The American Buffet Is Dead
The American buffet is dead. The buildings still stand and the food is still (self) served, but what was once a hallowed hall of family bonding, work gatherings and friendly strangers united by gluttonous excess, has become a dilapidated house of subpar food, feckless service and a complimentary malaise that consumes you well before you have prepaid for your food.
Many of my favorite memories have taken place in buffets: family night at Ryan's Grill Buffet, Thanksgiving at Old Country Buffet (OCB), taking grandma to Ponderosa. If memory serves, my last great buffet trip was during college. My colleague from the health center, a married Latino woman in her early forties, would take biweekly trips to the OCB. These were wonderful days filled with laughter and heaping scrumptiousness. During our last visit we took pictures memorialize the occasion. Little did we know it was the end of an era.
I recently patronized two local buffets: a Ponderosa and an Asian all-you-can-eat. Both experiences fell well below the few expectations I still had, devastating my nationalism and inner-child in under five plates.
Firstly, the depression I felt upon entering each establishment was not mine alone. Drab carpet, drab wallpaper, faux-“country house” décor. Ponderosa appeared as if the cast of Mama’s House came over for dinner on the Bonanza set and nobody swept up after. The Asian place was drab as well, unkempt and a ghost land to boot. If your town has an “old mall” that was replaced by a new mall, these resembled the old mall’s food court. I have eaten at livelier senior centers.
Where both houses equally failed was service. When the staff outnumbers the patrons, yet you have to retrieve and refill your own beverage, it is easy to see why buffets have fallen on hard times. Eating around filthy plates and stealing napkins from nearby tables are not problems any restaurant should put you through, let alone a buffet. I realize this comes off as terribly lazy, but that is the point of the buffet: you pay out of your nose to eat unlimited food, and the server’s only purpose in the whole joint is to swiftly whisk away soiled plates and napkins and keep your glass from ever being empty. When the manager cannot even muster a smile as you pay or offer an “enjoy your meal” as they hand you the receipt, the problems may be deeper than we understand.
What disappointed me most was how every person in the building seemed completely dead inside, as if carbon monoxide had been leaking into the front house all day. Eaters heavy and small avoided eye contact with me. Each server an unoiled robot in permanent rape gaze. Even the food looked embarrassed to be there. We ate silently like someone at the table was asleep and we didn’t want to wake them.
Granted, my buffet heyday was before 2000, which predates 9/11, The Biggest Loser and Kirstie Alley fat jokes, but I fondly remember a time when you entered a buffet with your head held high. You were excited to consume as many as twenty different foods in under an hour. You were thankful your family was able to afford such a lavish Friday night out. You could unabashedly strut down the aisle holding two heaping plates of food because everyone else was eating the same way.
The American buffet was our Roman bath house; an orgy of limitless delicacies and Caligula-esque foodie perversions. You ate to excess because you lived to excess. It was our town center, hosting business meetings and family reunions. It was the place to be.
What caused this tragedy? Is this how it always felt at a buffet and I was too young to understand? Is the decade long assault on fatty foods and fatty people ultimately felling the modern buffet? Some phenomena we may never understand. I can only hope that all quality buffets survive this slump and one day reclaim their rightful throne. This is no longer about all-you-can-eat, it’s about all-you-can-believe-in.
