Soylent green buffet is people!!!
Not to rag on your rant too much. But I think left-over food on buffet-eaters’ plates is a minimal source of food waste in this country. The amount of food, for example, that just gets thrown out by grocery stores to ensure that we get only the freshest food is immense. I try to not let leftovers going in the garbage get me down too much.
Oddly enough, Soylent Green™ is purple.
I ate at Quark’s Bar when I was in Vegas a few years ago. The food was good, but I don’t know about gourmet. Then again, I just had a sandwich. I think it was called the Bird of Prey.
My drink was the best part of my meal. If you ever go to Quark’s, may I suggest ordering the James Tea Kirk. It’s a long island iced tea, but this picture really doesn’t do it justice. It’s a very cool looking drink, and it’s huge.
Embarass the hell out of them, people. Say, “Oh, God, that’s GROSS, lady!” in a very loud voice. Point, if need be, and call over a server, asking for the spoon to be replaced, making sure that he, and everyone else, knows that it was THAT person over there who polluted the food.
I used to hesitate to do things like that, out of some vague notion that it’s impolite to call people on their rudeness. It is, yes, I know. But I’m tired of it. People act like they’re the only goddam people in the resturant, or, more accurately, that they’re the only people who matter.
Perhaps if there was more public humiliation of people like this, we’d see a dramatic cut-down in such behaviors. We cannot stand around like sheep while the nasty, rude, obnoxious people of this world ruin things for everyone.
…and where you come from, “amazing display of self-control” means “Slowly dissolving giant tortoise who works as a Wal-Mart Greeter” or means “Clown-headed handmaiden of Llolth”? What the hell are we looking at in this picture?
Daniel
You don’t know how much I wish that I had. I did shoot my best Miss Manners glare in her direction, but it seems that people who behave like this don’t notice the power of that look.
Someday I’ll learn to be a little more confrontational…
A number of the buffet restaurants around here started doing exactly that. I don’t know what the cutoff is, or if they even enforce it at all, but at least having a visible reminder of “hey, people, wanna step back and take a look at what you’re doing here?” does actually seem to produce results.
I went to an all-you-can-eat place for lunch on Saturday, and discovered it’s actually quite good for maintaining a healthy diet. I took a good look around the place (both the serving areas and the customers) and lost my appetite.
I have my own lame little buffet story. My wife and I were on our way back home from a semi-long trip and we decided to stop at The Sizzler. (She likes the salad bar but I’m not to fond of the place.) I get the buffet and there’s nothing much I care to eat aside from the potatos and fried chicken. No breasts, that’s fine I just get a thigh, some mashed taters, and gravy and return to my table to consume until they restock the buffet.
While I’m eating I notice a member of the kitchen staff restocking the buffet with chicken. When I finish my plate I return to the buffet and wait my turn as a woman starts putting chicken on her plate. She went through the chicken and picked out every last breast and took them to her table for her and her party. Leaving me and two other people to the thighs and legs.
Her party was seated at the table next to my wife and I. When I returned I told my wife what she had done. My wife said that the woman bragged to the rest of the table about getting all the breasts. Talking about pissing in my Cheerios. I was tired, I didn’t really like Sizzler to begin with, and this woman just put my in a foul mood.
Yeah, it was lame. The worst part of this post is the fact that I used the word breasts so many times and it didn’t conjure any happy thoughts.
Marc
With Chey Chase? That hilarious scene at the buffet…customer complains “this isn’t the chicken ala king!”…attendent picks up sign, drops itinto a big tray of steaming yellow glop, and proclaims: “THIS is the chicken ala king!”
Bleech! Every time I go to Vegas, I see those horrible buffet lines…and you know what? There are plenty of corn-fed German tourists in those lines…
Buffets are for slopping hogs!
So are unused feminie hygiene products, but no one (well damn few at least) wants to see a tampon, blood or no, sticking out of someone’s plate. Something need not be unsanitary to be disgusting or rude.
My parents–you’ll pry my cigarettes out of my cold, dead hands types–taught me that putting cigarettes out in your plate is disgusting and filthy, and only done by sub-humans.
How ironically funny! When I lived in Germany, Germans would not eat corn as it was animal feed. We were warned never to serve it if we had Germans over for dinner. I asked a couple of Germans about it and they at least thought it animal food.
They also see barley as lower class food, something used to bulk out more expensive foods with.
That being said, I got my german friend Christian into american indian pudding =)
[cornmeal cooked with egg, milk and spices] Going to try him on cornbread next time we get together=)
I think it’s actually spelled boo-fay. If not, it should be.
My wonderful Hubby is one of those all-you-can-eat greedy bastards. He doesn’t waste food, which is of limited admirability, but he does make it a point of pride to load his plate up with as many food products as can be balanced on porcelain.
Short line, long line, doesn’t matter. The point is the acquisition of food. Lots 'o food.
And he complains bitterly if the plates are too small, which seems to be the one trick restauranteurs sometimes employ.
Now anyone who swipes the last bacon will hear about it from him, you don’t even want to mess with this man’s bacon. Or sausage. You would never guess that he’s quite civilized and educated, that he holds a Ph.D. in molecular biology - that meat is a primal issue.
I figure it’s some sort of hunter-gatherer thing.
I remember as a pre-teen going to a buffet restaurant. It had stationary tables, but there was a carousel that sl-o-o-o-o-o-o-wly rotated through a window into the kitchen. It was for hot food, so the kitchen help could make sure everything was loaded up and hot and fresh. You could wait a good five minutes for the fried chicken to make their way around again.
A woman was complaining because the carousel spun so fast it made her dizzy. :rolleyes:
From Here
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While I agree that in toto, buffets are not the most wasteful, of food service options, they are. Now, how much of that is food left on plates versus dumping the cake that the idiot’s child dragged her finger through, I have absolutely no clue. But on a completely aestetic level, it’s still a huge pet peeve of mine.
“ALL YOU CAN EAT” is not a challenge.
Unless your son is named “Dilbert”.
Ominous voice
It’s not all you want to eat…
It’s all you CAN eat
Ominous voice
I don’t agree with this at all. Buffets in Vegas, like everything else, is a gamble. Two nights ago I went to the MGM Grand Buffet and payed a rather princely (and unexpected) sum for the privlege of eating there. I have a system when it comes to buffets, so I hit the salad bar first. A little bit of green salad, pasta salad, potato salad and some sort of mushroom dish. They all looked rather appetizing.
The only thing on the plate that I found remotely edible were the mushrooms. Even the green salad tasted “off” to me. So I left a plate full of food. I figured I’m paying $25, I shouldn’t be forced to eat a bunch of crap that makes me gag. I better find something else that justifies the cost.
That’s the only buffet pet-peeve that I forgive. I agree with everybody else on the thread, for the most part…