken, unused food cannot be sold to the next customer. What A. R. Cane describes is the opposite, correct? If you actually eat it*, there should be no problem**.
Guinastasia, I like your line, “It’s all you can eat, lady, not all you can take”. Sometimes just the right phrasing makes something snap into clarity.
panache45, did your cousin go often to the same restaurants and eat a lot each time?
I’m wondering, how well do restaurants know the average size of meals taken at buffets, and the likelihood of large takers? If the buffet was priced assuming the average patron took two servings, and the restauranteur know that customers were talink on average 1.75 servings, the cost of a five-serving taker showing up once every six months could be absorbed for goodwill. But if that five-serving taker showed up every day, it might be a problem.
I still can’t see one five-serving or even ten-serving taker pushing an establishment over the edge, unless there weren’t that many other customers, or profit margin was really low. The restaurant has to absorb the cost of all the food that does not get taken each day as well.
[sub]* And I don’t mean in the fashion of the ancient Roman vomitorium. Barfing so you can taste more doesn’t count. It has to stay down and be used.
**Of course, any establishment retains the right to refuse service to anyone, correct? How far does that right go?[/sub]
All-you-can-eat is no excuse for gluttonous waste. I remember back when I was a teenager going to an all-you-can-eat lunch deal at Pizza Hut. Hey, back then I was broke and mostly just ate once a day. There was this obese man who kept going back to the buffet and piling pizza slices on his plate, taking it back to his table and scraping just a little bit of his favorite toppings off of it, eating those, then discarding the rest into a truly revolting mound of uneaten pizza slices at the other end of his table. That memory has always stuck with me, it grossed me out so much.
Just curious, what buffet, if you don’t mind my asking? Me love Chinese buffet.
Having been to Des Moines and read their paper, I’d wager no.
…the Flying Chow Mein Monster would strike them with His Noodly Appendage?
Where on Earth is VN?
BTW, sounds like you found a real keeper.
I’m guessing Vietnam.
Sorry, I’ve developed the habit of abbreviating Vietnam that way. Yes, I was eating it all. As I recall the fried chicken was delicious and I hadn’t had any in a year, I think that was mostly what I kept going back for, anyway I wasn’t particularly upset, but the GF was. You have to put it into the context of the times. She was pretty great, but unfortunately I have no idea what happened to her, we broke up about a year later and she married an aquaintance of mine.
The one across from the Valero station downtown. I think it’s called “Chinatown”.
If I read your story right, a manager said you had had enough after 5 plates, not an unjustifiable opinion, especially if this was a family-run place (most of the ones I’ve seen are). Your girlfriend’s response was to lay into the manager for, in essence, ‘not supporting the troops’? If it were my restaurant, I wouldn’t care if you just came back from fighting Commie Terrorists on Mars if a customer treated me or one of my employees that way.
Or that the only time “clean your plate” promotes obesity is when you act like a greedy hog and pile a bunch of shit on your plate you don’t want, rather than just taking a nice, small amount.
The woman’s an idiot. My parents would have killed me if I had done that as a child-but then, when they took me to buffets, they made sure I only took a little bit at a time. Even today I usually will take a small bite-size portion if I just want to see if I like something first. There’s no need to take huge amounts-you can always go back if you want more.
Ah, if it’s the one I’m thinking of, it’s behind Mucky Duck. Great noodle bowls!
How does one justify calling it “all you can eat” if you aren’t allowed to eat all you can eat?
A woman who knows Wendy posted this at 8:36 (as it reads on my browser):
So Wendy’s friend, her husband, and her kids never finish what they take. And that makes it okay? Seems to me they’re part of the problem.
That’s all you can eat! Now go home!
(I think I go that from Mad when I was a kid.
Heh, I guess that’s it!
You beat me to it, thanks. Maybe Johnny L.A. has it right, the guy figured “That’s all you can eat, now leave.”
That’s fine, Wendy’s friend, your kids don’t have to finish everything on their plate…but in that case you don’t let them go back to the buffet.
Because we expect people to conduct themselves with basic human decentcy and respect and don’t want to have to ammend every statement with countless caveats and qualifications when it’s much easier just to throw the assholes out.
Just because we’re all about fighting ignorance here, lemme insert a quick reference to The Master on vomitoriums:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/021101.html
I’m talking about A.R. Cane simply eating, not the waste of the people in the OP. Or do you feel it’s indecent to actually eat all one can eat, as advertised? It’s disrespectful and assholish too?
If a restaurant is justified in kicking someone out for eating more than the tab pays for, they should refund money to people who eat less. I gotta give the restaurant credit at least for admitting they were wrong.
Friends of mine went to a Buddhist “vegetarian meat” restaurant in Thailand (including fake chicken drumsticks with plastic bones!) and in addition to the cover charge, there was an additional per-gram charge for uneaten food. You were only allowed one plate and no dumping of food. According to them, it really moderated how much they took.