# Should buffets automatically be considered "all you can eat" situations? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 24, 2004, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-buffets-automatically-be-considered-all-you-can-eat-situations/241809 "2004-04-24T15:47:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![FatBaldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ecd19e/32.png) [@FatBaldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FatBaldGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2004, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-buffets-automatically-be-considered-all-you-can-eat-situations/241809/41 "2004-04-25T14:09:26Z")
I’ve been to Chuck-a-Rama on many occasions myself, and it’s always been AYCE. They do have a sign at the exit stating that you’re not allowed to take any food off of the premises, but that’s it. ---
**Author:** ![Hey\_It\_s\_That\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Hey\_It\_s\_That\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hey_It_s_That_Guy)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2004, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-buffets-automatically-be-considered-all-you-can-eat-situations/241809/42 "2004-04-25T14:59:17Z")
> [@Revtim](#): > > Hey, that sounds exactly like the place I was talking about. I’m sure there’s more than one like that in S Florida, but by chance are you speaking of the place in Boca Raton, in the Albertson’s plaza on the NW corner of 441 and Glades? I was talking about Taisho in Davie in Broward County, actually. I don’t know exactly WHERE I was in Davie because friends took me, and I live further south, in South Miami. But there’s another Taisho in Coral Gables I know of, so it could be the same “chain” you went to in Boca. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2004, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-buffets-automatically-be-considered-all-you-can-eat-situations/241809/43 "2004-04-25T15:04:47Z")
> [@Big Bad Voodoo Lou](#): > > I was talking about Taisho in Davie in Broward County, actually. I don’t know exactly WHERE I was in Davie because friends took me, and I live further south, in South Miami. But there’s another Taisho in Coral Gables I know of, so it could be the same “chain” you went to in Boca. Yeah, it is Taisho. I didn’t know it was a chain! ---
**Author:** ![Abbie\_Carmichael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/49beb7/32.png) [@Abbie\_Carmichael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abbie_Carmichael)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2004, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-buffets-automatically-be-considered-all-you-can-eat-situations/241809/44 "2004-04-25T21:14:54Z")
**1) A “no carb” diet is a fatal one. Carbohydrates are essential to survival.** Would you READ THE BOOK before you pop off with ignorant statements like that one? Please? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2004, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-buffets-automatically-be-considered-all-you-can-eat-situations/241809/45 "2004-04-25T22:14:08Z")
If it was AYCE, the restaurant should just suck it up, or maybe offer them some free drinks, in the hope that the gas would fill them up. EXCEPT if they were inconveniencing other customers (example: I went to an AYCE pizza and pasta buffet the other day and there were a couple of lads who were taking five or six slices of the same pizza each, on every visit, leaving none for the customers behind them in the line). **waterj2** - good point - seems that some people interpret the whole Atkins/Low carb thing as “honey, it says we have to eat a metric fucktonne of meat” - it is a sign of the apocalypse, I’m sure. ---
**Author:** ![jellytoes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/eb9ed0/32.png) [@jellytoes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jellytoes)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2004, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-buffets-automatically-be-considered-all-you-can-eat-situations/241809/46 "2004-04-26T02:47:15Z")
> [@astro](#): > > Was he in some hypnotic meat trance? “Meat…Meeeaaat!! MEEAAATTT!!!” If you could snarf a “Peep”, I would have after reading that. Pure brilliance. Please tell me that someone submitted “ **hypnotic meat trance** ” as a band name. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2004, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-buffets-automatically-be-considered-all-you-can-eat-situations/241809/47 "2004-04-26T03:13:21Z")
> [@astro](#): > > I might be able to waddle back for a 4th helping of roast beef if I made an effort, but **12!!** helpings! We’re dealing with a truly mind bending level of gluttony here. In my experience, buffet roast beef slices are about as thick as a page of cheap copier paper. Either way I don’t see enough information here to really know who was in the wrong. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2004, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-buffets-automatically-be-considered-all-you-can-eat-situations/241809/48 "2004-04-26T19:33:19Z")
> [@Abbie Carmichael](#): > > **I used to go to an AYCE sushi place, and the sign said they’d charge you for each piece you didn’t eat, like 50 cent or a buck or somewhere around there.** > > Now THAT is just nuts. You pay up front, and then you pay AGAIN if you don’t clean your plate like a good boy? WTF? If they don’t want to lose money on people who waste food they should just jack up their prices a bit and be done with it. Roughly 60-70% of any given piece of sushi is rice. The rest is shrimp, crab, eel, fish, whatever. Rice is cheap and filling. The seafood isn’t nearly so cheap or filling. What the sushi buffets are trying to discourage is people taking items and eating just the comparatively expensive goodies on top of the rice and leaving the rice. The restaurants’ position (and IMO, it’s a valid one) is that a piece of sushi includes the rice, and to not eat the rice and take more than would if you were eating the entire item is cheating. A rough corrollary would be going to an AYCE spaghetti dinner and taking plate after plate and eating just the meatballs and leaving the spaghetti. ---
**Author:** ![Obsidian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/51bf81/32.png) [@Obsidian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Obsidian)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2004, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-buffets-automatically-be-considered-all-you-can-eat-situations/241809/49 "2004-04-27T01:16:58Z")
There was a KFC buffet in my college town that maintained a blacklist. My ex-boyfriend and his roomate were on it. A lot of college students would get stoned and go clean them out of chicken. The two of them got on it after consuming 15 breasts and a dozen drumsticks of fried chicken in one sitting. They weren’t asked to leave, but when done were asked never to come back-- and were refused service at the buffet from then on. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2004, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-buffets-automatically-be-considered-all-you-can-eat-situations/241809/50 "2004-04-27T04:09:41Z")
I think that “All you can eat” means “within reason, no Sumo wrestlers!” In EVERY buffet that I’ve ever been to, there’s never just roast beef for the entree, there’s usually other main dishes. Things like meatloaf, enchiladas, fried chicken, some sort of fish, stuff like that. I don’t think that buffets plan on people eating much more that double the amount of a normal meal. While I’ve never been to a Chuck-A-Rama, every buffet that I’ve ever been to has always served me more than 4 ounces of roast beef per serving, unless I specifically ask for a very small slice. Here’s another [article](http://news.tradingcharts.com/futures/4/7/55126574.html) which explains: > [@](#): > > The restaurant’s roast beef is cooked overnight and takes between 12 and 14 hours to cook, Johanson said. Depending on the location, a Chuck-A-Rama may have only between one and five roasts each day. > > But Johanson said the manager offered plenty of other buffet items for the couple to choose from. Given this additional information, I don’t think that the manager was really as out of line as the original story makes him appear. To me, it looks like this couple was abusing the restaurant’s buffet. I also don’t think that they are really on the Atkins diet. I think they just like roast beef, and wanted to fill up on only roast beef. ---
**Author:** ![Caffeine.addict](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f475e1/32.png) [@Caffeine.addict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caffeine.addict)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2004, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-buffets-automatically-be-considered-all-you-can-eat-situations/241809/51 "2004-04-27T04:51:21Z")
I don’t really have a problem with stuffing yourself with the premium goods at a buffet. I don’t usually go to buffets anymore since my metabolism slowed in my mid twenties, but I will still go to Brazilian _Churrascarias_, and sushi buffets. At the churrascarias, I avoid the salad bar and and the cheaper cuts of meat that I normally eat at home for the better cuts of meat that they have. I still remember the time I went to one with a friend of mine and we proceeded to stay there for about 90 minutes just eating. he had just started Atkins, and we ate until the point of collapsing into a meat coma. > [@](#): > > Roughly 60-70% of any given piece of sushi is rice. The rest is shrimp, crab, eel, fish, whatever. Rice is cheap and filling. The seafood isn’t nearly so cheap or filling. What the sushi buffets are trying to discourage is people taking items and eating just the comparatively expensive goodies on top of the rice and leaving the rice. Can’t you just get sashimi at those? The one I used to go to would offer sashimi. ---
**Author:** ![FatBaldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ecd19e/32.png) [@FatBaldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FatBaldGuy)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2004, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-buffets-automatically-be-considered-all-you-can-eat-situations/241809/52 "2004-04-30T13:45:57Z")
From a story in today’s (Salt Lake) [Deseret News](http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,595059925,00.html) > [@](#): > > Moss said the manager of the Taylorsville restaurant would not be disciplined, but the company will strengthen the training given to managers about how to deal with customer concerns. Chuck-A-Rama is still trying to figure out the best way to explain to customers that while they can help themselves to the buffet, there are limits, Moss said. “We have the responsibility to assure that each customer who comes through the doors understands,” he said. The company held a press conference yesterday to “apologize” to the couple, but the couple did not show up at the press conference or the scheduled meeting. However, it still sounds like more of a non-apology to me. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-buffets-automatically-be-considered-all-you-can-eat-situations/241809.md?page=2)