One Year Ago Today

This site was started one year ago today. For our anniversary I thought that I would go back to the beginning and relist all of the "Rules of the Buffet". We are even going to add one new one - about cell phones. Remember what we have said all along - these are common sense suggestions that will make your buffet or "all you can eat experience" much, much more pleasurable - and everyone else's too!

1. All you can eat is not a challenge. It is an offer!
2. There is no limit to the number of times that you can go up and get food.
3. Take your food in courses - as you would be served if ordering from a menu.
4.Everyone must pay!
5. No food is permitted to be taken out of the restaurant. (Saw a guy stuff a dozen cookies in his pocket just tonight!)
6. Take only what you will eat - do not waste food.
7.For a more social meal, it is polite to wait for the others at the table to finish their plates and then go up together to get more.
8. Take a clean plate every time that you go up to the buffet tables.
9. If you put it on your plate, leave it there. Never return food to the serving tray.
10. Never eat at the buffet tables!
11. Children under 12 should not be going up to the buffet tables alone.
12. The buffet table is not a cafeteria line.
13. Tip the server.
14. Never take a serving piece from one item and use it for another item.
15. Never place your dirty plates on someone else's table.
16. Never use your silverware to serve yourself from the buffet trays.
17. Once you have gotten what you want, don't stand around the buffet tables. Move on back to your table.
18. Children should remain seated through the meal.
19. Do not fill community plates for the "table". Each should take their own plate of what they wish to eat.
20. If you cough or sneeze into your hand, please do not use that hand to pick up the serving utensils.
21. In th buffet, as in any restaurant, children (and adults) should use their inside voices.

AND NOW A NEW RULE ...

22. Don't talk on your cell phone while you are getting your food at the buffet tables.

Please call back and pay attention to getting what you want to eat. More and more lately someone is up at the serving table with a phone at the ear and the plate in the other hand - leaving no hand for serving. So the guy or gal is first, distracted by the conversation and is just bumping around the serving table and second, trying to manuever the plate and the serving spoons without dropping the phone. It is bad enough having to listen to people's most intimate details while they carry on a cell phone conversation throughout the meal, but to continue the conversation when at the serving tables is just too much. We once were in a restaurant when a woman answered her cell and was told that the child of a very close friend had just been killed. Tragic - but then she spent the next hour having a breakdown at her table with the phone still pressed to her ear. Now, we did not know this woman - she was at her own table away from us, but the conversation became so vocal that everyone in the restaurant knew what happened, when and how.

So, there are the rules to date, all together in one place. If you want to read some of the explanations and details go back on the site's archives and check out the "rules" articles. There are two - with two other's each adding one additional rule.

After last week's article, I had hoped one of you might have left a comment of congratulations... ah, well. Still a chance now. Thank you all for reading and keeping coming back.

Next week we are heading off on the road hoping to fing new buffets to tell you about.

Happy Anniversary to US!