So now that I’ve gorged myself on my favourite mango chutney chicken salad that a nieghbouring restaurant made the mistake of offering as part of their lunch buffet, I am having flashbacks of a buffet scene of yore…
My (now-ex)GF and I went to a popular little joint for their “all you can eat” Sunday brunch, one cheery morn. As we sat down to enjoy the spoils, we couldn’t help but notice the plate of the woman at the neighbouring table.
(Couldn’t help but notice because she was also smoking a cigarette while she chewed her food and we thought that was unusual. At least in a public setting).
She had three BBQ ribs and the roast beef.
By “the roast beef,” I do in fact mean she had THE roast beef. The whole 6" x 6" x 8" block of meat!. :eek: She’d gone up to the buffet, jabbed her fork into the slab and plopped it on her plate leaving only the cut slices behind with the astonished kid in the chef hat. Whoa!
One Sunday mornin a friend and I decided to hit up the Easby’s buffet in Rockville. I had just gotten a big heap of mashed potatoes on my plate and was moving down the line when I noticed the (approx) 8-year-old kid behind me taking his finger and playing “choo choo” with the mashed potatoes. I told him to knock it off and returned to the table, happy that I had gotten my mashed potatoes before he ran his fingers through 'em.
8 hours later as my stomach is gurgling and I’m literally running for the toilet for the third time, the thought crosses my mind that what I witnessed probably wasn’t the kid’s first trip to the buffet the first time his booger-encrusted finger had been in the taters.
Children should never be left unsupervised in the presence of a buffet. I’ve seen a kid “taste” every dessert – including licking all the spoons and putting them back – and then sneeze all over the dessert cart because his nose was so tickled from all the ice cream sampling. What icked me out all the more is that every time he stuck a dessert serving-spoon in his mouth, his mom would pull it away from him, say “stop it!” and then she’d stick it back in the ice cream so the rest of us would get kid-cooties!
However, I refuse to believe that my beloved mango chicken salad was anything other than pure, prisitne, uncorrupted-by-toddler-paws, yummy goodness (thankfully, few children seem to eat at this Indian restaurant).
Uggh! Except for the Indian restaurant in my neighborhood, I steer clear of buffets just for some of the reasons listed above.
The last time I went to a buffet was on our way back from NYC. We stopped at the Iron Skillet. I’ve never seen so many people put so much food on their plates (well, iron skillets, really).
I’m waiting for the day someone opens a buffet and names it The Trough.
I’m exactly the same way, except they are a couple of Chinese buffets I’ll go to as well as a couple of Indian buffets. I refuse to ever go to Old Country Buffet or anything similar. Buffets generally give me the heebie-jeebies; I don’t want to be anywhere near giant vats of chocolate pudding.
Tiny local family owned place - we’re there, see a family at table next to us, notice them being pretty demanding, calling their server over on and on. 4 of them.
They left, and I noticed a single one dollar bill left on the hugely messy table (this place had AYCE ribs, and crab legs too).
I asked the server - was that really just a single dollar bill for that whole table?
yes, not only that, but they’d polished off all the crab, demanded more, were told ‘we’re out’ (they were at that point) bitched a fit to the manager who comped the whole meal for all four of them
In discussing w/the server, I found out that the lady was a manager of a local grocery store, and I promised to go there, pitch a fit etc on the server’s behalf. I didn’t get a chance to, tho’ since the grocery was closed a month later.
It’s not just little kids that act disgusting at buffets. There’s an Eat n Park (local diner/24-hour restaurant) in my neighborhood that has a very popular salad bar that is plagued by adults who think it’s okay to just stick their hands in and pick things out. It’s totally disgusting, and my friend’s mom once saw an older woman dipping into the lettuce with her bare hands, and called her on it, only to have the original lady start railing on her for failing to mind her own business.
Suffice to say, I don’t go to many salad bars/buffets.
Hey **The Wrong Girl **, you just reminded me of one time I was at an Eat N Park Sunday Buffet. (I miss those resturants, despite episodes like this):
They served this little mini-cinnamon rolls, bite sized things with frosting. We were sitting next to the buffet and watched a kid no older than maybe five walk over, pick one up, bite off the frosting, put the rest back, and go on to the next roll. He probably had ten of them half-eaten before his parents caught up to them.
(another restaurant)
Another time I watched a couple go to the buffet, fill their plates with one item, sit down, take a ziploc bag out of the woman’s gigantic purse, empty the contents into the bag, repeat with something else. They got thrown out, but got to keep the food.
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(Side thought - those of you who are worrying about wedding catering lately could consider that as a cheap way to obtain a variety of food cheaply…)
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Just this past weekend we were at Izzy’s (Salad/Pizza buffet joint) at around 3pm, so there was only one other table with customers. We hit the salad bar while waiting for the kitchen to bring out fresh pizzas. As soon as we saw them bringing two more pizzas out, we got up to get ourselves some, but two people from the other table (of 4 people) beat us there, picked up a pizza (pan and all) each, and went back to their table. :rolleyes:
Actually, I missed the spelling mistake until you pointed it out. So I guess that means I was making fun of you.
Smashed Ice Cream, that reminds me of an RA from school who told this story of a time when he and his buddies went into an all-you-can-eat Chinese place wearing plastic garbage bags in their pants. They’d get food, bring it to the table, then dump it down their trousers. Repeat ad nauseum. They walked out of there having put on quite a few pounds, and ate Chinese food for a week afterwards.
shudder Ohhhhh… I’m having flashbacks from when my relatives made me go to a Furr’s cafeteria… They had that weird stuff that looks like Jello mixed with Cool Whip with suspended mini-marshmallows… Nnnnoooo!
At least the place where I eat my mango chutney chicken salad is a real restaurant – the all-you-can-eat thing is a way they generate income during the week. It’s quite a huge draw for the business crowd during the weekday and has staples from their regular (rather expensive menu). And considering there are hot curries, I’ve never see anyone in there under the age of 14.
My only buffet adventure was laughing my assets off at my ex-BF as he scooped a heaping spoonful of what he thought was chocolate mousse into his mouth…
I was on a bus tour of the UK and there was some guy from Texas on it. You never followed him at the breakfast table- he always wore this poxy orange plastic jacket and he would scoop everything up and fill his pockets- bacon, toast, kippers, sausages. Then he would eat that all day long on the bus and never buy a meal. It’s a wonder he was never sick- the other Americans on the tour apologised profusely for his manners.
In a similar vein, I won’t eat anything from a fete or show where the parents prepare food for sale. One mother I am aware of made a lot of iced cookies (biscuits). Her brat of a child licked all the icing off them so she merely iced them again and donated them for sale. Ewwww.
Back when I earned my living as a travel agent, I sent a very wealthy couple to a prestigious golf resort in WV. Shortly after their return, I called the wife to verify that the resort had met their expectations. The exchange went something like this:
“Please don’t ever send us anywhere that has a buffet again!”
“Why?”
'Because Robert’s just too dumb to deal with getting his own food."
“What happened?”
"Well, the main table had some sculptures made out of some kind of mold and he thought the mock pig was real and kept trying to whack a piece of meat off of it
I still get a laugh imagining him hacking away while the help looked on in horror.
