What’s the price difference between the two?
About the same.
There are a lot of comments in this thread which seem to be saying that buffet restaurants have always been around and only recently started to decrease in number. I’m pretty sure that this is wrong. Buffets were a trend of the 1960’s through the 1990’s. They still exist, but they’re only common in a certain limited set of restaurant cuisines. Furthermore, they only existed in a certain limited set of restaurant cuisines before that time. Look at the Google Ngram for the term “salad bar”:
The use of the term was somewhat rare until 1963. Then it took off. It peaked in 1993. I think something like this is true for the existence of either salad bars or restaurant buffets. Yeah, they existed before the 1960’s and after the 1990’s, but they weren’t nearly as common before the 1960’s and they aren’t nearly as common these days. Any explanation for their existence has to show why they were so common for a period of about thirty years and not before or after that time. It can’t be just that something is true lately that wasn’t true before 1993 or that something was true up to 1963 that isn’t true today. An explanation has to account for both the coming and the going of salad bars and restaurant buffets in general.
I don’t go to buffets all that often these days but when I do make sure of two things. First, that the parking lot has a lot of cars in it. Second, that it isn’t late in the afternoon or evening. If there’s a lot of people then the food will be turning over quickly. And if it’s in the middle of the lunch/dinner rush instead of the end then I’m less likely to be stuck with food that’s been out for a while.
I’ve been to a few Golden Corral restaurants and the quality really varies by location. There was one in Little Rock near Wal-Mart near Chicot Road and it was just horrible. But I went to one near Williamsburg, VA and it was excellent. I’m not saying it was high quality food or anything but it was worth the price of admission.
I tend to eat more than I should at a buffet, even when I use the technique of placing a few small portions onto a plate, so I prefer to stay away from all-you-can-eat buffets. For me, the exception is Souplantation. Love to build a salad there, and I ESPECIALLY love to fill my tray with a “flight” of soups. I don’t make soup (or chili) nearly enough, and the opportunity to have five or six at a single meal is just too good to pass up.
We have a Old Country Buffet as well as a Chinese and Pizza buffet in town
The Pizza Buffet even made the Food Network - they make some odd pizzas.
It is pretty decent (invoke pizza rule).
The Chinese place was closed for couple of months due to a kitchen fire.
I think the food is OK.
Brian
I certainly agree that that is a problem, but it is a much smaller problem to whip a dozen kitchen employees into shape than it is to enforce food-handling standards upon everyone who walks in the door. A bunch of those people are also going to be teens (or little kids, or adults) who think flicking boogers is fun, but you’re not holding a paycheck over their heads.
When I was a kid, just before car phones, we used to always stop at Shoney’s when we were on the road (on the way to either set of grandparents) because my dad always had to call the office and Shoney’s always had a phone. My mom still thinks it’s hilarious that I didn’t know Shoney’s had a menu until I was in my 20’s because we were only allowed to get the “Soup, Salad and Fruit Bar” - the buffet was way faster.
Right next to our hotel a few weekends ago in Charlotte I saw the Holy Grail of “thank goodness they don’t have that at home because we’d both weigh six thousand pounds”. A Mexican combination-plate-style restaurant that was a buffet! It was really, really good, too! 7.50 a person! All the guacomole you wanted, and it was the good guacamole, too! My god, it was tasty - all very fresh tasting, obviously a limited number of things on it but tacos just the way you wanted them and damn, a dangerous thing for a pregnant lady. They about had to roll me back across the street. The grilled peppers and onions alone…!
Not certain where you live in the Midwest, but here in Indiana and in the Chicagoland area, buffets are still going strong. There are six different buffets in the city of 300k that I live near and that’s not including the Chinese buffets. Within a 75-mile radius there have to be at least 30-40 more.
Perhaps that’s down from what there might have been in the 1950-1980s but it is still a rather high density of “All can eat” and “All you care to eat” restaurants.
A group from work used to go to the local Chinese “All You Can Eat” Buffet. It was delicious and very reasonable. Then we noticed the quality was slipping and we were seeing yellowish, smelly broccoli and really chewy “chicken” that did not taste like chicken.
In spite of the slipping quality, there were members of the group that still wanted to go there, mainly because it was cheap. These folks were incredibly piggy. They’d stand at the meat islands, waiting for fresh pans from the kitchen and then create enormous, teetering piles of food. I tried not to share a table with them because they then tried to stuff massive quantities into their maws as fast as they could. It created messes on the table and floor, and the chomping noises would turn your stomach. Really classy. When a few of us got sick from the food, we decided to go elsewhere.
We moved on to the local pizza buffet. I never thought it possible, but the pig behavior got worse. They would wait for hot pizzas to come out of the back, then pounce on them and pile, vertically, slices of an entire pizza onto one plate. It was embarrassing (but funny.) They didn’t care that they were holding up the line or that everyone was staring at them. They stuffed the food in as if they had not eaten for a week. All this over a 6 buck buffet.
I stopped associating with that group and found some classier lunch mates.
I think the official stopping point for me was when Golden Corral installed a chocolate fountain. Blechh!!! Seeing a seven or eight year old kid stick french fries and half his hand into the fountain made me want to puke!
Around here there is a buffet restaurant called The Royal Fork. I haven’t been there in years, but I still remember the big slab of roast beef at the end and the guy there to cut a hunk off for you.
Getting back to what I think in the OP’s real concern, there is a truck stop around here that has a buffet, but it’s not their main push. In other words, it’s a restaurant that has a buffet but not a buffet restaurant.
In my area, there has been a Great American Steak & Buffet (formerly Western Sizzlin’) in one shopping center and a Chinese buffet in the shopping center across the street for years. Then a CiCi’s Pizza moved in down the row from Great American and quality went down at both of the other buffets, the Chinese one in particular.
The nearest Golden Corral is in Maryland at the end of the Blue Line so we haven’t had a chance to get over there yet but we did go to one last time we were in Springifled, Mass. As buffets go, it was pretty good.
Same down in Santa Clara. We went to an Indian buffet for a farewell lunch Friday, and to a high class Indian buffet in Santana Row the week before. There was a Chinese buffet near where I live in Fremont which drew tour buses (never went myself) and tons more. And there is Sweet Tomatoes, with lighter food, which is always packed.
I wonder if there are really fewer buffets or if a lot of us have moved out of the demographic.
Oh, yeah. 
Just went to one of those the other day - Fogo de Chao, that opened recently at Santana Row in Santa Clara, CA. Something about having guys bringing you a constant supply of tasty, tasty meat is good for my carnivore soul. 
Pricey for a regular thing, though: it was $51.50 per person, plus tax and tip. A nice treat, and I will be going back.
Re: Buffets - we have a Fresh Choice near us, which is kind of a buffet, I guess (I don’t do salad so I’ve never gone in). But I notice they’ve changed their sign from “All You Can Eat” to “All You Care To Eat.” Not sure I see a difference, but there ya go…
There used to be Fresh Choice out here in SoCal; they’ve been gone for some time. My point is that when they were here, their motto was “All You Care To Eat,” rather than “All You Can Eat.”
P.S. Infovore, if you like soup, you really should check out Fresh Choice; they’re another “salad” buffet that has several soups on hand at a time.
I’m perplexed as to why you would choose an Ngram for the phrase “salad bar” when you’re talking about “buffets”.
Buffet has fallen off as well, but not as much as salad bar, which is congruent with my expectations.
Salad bars are more clearly a trend that started about 1963 and ended about 1993. Buffet restaurants were more slowly increasing and now decreasing in popularity. The term “buffet” can be used in a wider sense than the term “salad bar,” including in some ways that don’t refer to restaurants. It just made it easier to show the trend.
Exactly. Wendy’s used to have a salad bar, but they have never been a buffet.
Buffets are alive and well in Kansas City. 4 block from me is a strip mall with both an Indian and a Chinese buffet.
Amateur…really? at least you picked an appropriate user name! :dubious: