Trivia: Dan Blocker (Hoss Cartwright) was one of the owners of BONANZA steakhouses, receiving his share in exchange for being their pitchman. This was back when there were lots of them so that was quite lucrative, though I think his family sold his share back to the parent company when he died.
I don’t know why, but it strikes me that this would be the perfect exchange for two spies to recognize each other.
Man 1: The passion fruit juice is yummy…
Man 2: The waitress walks with the coffee…
And a tiny flash drive with plans for the Pentagons 3 top secret weapons gets palmed.
I’ve seen that at several buffets and I’ve never understood it either. One exception though is Pizza Hut, where if you don’t pile the plate you’re not getting anything until another one comes out. I don’t understand why they don’t just make up a bunch and shove them in as fast as they can. What makes the difference if it sits in the kitchen for a little while, it’s just going to sit on the buffet anyway.
I know of one in a town about 90 miles from here, at least I think it may still be open. I always liked it.
I’ve never been able to get past their name. I can’t go to eat at a place that sounds like it was named after a sexual practice that is best performed on a tiled surface and can only be seen on fetish websites.
Try a bunch of teens and college-age folks (groups that make up a substantial portion of my gaming organization) who have been outside all day, engaging in moderate physical activity, with little or nothing to eat. This is why we often go to Golden Corral after games–the locusts can get enough to eat at a fixed price, and there’s enough variety that everyone can at least find something edible.
I never go there otherwise. There are too many good restaurants around here to go to a mediocre buffet.
Hell, I used to HOST a gaming group consisting of half a dozen teen to mid 20s guys, the DM (in his 30s but could out eat a teen), my husband (in his 20s), and me. And I used to feed them all, too. I finally started asking for a couple of bucks from everyone if I was feeding them. This was cheaper than most buffets.
From personal experience and what I’ve read in this thread, Golden Corral is a perfectly OK buffet restaurant. I lived in Las Vegas for a few years and, from my experiences there, there are very few “good food” buffets.
I’ve only eaten at one Golden Corral (in Duluth, Ga.,) but the food was…quite acceptable. More variety then a fast food place and not too much more expensive.
As for “double dipping,” the GC I’ve been to had employees monitoring the various stations. I saw a plate (serving unit/dish/amount?) of Bourbon Chicken get removed because somebody put some on their empty plate then put it back.
I think that the waste of food is atrocious, but the quality, variety, and service put it ahead of comparatively priced fast food/quicky eats places.
I eat there. The food is good, and there is a lot of variety. I don’t really like to go there during the rush when it’s wall-to-wall. Too crowded, too noisy, too many people in the way. But at slower times it’s pretty good.
Occassionally the steak is a bit gristley, but you know what? It’s a buffet - go get another piece.
I do avoid the chocolate fountain “Wonderfall”. And they really should put the ice cream cones up higher for less child fondlage.
I was on a project for work with a team in Albuquerque. Some of the guys were on a fixed per diem (daily amount) for meals so for them the strategy was to maximize the caloric intake while minimizing the cost (this meant more money left in their pocket). So, we would go to Golden Corral once a week. These guys would mound up their plates at least four times - this was the only meal they would have in a day. I told them to just forgo the plate altogether and pile the food directly on their tray. There were always lots of immense people in there.
I don’t have the aversion to buffets that many have expressed here (I was raised poor), I liked the variety and the fact that you could make a large meal out of nothing but veggies. The food was fine, really. I’ve worked in plenty of restaurants and IMHO the marginal difference between GC ingredients/supplies/prep and other middle range sit-downs is not significant. (I get that a lot of people don’t like seeing other people hovering over buffet food - as if the kitchen and server staff in a sit-down is somehow not the same - maybe they were all dipped in bleach before they started their shift?)
jacobsta811–huh. At the Golden Corrall we usually go to you have the option of a standard sized cup OR an extra large ‘souveneir’ take home cup and the servers are constantly all “Would you like a refill?”. There have been times when I’ve only drunk half of what was in my cup and the server INSISTED on bringing me another full glass.
We love GC because Slim is, more or less and by his own choice, a vegetarian and he can pile his plate with veggies and eat to his skinny little butt’s content.*
*Shocking, because Hubs and I are both very big on meat. Om nom nom…cow.
