Golden Corral (or the Golden Trough as one former employee I know likes to call it) has a deal where for $1.99 they will give you a 22 oz (I assume this is the amount of water it’s capable of holding) container to fill with whatever you want from the buffet to bring home. What is the most expensive thing I could fill it with?
I assume it would need to be something fairly dense and something that could sort of conform to the shape of the box.
Seriously, I think they have steak some nights, so that would probably be the most value-added. The rest of the food pretty much is assembled on the ‘lowest-bidder’ premise.
Which doesn’t stop me from eating there on occasion.
This reminds me of a similar question you sometimes confront in Israel: how many french fries can you stuff into a pita with falafel (they do that over there) but leave room for the other freebies you’ve stuffed in there.
From the menu if there was a way to cut the meat off the pork ribs and fit it in there, that would be the most expensive. Otherwise, the steak would be the most expensive and easier to cut up and stack in the box.
According to the online menu, the steaks are cooked to order. I’ll bet the place doesn’t consider them a buffet item and won’t let you order one for the take-out box.
It seems to me that sirloin steak would be the clear winner if available. I was going to suggest that seafood salad might be a possibility, but it apparently includes imitation crab rather than more expensive ingredients. Lobster is not available in the buffet.
I thought I’d heard that fresh fruit was the costliest item on a salad bar, for the restaurant. Probably not what you’re looking for when you want to maximize your treasure box, but the fruit might be what would make the manager most peeved.
I had a friend a while back who saw buffets as a challenge, like a battle between him and the restaurant. He would eat sparingly for a couple days before, then at the buffet he would choose entirely based on what he thought was the most costly to the restaurant, whether he enjoyed it or not. A strange person in many ways.
What sitcom (or sitcoms)–and it definitely was in an essay in Me Talk Pretty One Day by Sedaris–where one of the characters says in a restaurant, “You see that bread? Don’t eat it. That’s how they get 'cha.” And derive great satisfaction from that. (Sounds like a Seinfeld.
Of course, most of us have been told, or come to the conclusion, that filling up with the bread, no matter how good it is, detracts from the amount of time/pleasure before satiation on the rest of the meal.