Sweet Tomatoes, also know in some areas as Souplantation, is a chain of salad and soup buffets in several parts of the US from California to the East Coast. On Tuesday evening, October 4, 2016 and Wednesday morning, October 5, 2016, the corporation closed all of the Sweet Tomatoes restaurants in the state of Illinois.
Garden Fresh Restaurant Corporation, the owner of Sweet Tomatoes, filed for bankruptcy on Monday. The corporation confirmed that the restaurants in Schaumburg, St. Charles, Waukegan, Lombard, Aurora and Glenview, Illinois are closed for business. The company reports that they plan to restructure, close more restaurants, and put the corporation up for sale. What will remain - for the moment - are approximately 100 restaurants with the Souplantation name that are located in the western US. The corporate headquarters are in San Diego, California. Sales are reported to have dropped by 5.2 million dollars in the last year.
Our source is the Daily Herald, a suburban Chicago information source.
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We have also learned that the Sweet Tomatoes restaurant in Forth Worth, Texas, as well as the Irving, Texas location were closed at the same time. The two locations in Jacksonville, Florida were closed.
Nation's Restaurant News also has reported the story and has confirmed with Garden Fresh that locations will close nationwide. The restaurant chain website is still active and still shows locations in Florida and in North Carolina as still in operation. The other states with locations shown are all in the West and and up and down the coast.
I have only been to a Sweet Tomatoes once and that was in Cary, North Carolina. We liked it very much and have always hoped that they would open restaurants further up the East Coast. That hope is now gone. We are on the restaurant chain's email list and a discount coupon email came this past week.
If any of our readers know of other Sweet Tomatoes or Souplantation closings please contact us with the email link and let us know so that we can inform our readers. Thank you!
Showing posts with label salad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label salad. Show all posts
Friday, October 07, 2016
Friday, December 23, 2011
Old Country Buffet
Believe it or not, I have been eating at Old Country Buffet a lot lately. No, I have not been going to what I and others have called the "worst OCB in the Country" which is the nearest location to me but we have been traveling the twenty or so miles out to their other location in our area - the one with the "good" manager. Actually, we have been going at least once a week and some weeks more. It is really the only buffet "in town" so to speak. With the exception of a very few remaining Chinese buffets, there are no other chains or buffet restaurants near here.
My wife likes OCB. She prefers it over the other chains buffets. As everyone who reads this site regularly knows by now, she is a picky eater. And at OCB she can pick and choose things that are relatively plain and not overly seasoned. This is a good thing for many who do not want the heavily sauced and hot spiced items that have become popular at the other chains. She likes the carvings - especially the turkey, and the vegetables which can vary by recipe but can be found most nights to be served plain. She also likes that the salad bar is extensive and it is always possible to pick vegetables from the salad bar.
I have found several dishes of theirs to my liking and have enjoyed most of the meals that I have had there. I have written so many times about Old Country Buffet, both good and bad, that I won't go into the overall set up again, but I will tell you about some of the things that I find are good. One thing that I must note for you all, is that OCB varies by location in many regards and that includes how things are cooked, how things taste, how clean the restaurant is, and how the employees are. I have been to Old Country Buffets in several states and it is rare to find two alike in the things that I have just noted. Consistency in a chain is important - but there is little consistency from one OCB to the next and that is not good. But I don't want this to be a negative article about OCB, because I have been enjoying my meals there lately.
I am finding little change from night to night at OCB. There was a time when Monday night featured one set of dishes, Tuesday another, and so on. There is now no set menu that varies night to night. Some different dishes are added in, but more often than not the dishes served one night are the same as another. This is something that I miss from the old days. There were things on the old offerings that were very good and are now gone. Their barbecue beef ribs on Thursday nights were well known, and those have been gone now for several years. They also took away the plain spaghetti with sauce on the side and now have premixed pastas or spaghetti, often containing meat which does not help any vegetarians who might eat here.
So what do I like. I very much like their Caesar salad. They mix the Romaine lettuce with creamy Caesar dressing and croutons. It is good. It would be better if they put out the lettuce and the dressing on the side, but the mixed Caesar salad is one of the better Caesar salads that I have had served at buffets - even the more expensive buffets. It goes quickly also. The location that I am going to is attentive to empty serving trays and a new tray of salad is brought out as quickly as possible.
I cannot eat it, but the Split Pea soup found on Thursday nights is good. It is a thick and rich soup. We often take the chicken noodle which is there every night. It varies depending on how long it has been out - when it is freshest it is thinner and after it has been out for a while it thickens. It is actually not bad, either way. OCB could take something from their Ryan's chain and use thick, doughy, country noodles instead of pasta noodles which would make this soup even better. The soup has good size chunks of chicken, carrots, and celery.
The turkey is good - carved on Sundays and Wednesdays. The roast beef is just fair. The ham is good. There is steak on Friday and Saturday nights. I have written about the steak before - it comes from a char grill in the kitchen, but it is brought out to the carving area and placed in a steam table where it continues to cook to become way over done. Something funny happened with the steak recently. We went on a stormy night to the closer (and bad) location because there was no place else to go. I went up for some steak and the young man, who was carving, took a steak out of the steam table and cut a piece off to place in my plate. Before putting it in the plate he suddenly stopped, put the piece onto the cutting board and cut into it exposing the grey middle. "How is that?" He asked. I laughed. I said, "It is the same as always, over done." He did not offer to find my a rarer piece but instead was going to inform me of the timing for steak. He said that what I said was not true and that there are often rare steaks that come out. These had just come from the kitchen. He then said, that it was overdone because of the time - it was about 8 o'clock and the restaurant was still open until 10. If I was there earlier, the steak would be rarer. He was playing with the wrong guy and I came back at him. I explained to him that no matter how the steak came from the kitchen once it went into the steam table, it would continue to cook to well done. He became indignant - "OH, the steaks are not steamed! They are cooked on a grill." I had to explain to him that the tray that he placed the steaks in under the cutting board was in a steamer and the heat in there would continue to cook the steak. He was amazed by this and pointed down at the cutting board and the tray underneath. "You mean here?", he asked. Yep, that is exactly where. I took the steak and went back to my table chuckling. Here at this location, they just don't get it. While the steak is not much different at our usual OCB, they do understand that the system they have to hold the steaks until served will continue to cook them. This is the one big problem with steak at OCB. Some locations, I am told, have a grill at the serving area, like Ryans or Golden Corral. I would love to find one of those and try it.
The Fall has brought out pot roast on Sunday nights. This varies and can be very good, if it has good down until tender. It sometimes looks like the left over roast beef, but other times it has cooked to the point that it falls apart and melts as you eat it. It is served with carrots, celery, and potatoes in a brown gravy.
My favorite thing at OCB - and something that they do not put out often enough - is smoked sausage. I love smoked sausage, and others must also because any night that it is out, it goes quickly. They serve it in several ways - grilled with sauerkraut, cooked in barbecue sauce, cooked into a jambalaya, and it has even shown up in beans and rice. It is good. It would be better if is showed up more often. I think sometimes that it is brought out to replace other meat dishes that have run out.
Recently we got a coupon that required that a survey be taken to validate the coupon. The survey on the website spoke of an Italian Station, a Chinese Station, and a Mexican Station of foods. The taco bar is standard, but I have never seen an Italian Station or a Chinese Station. There are Italian and Chinese dishes mixed in at times - always Italian with two pastas on the buffet, but no separate "station". A recent sign on the tables talks about "going around the world" at OCB and selecting Italian dishes, Chinese dishes, and Mexican dishes. I am wondering if this is happening in other parts of the country or perhaps it is something that is coming. It will be interesting to wait and see.
Deserts at OCB are basic and not really worth the calories. The ice cream is the best of the desserts offered and you can make a nice sundae with the toppings offered.
Drinks at OCB, as most know by now, are extra - no longer included in the price of the meal, and rather expensive, though in line almost with the other chains, at $1.99 each for the "beverage bar". Drinks are included in the children's prices. Dinner locally to me at OCB is $10.99. I understand that in some areas it is only $9.99. There are often coupons sent out to those who have signed up for the email list - and lately the restaurant itself has been giving out coupons to use on a next visit. The price is right - and depending on the OCB that you go to, the food is not bad either.
It is hard to just make a blanket recommendation for OCB because they do vary so much from restaurant to restaurant. But if you try a bad one, don't let that stop you from trying another. There are good ones out there.
My wife likes OCB. She prefers it over the other chains buffets. As everyone who reads this site regularly knows by now, she is a picky eater. And at OCB she can pick and choose things that are relatively plain and not overly seasoned. This is a good thing for many who do not want the heavily sauced and hot spiced items that have become popular at the other chains. She likes the carvings - especially the turkey, and the vegetables which can vary by recipe but can be found most nights to be served plain. She also likes that the salad bar is extensive and it is always possible to pick vegetables from the salad bar.
I have found several dishes of theirs to my liking and have enjoyed most of the meals that I have had there. I have written so many times about Old Country Buffet, both good and bad, that I won't go into the overall set up again, but I will tell you about some of the things that I find are good. One thing that I must note for you all, is that OCB varies by location in many regards and that includes how things are cooked, how things taste, how clean the restaurant is, and how the employees are. I have been to Old Country Buffets in several states and it is rare to find two alike in the things that I have just noted. Consistency in a chain is important - but there is little consistency from one OCB to the next and that is not good. But I don't want this to be a negative article about OCB, because I have been enjoying my meals there lately.
I am finding little change from night to night at OCB. There was a time when Monday night featured one set of dishes, Tuesday another, and so on. There is now no set menu that varies night to night. Some different dishes are added in, but more often than not the dishes served one night are the same as another. This is something that I miss from the old days. There were things on the old offerings that were very good and are now gone. Their barbecue beef ribs on Thursday nights were well known, and those have been gone now for several years. They also took away the plain spaghetti with sauce on the side and now have premixed pastas or spaghetti, often containing meat which does not help any vegetarians who might eat here.
So what do I like. I very much like their Caesar salad. They mix the Romaine lettuce with creamy Caesar dressing and croutons. It is good. It would be better if they put out the lettuce and the dressing on the side, but the mixed Caesar salad is one of the better Caesar salads that I have had served at buffets - even the more expensive buffets. It goes quickly also. The location that I am going to is attentive to empty serving trays and a new tray of salad is brought out as quickly as possible.
I cannot eat it, but the Split Pea soup found on Thursday nights is good. It is a thick and rich soup. We often take the chicken noodle which is there every night. It varies depending on how long it has been out - when it is freshest it is thinner and after it has been out for a while it thickens. It is actually not bad, either way. OCB could take something from their Ryan's chain and use thick, doughy, country noodles instead of pasta noodles which would make this soup even better. The soup has good size chunks of chicken, carrots, and celery.
The turkey is good - carved on Sundays and Wednesdays. The roast beef is just fair. The ham is good. There is steak on Friday and Saturday nights. I have written about the steak before - it comes from a char grill in the kitchen, but it is brought out to the carving area and placed in a steam table where it continues to cook to become way over done. Something funny happened with the steak recently. We went on a stormy night to the closer (and bad) location because there was no place else to go. I went up for some steak and the young man, who was carving, took a steak out of the steam table and cut a piece off to place in my plate. Before putting it in the plate he suddenly stopped, put the piece onto the cutting board and cut into it exposing the grey middle. "How is that?" He asked. I laughed. I said, "It is the same as always, over done." He did not offer to find my a rarer piece but instead was going to inform me of the timing for steak. He said that what I said was not true and that there are often rare steaks that come out. These had just come from the kitchen. He then said, that it was overdone because of the time - it was about 8 o'clock and the restaurant was still open until 10. If I was there earlier, the steak would be rarer. He was playing with the wrong guy and I came back at him. I explained to him that no matter how the steak came from the kitchen once it went into the steam table, it would continue to cook to well done. He became indignant - "OH, the steaks are not steamed! They are cooked on a grill." I had to explain to him that the tray that he placed the steaks in under the cutting board was in a steamer and the heat in there would continue to cook the steak. He was amazed by this and pointed down at the cutting board and the tray underneath. "You mean here?", he asked. Yep, that is exactly where. I took the steak and went back to my table chuckling. Here at this location, they just don't get it. While the steak is not much different at our usual OCB, they do understand that the system they have to hold the steaks until served will continue to cook them. This is the one big problem with steak at OCB. Some locations, I am told, have a grill at the serving area, like Ryans or Golden Corral. I would love to find one of those and try it.
The Fall has brought out pot roast on Sunday nights. This varies and can be very good, if it has good down until tender. It sometimes looks like the left over roast beef, but other times it has cooked to the point that it falls apart and melts as you eat it. It is served with carrots, celery, and potatoes in a brown gravy.
My favorite thing at OCB - and something that they do not put out often enough - is smoked sausage. I love smoked sausage, and others must also because any night that it is out, it goes quickly. They serve it in several ways - grilled with sauerkraut, cooked in barbecue sauce, cooked into a jambalaya, and it has even shown up in beans and rice. It is good. It would be better if is showed up more often. I think sometimes that it is brought out to replace other meat dishes that have run out.
Recently we got a coupon that required that a survey be taken to validate the coupon. The survey on the website spoke of an Italian Station, a Chinese Station, and a Mexican Station of foods. The taco bar is standard, but I have never seen an Italian Station or a Chinese Station. There are Italian and Chinese dishes mixed in at times - always Italian with two pastas on the buffet, but no separate "station". A recent sign on the tables talks about "going around the world" at OCB and selecting Italian dishes, Chinese dishes, and Mexican dishes. I am wondering if this is happening in other parts of the country or perhaps it is something that is coming. It will be interesting to wait and see.
Deserts at OCB are basic and not really worth the calories. The ice cream is the best of the desserts offered and you can make a nice sundae with the toppings offered.
Drinks at OCB, as most know by now, are extra - no longer included in the price of the meal, and rather expensive, though in line almost with the other chains, at $1.99 each for the "beverage bar". Drinks are included in the children's prices. Dinner locally to me at OCB is $10.99. I understand that in some areas it is only $9.99. There are often coupons sent out to those who have signed up for the email list - and lately the restaurant itself has been giving out coupons to use on a next visit. The price is right - and depending on the OCB that you go to, the food is not bad either.
It is hard to just make a blanket recommendation for OCB because they do vary so much from restaurant to restaurant. But if you try a bad one, don't let that stop you from trying another. There are good ones out there.
Friday, December 16, 2011
VISITED THE CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL AT GOLDEN CORRAL
We were near the Philadelphia area and decided to have dinner at the Golden Corral in Bensalem,Pennsylvania. It was a Wednesday night and it was at the beginning of November. When we arrived at the restaurant it was not overly crowded but there were a good number of people there for dinner.I have written about this particular Golden Corral in the past. It is a fair location - not the best Golden Corral that I have been to. It is not the worst, but it has had its share of problems in the past. I was hoping that this trip would be good - and that my wife would find something to eat, as she does have difficulty finding things at Golden Corral and tends to eat mostly from the salad bar mixing salad with some of the cold, grilled, plain chicken that is out for the salads. I am always reluctant to suggest going to Golden Corral for this reason but she was actually the one who suggested it to me - so that we could get to see the Chocolate Wonderfall in person, after recently writing about it to inform all of you of this new feature.
This Golden Corral is about a mile or so from the PARX racetrack casino and I had to wonder as we sat down at our table if the odd assortment of people - mostly men around us were gamblers who came over here for a cheap meal. This was a much different crowd that I have seen here before, but I had not been here at this time of the year before. The casino has no buffet - much to my chagrin or you all would have heard about it from me by now. When these various tables emptied they were refilled by families - so I think my suspicions are correct. Anyway...
When we paid for our dinner and drinks my wife was handed her soda, but I was told that the server would bring my ice tea to our table. When we sat down it took a few minutes for the server to come and when I mentioned the ice tea he said that he would bring it right away. Fine. Just a bit odd - and we have been here before. He went off to get the tea and we went up to the buffet for soup.
I won’t go into the foods as they are so much the same as at all of the other Golden Corrals that I have written about in the past year. I was surprised to see that the poorly thought out seafood saute was still being featured - though now it has dropped the scallops and added crab cakes. This Golden Corral seems to have partly abandoned the cook to order idea and the chef who was also tending the steak grill, had two saute pans continually cooking shrimp and talapia (fish). On the side of the chargrill was a flat iron fry grill and on that he was scooping crab cake mixture and setting it down on the grill and flattening it out. All of the pasta, rice and grilled vegetables, and all of the sauces for the feature were at the side, now facing out for anyone to take and make their own plate of seafood. You still had to ask the chef for the shrimp, fish, or crab cakes. With this set up, it was not the fish or shrimp that were causing a long line,but the crab cakes. He was making just so many at time - not really filling the grill, and handing them out one at a time to each person on the line. And the line only moved, when that batch of crab cakes were ready. They needed to wake up to this and just keep crab cakes cooking at the back and bring them out - but no, this was a new hold up at the saute seafood fiasco. I had gone up three times just to try one crab cake and it was not until just before we were about to finish dinner was I able to get close enough so that I only waited about four minutes to get a crab cake. I wish that I could tell you it was a great crab cake. It was a bit mushy in the middle. I could not really tell if it was real crab. It did not have the texture of real crab - but there did seem to be something mixed in that could have been shell which would say then that it was real crab. Maybe yes and maybe no.
I should say that the first thing that I did once we headed up to the buffet was to walk over to the dessert area and see the chocolate fountain. And there it was. Several levels high (just like in the picture on the commercial) flowing from top to bottom with some type of chocolate substance. This is not real milk chocolate - it may taste like it but it does not have the consistency of melted real milk chocolate and it does not harden when as it cools, as real milk chocolate would. That is not a terrible thing, but it is something to be aware of. The chocolate fountain sat on the counter at anyone’s height including small children and was unattended. Next to the fountain were trays of what should have been the items to dip. All that were there were chunks of pineapple and a plate with rice krispy treat bars. There was a cup full of skewers that you are “supposed to” use to skewer FIRST what you are going to dip. There were no strawberries and no macaroons as stated on the sign on our table. I checked back several times during the night and when the rice krispy bars were gone all that was out was the pineapple. Let me get back to the meal and I will come back to the chocolate fountain shortly.
After soup, we went up for salad, and a number of the salad serving dishes were empty - many of the usual items that should have been out to create a salad needed to be refilled. There was one woman behind the counter who spent the entire night cutting lettuce - and talking to any employee that passed by. Despite requests, she never refilled those empty serving dishes. And as a result, there was no cold grilled chicken for my wife - nor were there most of the things that she eats when she eats salad. (Don’t comment that we should have said something - we did.)
To follow suit, at one point in the meal I went up to the hot buffet and many trays were empty - all at the same time. I sat back down and waited because I was not going to eat things that I did not want because they were not refilling food. It took about ten minutes and trays started to be refilled. Eventually, the hot foods were back out - but this should not happen and it is a sign of a poor kitchen manager and a poor buffet manager - not to mention the staff when this happens. The salad bar, however, was never replenished - but they had heaps of cut up lettuce - that I suppose they were keeping until the next day because that much lettuce would not be needed for that night - given the state of the rest of the salad bar.
So let’s return to the chocolate fountain. It was time for dessert and I was going to try it. My wife made a comment about chocolate fountains, in general, that had not occurred to me. If one is allergic to, let’s say,strawberries, and strawberries are dipped into the chocolate fountain (or dropped into the hot chocolate and lost below - then all of that fountain can cause a problem for that strawberry allergic person. With the pineapple chunks that were out, overly dripping with juice, that pineapple would certainly be mixed into the chocolate. So if you are allergic to any one of the items that are being dipped, beware! I had been keeping an eye on the fountain all night when I was up at the buffet to see what was going on there. What was interesting, is that there pretty much was no one dipping. Perhaps, that is because all that was left to dip was pineapple, but even when the rice krispy treat bars remained, no one was paying the Chocolate Wonderfall any attention!
Now, I titled this article “VISITED THE CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL AT GOLDEN CORRAL”.Notice that I did not say “tried” the Chocolate Wonderfall? That is because I could not try it. We were ready for dessert an hour and a half before this Golden Corral closes. There were still people on line to come in to eat. Tables were just starting their meal. And there was a young woman behind the dessert counter who was taking the chocolate fountain apart. She removed each layer, poured away the chocolate in a waste can next to her, and set the piece of the fountain in a bucket to be taken away. When she got to the bottom level, she started scooping out all of the things that had fallen into the fountain from what was lost at some time during the day and night during dips. So the final laugh - and I did laugh out loud - was that when it was time to try the Chocolate Wonderfall they were taking it away! When I got back to the table, my wife asked where was the whatever dipped in chocolate. I told her, that’s the laugh the whole fountain is gone. Lots of luck to all of those who came to have some - and in fact one of our readers commented on the article in November that they went to Golden Corral just for the chocolate fountain and there was none to be found!
By the way - there was not much in the way of dessert at this point that was being put out either. It could not have been that busy a day - and if it had been, management needed to anticipate what to do in that regard to keeping food out on the buffet.
Service from our server was overall fine. It is a good thing now that you get your own plates and you no longer need to rely upon the server to bring you clean plates each time you want to go up to the buffet. He did come by several times to bring drinks and ask about bringing drinks.
So there you have it. I tried to get a taste of that chocolate. I will say that it is A WONDER and it FALLS flat. Come on, Golden Corral - two losing ideas in a row. Perhaps they have brought you business, but you have to deliver when the people get there. And this time - like with the saute seafood - you did not deliver both at all and in any reasonable manner.
And it was another buffet meal that I felt real bad for my wife...
Now, allow me to apologize to you all as when this article was posted for some reason Blogspot put this post on the site blank. All of the text was there to be posted BUT nothing was posted. I still do not understand why. Anyway - the article is here now - formatted as best as I can get blogger to format it. Let's all hope this is not going to happen again.
Until next week...
This Golden Corral is about a mile or so from the PARX racetrack casino and I had to wonder as we sat down at our table if the odd assortment of people - mostly men around us were gamblers who came over here for a cheap meal. This was a much different crowd that I have seen here before, but I had not been here at this time of the year before. The casino has no buffet - much to my chagrin or you all would have heard about it from me by now. When these various tables emptied they were refilled by families - so I think my suspicions are correct. Anyway...
When we paid for our dinner and drinks my wife was handed her soda, but I was told that the server would bring my ice tea to our table. When we sat down it took a few minutes for the server to come and when I mentioned the ice tea he said that he would bring it right away. Fine. Just a bit odd - and we have been here before. He went off to get the tea and we went up to the buffet for soup.
I won’t go into the foods as they are so much the same as at all of the other Golden Corrals that I have written about in the past year. I was surprised to see that the poorly thought out seafood saute was still being featured - though now it has dropped the scallops and added crab cakes. This Golden Corral seems to have partly abandoned the cook to order idea and the chef who was also tending the steak grill, had two saute pans continually cooking shrimp and talapia (fish). On the side of the chargrill was a flat iron fry grill and on that he was scooping crab cake mixture and setting it down on the grill and flattening it out. All of the pasta, rice and grilled vegetables, and all of the sauces for the feature were at the side, now facing out for anyone to take and make their own plate of seafood. You still had to ask the chef for the shrimp, fish, or crab cakes. With this set up, it was not the fish or shrimp that were causing a long line,but the crab cakes. He was making just so many at time - not really filling the grill, and handing them out one at a time to each person on the line. And the line only moved, when that batch of crab cakes were ready. They needed to wake up to this and just keep crab cakes cooking at the back and bring them out - but no, this was a new hold up at the saute seafood fiasco. I had gone up three times just to try one crab cake and it was not until just before we were about to finish dinner was I able to get close enough so that I only waited about four minutes to get a crab cake. I wish that I could tell you it was a great crab cake. It was a bit mushy in the middle. I could not really tell if it was real crab. It did not have the texture of real crab - but there did seem to be something mixed in that could have been shell which would say then that it was real crab. Maybe yes and maybe no.
I should say that the first thing that I did once we headed up to the buffet was to walk over to the dessert area and see the chocolate fountain. And there it was. Several levels high (just like in the picture on the commercial) flowing from top to bottom with some type of chocolate substance. This is not real milk chocolate - it may taste like it but it does not have the consistency of melted real milk chocolate and it does not harden when as it cools, as real milk chocolate would. That is not a terrible thing, but it is something to be aware of. The chocolate fountain sat on the counter at anyone’s height including small children and was unattended. Next to the fountain were trays of what should have been the items to dip. All that were there were chunks of pineapple and a plate with rice krispy treat bars. There was a cup full of skewers that you are “supposed to” use to skewer FIRST what you are going to dip. There were no strawberries and no macaroons as stated on the sign on our table. I checked back several times during the night and when the rice krispy bars were gone all that was out was the pineapple. Let me get back to the meal and I will come back to the chocolate fountain shortly.
After soup, we went up for salad, and a number of the salad serving dishes were empty - many of the usual items that should have been out to create a salad needed to be refilled. There was one woman behind the counter who spent the entire night cutting lettuce - and talking to any employee that passed by. Despite requests, she never refilled those empty serving dishes. And as a result, there was no cold grilled chicken for my wife - nor were there most of the things that she eats when she eats salad. (Don’t comment that we should have said something - we did.)
To follow suit, at one point in the meal I went up to the hot buffet and many trays were empty - all at the same time. I sat back down and waited because I was not going to eat things that I did not want because they were not refilling food. It took about ten minutes and trays started to be refilled. Eventually, the hot foods were back out - but this should not happen and it is a sign of a poor kitchen manager and a poor buffet manager - not to mention the staff when this happens. The salad bar, however, was never replenished - but they had heaps of cut up lettuce - that I suppose they were keeping until the next day because that much lettuce would not be needed for that night - given the state of the rest of the salad bar.
So let’s return to the chocolate fountain. It was time for dessert and I was going to try it. My wife made a comment about chocolate fountains, in general, that had not occurred to me. If one is allergic to, let’s say,strawberries, and strawberries are dipped into the chocolate fountain (or dropped into the hot chocolate and lost below - then all of that fountain can cause a problem for that strawberry allergic person. With the pineapple chunks that were out, overly dripping with juice, that pineapple would certainly be mixed into the chocolate. So if you are allergic to any one of the items that are being dipped, beware! I had been keeping an eye on the fountain all night when I was up at the buffet to see what was going on there. What was interesting, is that there pretty much was no one dipping. Perhaps, that is because all that was left to dip was pineapple, but even when the rice krispy treat bars remained, no one was paying the Chocolate Wonderfall any attention!
Now, I titled this article “VISITED THE CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL AT GOLDEN CORRAL”.Notice that I did not say “tried” the Chocolate Wonderfall? That is because I could not try it. We were ready for dessert an hour and a half before this Golden Corral closes. There were still people on line to come in to eat. Tables were just starting their meal. And there was a young woman behind the dessert counter who was taking the chocolate fountain apart. She removed each layer, poured away the chocolate in a waste can next to her, and set the piece of the fountain in a bucket to be taken away. When she got to the bottom level, she started scooping out all of the things that had fallen into the fountain from what was lost at some time during the day and night during dips. So the final laugh - and I did laugh out loud - was that when it was time to try the Chocolate Wonderfall they were taking it away! When I got back to the table, my wife asked where was the whatever dipped in chocolate. I told her, that’s the laugh the whole fountain is gone. Lots of luck to all of those who came to have some - and in fact one of our readers commented on the article in November that they went to Golden Corral just for the chocolate fountain and there was none to be found!
By the way - there was not much in the way of dessert at this point that was being put out either. It could not have been that busy a day - and if it had been, management needed to anticipate what to do in that regard to keeping food out on the buffet.
Service from our server was overall fine. It is a good thing now that you get your own plates and you no longer need to rely upon the server to bring you clean plates each time you want to go up to the buffet. He did come by several times to bring drinks and ask about bringing drinks.
So there you have it. I tried to get a taste of that chocolate. I will say that it is A WONDER and it FALLS flat. Come on, Golden Corral - two losing ideas in a row. Perhaps they have brought you business, but you have to deliver when the people get there. And this time - like with the saute seafood - you did not deliver both at all and in any reasonable manner.
And it was another buffet meal that I felt real bad for my wife...
Now, allow me to apologize to you all as when this article was posted for some reason Blogspot put this post on the site blank. All of the text was there to be posted BUT nothing was posted. I still do not understand why. Anyway - the article is here now - formatted as best as I can get blogger to format it. Let's all hope this is not going to happen again.
Until next week...
Friday, February 18, 2011
Souper Salad IS NOT Souper! Salad!
This is so odd that I felt that it should have its own article. I have written several times on this site about a salad buffet chain named "Souper! Salad!". I was doing a search for their website (sure, I should have just come to my site and clicked on the link at the side of the page) when my search engine came up with "Souper Salad - Boston". Hmm? Could it be that this chain has made its way north?
The Souper! Salad! chain is located in the Western US, the Mid-West US, and in the Southeast US as north as North Carolina. They are wonderful and I ate in one about four years ago at their location in Spartanburg, South Carolina. You can read all about that visit here. I have often wished they would open one nearer to me in the Northeast. As you will read, this was a small buffet featuring salads, pasta, pizza, potatoes, and an assortment of other things. The price for the meal is about $6 and they constantly offer coupons bringing the meal down to $4.99. In fact, as a member of their Souper Fresh Club I just got an email with a "card" good for a whole month for as many visits as one would like with the meal at just $4.99. They also offer coupons and special discounts on a Facebook page.
Anyway. So here I am searching for their website and Boston comes up. I went immediately to the link. The site was familiar but was not the Souper! Salad! site. There is mention of a "salad bar" which to me at first means "all you care to eat" but I know that this is not always the case. I poked around on the site. They feature salads, soups, sandwiches, wraps, etc. and the salad bar - but this is not a buffet and none of it is "all you care to eat". The salad bar is listed with two prices - small and large - you take it but you don't go back and pay by the size. There are four locations in Boston.
It just struck me odd. Same name with the difference of two !'s. I am very surprised that the Massachusetts business could incorporate with this so similar name. I am not a lawyer but I was involved with incorporating a business years back that had initials similar to a large corporation and we were blocked from using that name for our corporation because of those initials - and those were very, very different businesses. Here are two salad restaurant chains - one large and one small - and both with the same name (except for those !'s).
I was very disappointed to find that this was not the "real" Souper! Salad!. I could more easily get to Boston than I can to North Carolina where the nearest Souper! Salad! is and I thought that if the chain had moved that far north maybe there were more nearby. No such luck. This is just a little chain trying to cash in on the name of a larger chain and attract those like me who have tried the real thing and want it again. And you know, this Boston chain may be very good but because of this, I would not go there. Not saying that there is any reason not to go there but my annoyance at using the same name.
So I just have to hope that someone decides to open a "real" Souper! Salad! in the Northeast some day. Maybe it will happen... and maybe then I can use those great coupons that I get.
The Souper! Salad! chain is located in the Western US, the Mid-West US, and in the Southeast US as north as North Carolina. They are wonderful and I ate in one about four years ago at their location in Spartanburg, South Carolina. You can read all about that visit here. I have often wished they would open one nearer to me in the Northeast. As you will read, this was a small buffet featuring salads, pasta, pizza, potatoes, and an assortment of other things. The price for the meal is about $6 and they constantly offer coupons bringing the meal down to $4.99. In fact, as a member of their Souper Fresh Club I just got an email with a "card" good for a whole month for as many visits as one would like with the meal at just $4.99. They also offer coupons and special discounts on a Facebook page.
Anyway. So here I am searching for their website and Boston comes up. I went immediately to the link. The site was familiar but was not the Souper! Salad! site. There is mention of a "salad bar" which to me at first means "all you care to eat" but I know that this is not always the case. I poked around on the site. They feature salads, soups, sandwiches, wraps, etc. and the salad bar - but this is not a buffet and none of it is "all you care to eat". The salad bar is listed with two prices - small and large - you take it but you don't go back and pay by the size. There are four locations in Boston.
It just struck me odd. Same name with the difference of two !'s. I am very surprised that the Massachusetts business could incorporate with this so similar name. I am not a lawyer but I was involved with incorporating a business years back that had initials similar to a large corporation and we were blocked from using that name for our corporation because of those initials - and those were very, very different businesses. Here are two salad restaurant chains - one large and one small - and both with the same name (except for those !'s).
I was very disappointed to find that this was not the "real" Souper! Salad!. I could more easily get to Boston than I can to North Carolina where the nearest Souper! Salad! is and I thought that if the chain had moved that far north maybe there were more nearby. No such luck. This is just a little chain trying to cash in on the name of a larger chain and attract those like me who have tried the real thing and want it again. And you know, this Boston chain may be very good but because of this, I would not go there. Not saying that there is any reason not to go there but my annoyance at using the same name.
So I just have to hope that someone decides to open a "real" Souper! Salad! in the Northeast some day. Maybe it will happen... and maybe then I can use those great coupons that I get.
Friday, August 27, 2010
FRENCH QUARTER BUFFET- Showboat Casino, Atlantic City, NJ - PART 1
When I started writing this I had intended it to be one single article, but it grew to be so long that I have split it into two parts -
Part 1
For two years I have been told that the best casino buffet in Atlantic City, New Jersey is at the Showboat Casino. When the casino first opened many years ago, I went to the Showboat's buffet a number of times. They were known THEN for their all you can eat lobster buffet and way back then it was served every night. I guess there were a lot more lobsters around then and they were more affordable because at the time the buffet's price at that time was not higher than any of the others. Now, you may ask - how could they do that? Well, the answer is they couldn't and the every night lobster buffet became history at the Showboat. After that the buffet at the Showboat became just so, so. Nothing really to brag about and there were better at other casinos.
Flash forward several years later and the buffet at the Showboat moved from one part of the second floor to another. It became a little more open - though the view that you had of the ocean in its original location was gone. But the offerings remained just average and after trying it again, I was not all that impressed and looked to other casino buffets.
Now we come to the present and as I said, I have been told by a number of people that the best buffet in a casino at Atlantic City is at the Showboat. It had to be really good to top what I consider to be the best Atlantic City casino buffet which is at the Wild, Wild West Bally's Casino. We recently went to Atlantic City pretty much just to have dinner at the French Quarter, Buffet at the Showboat Casino.
We went on a Friday night which is called Seafood Festival. Sounded good on the signs around the casino. We also passed a sign that said - Saturday Night - ALL YOU CAN EAT WHOLE LOBSTER. So hey, they have brought that back too, at least for one night a week. Other nights of the week there are other features and I am assuming a lower price. The Seafood Festival was $27.99 per person and the Saturday Lobster is $29.99 per person. I am going to base this review on my experience at the Seafood Festival Friday night feature. The Lobster may be wonderful and more than worth every penny of the $30 per person (which is reasonable for all the whole lobsters that you can eat), but there was no value in what was paid for the Friday night Seafood Festival. Does the French Quarter Buffet hold up to the claims that it is the best casino buffet in Atlantic City - not in my opinion. Let me tell you about the whole night and I will tell you why.
The buffet is located on the second floor of the casino building, above the gambling area and in the middle of the floor that it shares with a theater, banquet rooms, and the House of Blues nightclub/bar. The second floor is reached by escalated at either end of the building. You walk down the hallway and you will see the buffet - a large open area along the middle of the hall. Getting in was confusing. There are three entrances - each for a different "comp" card holder - holders of the silver, gold, or platinum cards each go into a different entrance and those without cards enter where the silver card holders go in. All of this and all three entrances enter into the same cashier area with the same cashier desk. I am certain that when there is a crowd - on this Friday night on the last weekend of July there was surprisingly no crowd and no line at all (???) - you will wait much less time depending on which card you have in your hand. You have to earn that gold or platinum card with how much gambling that you do.
So, we finally find the right entrance opening and go to the same cashier that everyone else would go to and we pay - $27.99 each. If you do have a card it is swiped and "points" are added to it. The more points you have (from this or gambling- the more things you get from the casino - which are called "comps" for complimentaries). We go to the side of the cashier and are met by a young woman who escorted us to a table. A server came along almost as soon as we arrived and we were asked for our drink orders which are unlimited soft drinks included in the meal price. If you want wine or beer that is extra, but available with a per drink charge. They seem to be serving Pepsi products as that is what my wife thinks her diet soda was - Diet Pepsi - though she commented that she could not be sure it was not a no name brand.
The layout of the buffet is this - there is a dining room that forms an L around the very long serving area. The entire rear wall is the serving area with a salad and dessert island in front of that closest to the dining tables. Each type of cuisine is SUPPOSED to be in its own section along the serving area - Chinese in the Chinese section, meat in the carving section, Italian in the Italian section, seafood in the seafood section and so on. I say supposed because it was actually scattered all over the place with no sense or reason at all. What should have been in one was mixed into another area. It really was necessary to walk completely around and take note of what was offered to be able to find everything because if you skipped say the Chinese area because you were not in the mood for Asian food but you really wanted some plain string beans (NOT Chinese style string beans) you were not going to find them because they were next to the trays of fried rice and lo mein. Behind each serving counter was an open area for chefs to cook what was being served. Nothing was being cooked to order but they were cooking and refilling what needed to be out - at least as some stations - but not all.
We usually start our meal with soup and soup was scattered all around the different stations. Over by the raw bar and some of the seafood there was Manhattan Clam Chowder (the red kind). At the Chinese area there was egg drop soup. At the Italian area there was Minestrone soup. And then between the Italian area and the carving, hidden so well that I did not find this until mid-meal was another soup - Turtle and Snapper Soup. I took the clam chowder and it was fine - nothing much different than the clam chowder that is served every night at every diner on Long Island where I live (yes, in some areas there is always Chili offered, on Long Island in a diner there is always Manhattan clam chowder). Anyway, the clam chowder was nice - lots of clam pieces but nothing special. I will say here that later I went and had to try the Turtle and Snapper soup. I have had mock turtle soup before and I have had red snapper soup before - usually made with sherry. I have liked both when I have had them. The serving tureen of this soup was skimmed over with a thick layer of cooled soup. I took the ladle and stirred a lot to blend this thickened layer into the soup. I started to scoop and long, thick strands of soup hung from the ladle. Was this supposed to happen with this type of soup? None of those other soups that I have had - the mock turtle or the snapper did this. I scooped a half cup. It looked like brown gravy. I thought to myself that perhaps this was not soup at all but brown gravy for the beef. It was actually thicker than the thickest brown gravy would be. Back at the table I took a taste - the thick reddish brown soup clung to the sides of the cup and again, a long strand of something came up with the spoon and down into the soup. I bravely, broke the strand and tasted. It tasted like other snapper soup that I have had. There was the distinct subtle taste of sherry. The taste was pleasant - the consistency was odd. It was super thick and those strands kept coming up with the soup. There was no pieces of anything in the soup - just these stringy strands. I did finish most of the half cup, leaving behind what was clinging to all of the sides that the soup touched.
My wife visited the salad bar next and I went on to the raw bar. The salad bar was very extensive with a variety of salad toppings to go along with the greens and then a number of prepared salads including a Caesar salad that was prepared. I tried the Caesar salad later on and it looked a lot better than it was. The dressing - and most of what is Caesar salad is the dressing - was weak. My wife was upset that a number of the salad toppings contained drippings and pieces from other toppings containers. I commented to her that this was the fault of the people serving themselves moving one spoon to another container but she pointed out to me that at many salad bars at buffets - including the chain buffets - the employees come around and correct this when it happens - removing whatever does not belong or even replacing the container. Here this did not happen and the - let's call them "contaminated" containers remained that way the entire time that we were there. While eating her salad, my wife discovered that the slices of cucumber that she had taken were all spoiled.
As I said, while my wife had salad, I went to the Raw Bar and there were raw oysters and clams on the half shell. The oysters were large - perhaps too large to eat comfortably for raw oysters. I took three oysters and one clam. The oysters were not wet as they should be and instead of silvery grey in color they were a dry, pale yellow. I ate the first one and thought that it was slightly off in taste - not bad but not with that fresh ocean taste that raw clams should have. They were served on a large bed of ice so they should have kept fresh but it is hard to tell how often they are taken and replaced. I tried one more with more concern - and the last thing that I wanted on this night was raw shell fish poisoning. It did not have that fresh ocean taste and that was it for oysters for me that night. I did try the clam and it was OK - too large really to be very good. The Raw Bar also had shrimp in the shell - large shrimp that had been de-veined. The ones that I picked were fine. My wife took some later that she said were under cooked and not good. So far the Seafood Festival was not so festive.
END OF PART 1 - Come back next week for PART 2
Part 1
For two years I have been told that the best casino buffet in Atlantic City, New Jersey is at the Showboat Casino. When the casino first opened many years ago, I went to the Showboat's buffet a number of times. They were known THEN for their all you can eat lobster buffet and way back then it was served every night. I guess there were a lot more lobsters around then and they were more affordable because at the time the buffet's price at that time was not higher than any of the others. Now, you may ask - how could they do that? Well, the answer is they couldn't and the every night lobster buffet became history at the Showboat. After that the buffet at the Showboat became just so, so. Nothing really to brag about and there were better at other casinos.
Flash forward several years later and the buffet at the Showboat moved from one part of the second floor to another. It became a little more open - though the view that you had of the ocean in its original location was gone. But the offerings remained just average and after trying it again, I was not all that impressed and looked to other casino buffets.
Now we come to the present and as I said, I have been told by a number of people that the best buffet in a casino at Atlantic City is at the Showboat. It had to be really good to top what I consider to be the best Atlantic City casino buffet which is at the Wild, Wild West Bally's Casino. We recently went to Atlantic City pretty much just to have dinner at the French Quarter, Buffet at the Showboat Casino.
We went on a Friday night which is called Seafood Festival. Sounded good on the signs around the casino. We also passed a sign that said - Saturday Night - ALL YOU CAN EAT WHOLE LOBSTER. So hey, they have brought that back too, at least for one night a week. Other nights of the week there are other features and I am assuming a lower price. The Seafood Festival was $27.99 per person and the Saturday Lobster is $29.99 per person. I am going to base this review on my experience at the Seafood Festival Friday night feature. The Lobster may be wonderful and more than worth every penny of the $30 per person (which is reasonable for all the whole lobsters that you can eat), but there was no value in what was paid for the Friday night Seafood Festival. Does the French Quarter Buffet hold up to the claims that it is the best casino buffet in Atlantic City - not in my opinion. Let me tell you about the whole night and I will tell you why.
The buffet is located on the second floor of the casino building, above the gambling area and in the middle of the floor that it shares with a theater, banquet rooms, and the House of Blues nightclub/bar. The second floor is reached by escalated at either end of the building. You walk down the hallway and you will see the buffet - a large open area along the middle of the hall. Getting in was confusing. There are three entrances - each for a different "comp" card holder - holders of the silver, gold, or platinum cards each go into a different entrance and those without cards enter where the silver card holders go in. All of this and all three entrances enter into the same cashier area with the same cashier desk. I am certain that when there is a crowd - on this Friday night on the last weekend of July there was surprisingly no crowd and no line at all (???) - you will wait much less time depending on which card you have in your hand. You have to earn that gold or platinum card with how much gambling that you do.
So, we finally find the right entrance opening and go to the same cashier that everyone else would go to and we pay - $27.99 each. If you do have a card it is swiped and "points" are added to it. The more points you have (from this or gambling- the more things you get from the casino - which are called "comps" for complimentaries). We go to the side of the cashier and are met by a young woman who escorted us to a table. A server came along almost as soon as we arrived and we were asked for our drink orders which are unlimited soft drinks included in the meal price. If you want wine or beer that is extra, but available with a per drink charge. They seem to be serving Pepsi products as that is what my wife thinks her diet soda was - Diet Pepsi - though she commented that she could not be sure it was not a no name brand.
The layout of the buffet is this - there is a dining room that forms an L around the very long serving area. The entire rear wall is the serving area with a salad and dessert island in front of that closest to the dining tables. Each type of cuisine is SUPPOSED to be in its own section along the serving area - Chinese in the Chinese section, meat in the carving section, Italian in the Italian section, seafood in the seafood section and so on. I say supposed because it was actually scattered all over the place with no sense or reason at all. What should have been in one was mixed into another area. It really was necessary to walk completely around and take note of what was offered to be able to find everything because if you skipped say the Chinese area because you were not in the mood for Asian food but you really wanted some plain string beans (NOT Chinese style string beans) you were not going to find them because they were next to the trays of fried rice and lo mein. Behind each serving counter was an open area for chefs to cook what was being served. Nothing was being cooked to order but they were cooking and refilling what needed to be out - at least as some stations - but not all.
We usually start our meal with soup and soup was scattered all around the different stations. Over by the raw bar and some of the seafood there was Manhattan Clam Chowder (the red kind). At the Chinese area there was egg drop soup. At the Italian area there was Minestrone soup. And then between the Italian area and the carving, hidden so well that I did not find this until mid-meal was another soup - Turtle and Snapper Soup. I took the clam chowder and it was fine - nothing much different than the clam chowder that is served every night at every diner on Long Island where I live (yes, in some areas there is always Chili offered, on Long Island in a diner there is always Manhattan clam chowder). Anyway, the clam chowder was nice - lots of clam pieces but nothing special. I will say here that later I went and had to try the Turtle and Snapper soup. I have had mock turtle soup before and I have had red snapper soup before - usually made with sherry. I have liked both when I have had them. The serving tureen of this soup was skimmed over with a thick layer of cooled soup. I took the ladle and stirred a lot to blend this thickened layer into the soup. I started to scoop and long, thick strands of soup hung from the ladle. Was this supposed to happen with this type of soup? None of those other soups that I have had - the mock turtle or the snapper did this. I scooped a half cup. It looked like brown gravy. I thought to myself that perhaps this was not soup at all but brown gravy for the beef. It was actually thicker than the thickest brown gravy would be. Back at the table I took a taste - the thick reddish brown soup clung to the sides of the cup and again, a long strand of something came up with the spoon and down into the soup. I bravely, broke the strand and tasted. It tasted like other snapper soup that I have had. There was the distinct subtle taste of sherry. The taste was pleasant - the consistency was odd. It was super thick and those strands kept coming up with the soup. There was no pieces of anything in the soup - just these stringy strands. I did finish most of the half cup, leaving behind what was clinging to all of the sides that the soup touched.
My wife visited the salad bar next and I went on to the raw bar. The salad bar was very extensive with a variety of salad toppings to go along with the greens and then a number of prepared salads including a Caesar salad that was prepared. I tried the Caesar salad later on and it looked a lot better than it was. The dressing - and most of what is Caesar salad is the dressing - was weak. My wife was upset that a number of the salad toppings contained drippings and pieces from other toppings containers. I commented to her that this was the fault of the people serving themselves moving one spoon to another container but she pointed out to me that at many salad bars at buffets - including the chain buffets - the employees come around and correct this when it happens - removing whatever does not belong or even replacing the container. Here this did not happen and the - let's call them "contaminated" containers remained that way the entire time that we were there. While eating her salad, my wife discovered that the slices of cucumber that she had taken were all spoiled.
As I said, while my wife had salad, I went to the Raw Bar and there were raw oysters and clams on the half shell. The oysters were large - perhaps too large to eat comfortably for raw oysters. I took three oysters and one clam. The oysters were not wet as they should be and instead of silvery grey in color they were a dry, pale yellow. I ate the first one and thought that it was slightly off in taste - not bad but not with that fresh ocean taste that raw clams should have. They were served on a large bed of ice so they should have kept fresh but it is hard to tell how often they are taken and replaced. I tried one more with more concern - and the last thing that I wanted on this night was raw shell fish poisoning. It did not have that fresh ocean taste and that was it for oysters for me that night. I did try the clam and it was OK - too large really to be very good. The Raw Bar also had shrimp in the shell - large shrimp that had been de-veined. The ones that I picked were fine. My wife took some later that she said were under cooked and not good. So far the Seafood Festival was not so festive.
END OF PART 1 - Come back next week for PART 2
Friday, February 12, 2010
The Best Buffet Coupon Deals
No, this is not another of our annual awards, but I have to share with all of you the two best buffet chains that offer regular coupons for free meals. I get coupons from all of the big chains. It is easy to do - just register your email address at their website and you will start receiving offers. Old Country Buffet even sends out a free meal coupon when you register - just for registering, but the OCB coupons are few and far between.
The two best deals are the two large salad buffets - Soup Plantations/Sweet Tomatoes and Souper Salad. These chains have buffet locations across the country but not further north on the East Coast than North Carolina. Each regularly sends out Buy One Meal, Get One Meal Free coupons regularly - at least once, if not more a month.
Sweet Tomatoes/Soup Plantations is the larger of the two chains and the larger restaurant setup. I had the pleasure of dining at one of their two locations in North Carolina a few years ago and you can read my review of that restaurant here. The feature of this buffet is soup and salad and they have an amazing variety of soups and a vast assortment of mixed salads. The offerings vary each month and there are themes that are changed month to month. One of the things that you will learn being on their email list are the features for the month - and always a coupon to go with it. The price is already reasonable but with the coupon two can eat dinner for less than ten dollars US. There are not many places where that is possible any longer. There is also more on the buffet besides soup and salad. There is pizza, a baked potato bar, pasta, and a great assortment of baked goods and desserts. I was very pleased when I visited this buffet on that very hot afternoon in North Carolina - and my picky eater wife after a little convincing from me that it was OK to ask for plain pasta was happy too. This was an experience and one that I wish was close enough to enjoy again some time soon. The only complaint that I have about this chain is that they do not move further north on the East Coast. If you are lucky to have one near you - if you live on the West Coast there are plenty of locations as it started in California (where salads are well known) - get on their email list and start getting coupons. If you are on Facebook, they also have a page and they run contests there with even better deals!
Souper Salad is another chain that I was able to go to on that same trip in 2007. This buffet was in South Carolina - the furthest north location in the chain. A reader had told me about the chain just before my trip and when we planned our itinerary I made sure to be close enough to try it. You can read about my visit here. This is a smaller chain and, at least, the location that I dined at is a smaller restaurant set up than Sweet Tomatoes/Soup Plantation. But though the offerings were less it was very enjoyable and if anything good could be less expensive, this was it with a price a few dollars less than the other chain. Here again, the order of the day is soup and salad. Like the other chain, there is a potato bar, a pasta bar, pizza (read my original review about the pizza), a variety of really good baked goods, and desserts. Despite its size there were somethings that I actually enjoyed more at this buffet than the other (and I dined here first before the other). Again, if they were only further north. This chain is in the western part of the US and in the south east, but no further north than North Carolina - I think. The website, while cutely animated, has one of the worst restaurant locators that I have ever encountered. It is slow and after waiting for what seems like forever no results ever come up. After a long wait I did manage to get the Spartanburg location to come up so it is still there and the only one in South Carolina. If you have one near you, and you are a buffet goer, you probably know about it. Go to the website and sign up for the "club" and you will start getting coupons- Buy One Get One at this price - two can't eat lunch for that little and here the same price is for dinner or lunch, weekend or weekday!
As I say, these are the best and most regular offers. Occasionally for some special date, OCB will send out a coupon with a reduced price meal if you buy one and they send a similar coupon for your birthday. They are odd with their coupons - they mail coupons in some areas. They mail coupons to my sister-in-law who lives about twenty miles from me and not near an OCB, but here where there is a location there never is a coupon in the mail. I have a nice sister-in-law who sends me hers.
It is always nice to get something for nothing.
The two best deals are the two large salad buffets - Soup Plantations/Sweet Tomatoes and Souper Salad. These chains have buffet locations across the country but not further north on the East Coast than North Carolina. Each regularly sends out Buy One Meal, Get One Meal Free coupons regularly - at least once, if not more a month.
Sweet Tomatoes/Soup Plantations is the larger of the two chains and the larger restaurant setup. I had the pleasure of dining at one of their two locations in North Carolina a few years ago and you can read my review of that restaurant here. The feature of this buffet is soup and salad and they have an amazing variety of soups and a vast assortment of mixed salads. The offerings vary each month and there are themes that are changed month to month. One of the things that you will learn being on their email list are the features for the month - and always a coupon to go with it. The price is already reasonable but with the coupon two can eat dinner for less than ten dollars US. There are not many places where that is possible any longer. There is also more on the buffet besides soup and salad. There is pizza, a baked potato bar, pasta, and a great assortment of baked goods and desserts. I was very pleased when I visited this buffet on that very hot afternoon in North Carolina - and my picky eater wife after a little convincing from me that it was OK to ask for plain pasta was happy too. This was an experience and one that I wish was close enough to enjoy again some time soon. The only complaint that I have about this chain is that they do not move further north on the East Coast. If you are lucky to have one near you - if you live on the West Coast there are plenty of locations as it started in California (where salads are well known) - get on their email list and start getting coupons. If you are on Facebook, they also have a page and they run contests there with even better deals!
Souper Salad is another chain that I was able to go to on that same trip in 2007. This buffet was in South Carolina - the furthest north location in the chain. A reader had told me about the chain just before my trip and when we planned our itinerary I made sure to be close enough to try it. You can read about my visit here. This is a smaller chain and, at least, the location that I dined at is a smaller restaurant set up than Sweet Tomatoes/Soup Plantation. But though the offerings were less it was very enjoyable and if anything good could be less expensive, this was it with a price a few dollars less than the other chain. Here again, the order of the day is soup and salad. Like the other chain, there is a potato bar, a pasta bar, pizza (read my original review about the pizza), a variety of really good baked goods, and desserts. Despite its size there were somethings that I actually enjoyed more at this buffet than the other (and I dined here first before the other). Again, if they were only further north. This chain is in the western part of the US and in the south east, but no further north than North Carolina - I think. The website, while cutely animated, has one of the worst restaurant locators that I have ever encountered. It is slow and after waiting for what seems like forever no results ever come up. After a long wait I did manage to get the Spartanburg location to come up so it is still there and the only one in South Carolina. If you have one near you, and you are a buffet goer, you probably know about it. Go to the website and sign up for the "club" and you will start getting coupons- Buy One Get One at this price - two can't eat lunch for that little and here the same price is for dinner or lunch, weekend or weekday!
As I say, these are the best and most regular offers. Occasionally for some special date, OCB will send out a coupon with a reduced price meal if you buy one and they send a similar coupon for your birthday. They are odd with their coupons - they mail coupons in some areas. They mail coupons to my sister-in-law who lives about twenty miles from me and not near an OCB, but here where there is a location there never is a coupon in the mail. I have a nice sister-in-law who sends me hers.
It is always nice to get something for nothing.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Olive Garden's Never Ending Pasta Bowl
The Olive Garden is a chain of Italian restaurants with locations across the United States. The Olive Garden is not a buffet restaurant but every so often it does run an all you care to eat special. In addition, they always have an unlimited soup and salad offering on the menu. At the current time there is an all you care to eat special that they are calling the Never Ending Pasta Bowl. This is a limited time offer, but it has been brought back through the years.
I never have had much regard for non-buffet restaurant chain all you can eat special offers. I have tried them in years past at both this chain and also the Red Lobster, a seafood chain across the U.S. that frequently offers specials of all you can eat shrimp, crab legs, etc. How this works is that yu order from the menu and your waiter or waitress brings you the first dish and when y9u want more the server must bring you another plate, and so on. My experience always has been that the first serving is brought and then when you are ready for more you can try to find your server who is avoiding your table, and when and if you find the server and ask for me, it is a big surprise - I recall the scene from the play/movie, Oliver - "Please, Sir, may I have some more?" "SOMEMORE...the boy wants somemore?" And then a song and dance number starts about how never before has a boy wanted more. Well, once you get past the - yes, bring me somemore!- the server comes back after a considerable amount of time with a few pieces of whatever it was you asked for on a small plate. Yes, this has happened consistently to me in the long past at both of these chains - and I have not gone back for one of these specials since. Until now.
The television commercial for the Olive Garden's Never Ending Pasta Bowl tempted me enough to bring me back to the Olive Garden after oh so many years for one more try. I have to say that I was pleasingly surprised.
The offer is this - order a bowl of pasta in one of six pasta shapes covered in one of six different sauces. As their advertising states, there are forty two different combinations. You can keep asking for as many of these combinations as you would like. With the pasta you will also get unlimited breadsticks (more like long, narrow garlic bread rolls) and a choice of unlimited soup of your choice from the soups on the menu OR unlimited salad. The amazing price for all of this is just $8.95. If you enjoy your pasta with Italain meatballs or sausage, for an additional $1.95 you can order unlimited meatballs or sausage to accompany your pasta. You can order unlimited softdrinks - but there is no price for this on the menu. We decided on just water, but certainly it could not be much more than another $2 each, if you are inclined to soda. Right at this point, the price is good. If you are inclined to dessert you are going to pay over $6.00 or more for ONE piece of cake. Add single serving appetizers and you are getting into serious money. But the pasta is unlimited so you don't really need much more - much to our waiter's chagrin. One other word before I continue on - they are big on wine here and it is the first thing the waiter offered while holding a bottle in his hand ready to pour into the glasses on our table before offering the special menu choices. If you are so inclined, it is not cheap.
Now, we went to one of the two local Olive Gardens in our area and there was a short wait top get in - they said fifteen minutes, it was more like ten or less. I am not sure why there was a wait aother than to show off the fancy electronic pager system - not sure why they have that either as there was no place to go but the parking lot or the lobby of the restaurant. Once we were seated there were a number of vacant tables. The restaurant was not empty, but other than staggering server assignments, there was no reason to have anyone wait. But the wait was not bad - though one family came in, heard about the wait and left (I am not sure what other restaurant they were going to get to in the fifteen minutes they were told they would have to wait). Any way, we were tyaken into one of the several dining rooms and seated. Very nice, faux-rustic Italain decor. On the table was a special menu and on the front of that was the Never Ending Pasta Bowl and all of the choices for it. They did not hide the special, and while it was not the only thing we saw people at other tables ordering, it was one of the more popular choices. As I said, you order your "first" bowl of whatever combination you would like and also order soup or a salad.
Ok - the pastas - spagetti, whole wheat spagetti, linuini, fettachini, penne, and orechiette (ear-shaped pasta, similar to shells). The sauces - marinara, five cheese marinara, alfredo, meat sauce with beef and sausage within, and two new sauces introduced with this offer - Roasted Portabello Pomadoro and Creamy Parmesean Florentine. You order a pasta and a sauce. When yu want more you order any pasta and any sauce, and you can change as many times as you order another bowl. There are a nice selection of soups and you are ordering these from the standard menu - these include minnestrone, chicken and gnocci, macaroni and beans, and a spicy sausage soup. I have not used the Italian names that these soups have on the menu. If you roder salad you get a very large bowl of greens served family style to all those who order it. If you would like more soup or salad, it will be brought to you.
Together, my wife and I tasted an assortment. We went for the soup instead of the salad. I had the Chicken and Gnocci and she had the Minnestrone. The chicken soup was a cream of chicken soup that contained small chunks of chicken and a few gnocci. Gnocci is potato dumpling pasta - little balls of potato dough that is boiled like pasta to cook. My first experience with gnocci was wwhen my father made it when I was young using my Grandmother's recipe. The gnocci in the soup was not quite like Dad's, but they were not bad - though there were maybe four in the whole bowl. Of course, if I wanted more I could have asked for another bowl - which was offered when we had finished our bowls of soup. The Minnestrone was the usual tomato based, Italian vegtable soup. This one was fine, yet again, not as full of vegetables as some. All in all, the soups were good, We saw salad served on other tables and they bring a VERY large bowl for those who ordered it to share - or a similarly large bowl for one. And again, you can get more if y9u wish.
We did not get more soup - the attraction for the evening is the pasta and why get full on soup or salad - or the breadstick/garlic bread. The waiter brought out two bowls of pasta. The bowls were large in size - perhaps as large as a dinner plate about ten inches. The bowl was full of pasta but not overflowing. The pasta was covered in sauce. All was very hot when it came out - and stayed close to that throughout. I started with the fetticini with the specail roasted portobello pomadoro sauce and my wife had the whole wheat pasta with marinara sauce,. Each pasta was good. The whole wheat pasta was actually too good to be whole wheat - so much so that my wife doubted that it was - though the waiter said that it was when he put it in front of her. The Roasted Portobello Pomodoro was a chunky tomato sauce with regular mushroom slices mixed in and on the top were a few strips of portobello mushrooms. It was tasty. My wife felt that the marinara was spicy. It should not have been. I tried some of hers and did not find it that. It seemed mild to me. It is possible that she was just feeling whatever spice had been in the Minnestrone. When the pasta is served you are offered freshly grated cheese which is ground over your bowl by your server. I enjoyed my first bowl eager to see what was to come. Would the waiter dissappear?
As we were coming to the bottom of our bowls of pasta the waiter appeared. To my pleasant surprise he asked if we wanted then to order the next bowl or would we want to finish our bowls and then order another - as they come out quickly, he said. We said we would wait. When we had finished, in a few minutes the waiter reappeared and asked if we were ready to order more. This time I ordered the little ear pasta and the creamy parmasean florentine sauce adn my wife ordered the penne with meat sauce. True to form for these types of specials in this type of restaurant, when the next bowls were served, gone where the large, dinner plate sized bowls and now the pasta was served in a smaller bowl - perhaps six or seven inches across. Ok, less pasta - or at least the suggestion of less pasta, but you can still ask for more. The creamy parmasean florentine is described as an alfredo sauce with spinich. What they do not say is that this is raw spinach leaves torn up and put over the top of the pasta and alfredo sauce. The taste was nice but I had expected cooked spinach and did care as much as I would have liked. The meat sauce was not heavily loaded with meat but the meat was evident. My wife says that she did not notice if there actually was sausage meat mixed in with the beef. I tasted it and it was not bad.
Let's face it - and this is what Olive Garden is counting on for a $9 all you care to eat dinner - there is just so much pasta one can eat at one meal. By the end of the second bowl my wife was ready to stop and I was not far from it. But, of course, I had to go on to at least one more bowl. Again, the waiter did not dissapoint and appeared in a timely manner to ask if we would like another bowl. I had the penne in five cheese marinara sauce. This sauce was much like an ala vodka sauce with9ut the vodoka - a creamy red tomato sauce that was thick with cheese - which may have been what made it creamy in the first place. It was a very nice sauce. Again, this pasta arrived in the small bowl. I made it through three quartes of the bowl before I had to call it quits. Unlless you intend to marathon eat this meal, there is not much more than three bowls that the average preson is going to eat.
I was full, but I also wanted to see something involving my left over pasta. At every other table, there servers were rushing to bring take out boxes and bags for people to take their left overs hoke with them including the garlic rolls. Would I be offered to take my left over pasta home and the almost full basket of garlic bread breadsticks? The answer is no.
I found the $8.95 Never Ending Pasta Bowl to be a very satisfying meal. The value was great, the food was good, and there was plenty to eat without any real effort to get the refills. If you like pasta and can eat your fill of it - this is the dinner to go for.
Olive Garden restaurants are all over in many states. This offer is for a limited time and in a few months or even less, call first to see if it is still offered (if you are no longer seeing the commercials). If it is gone, it will come back at some point. The hours at the Olive Garden may vary by location but many are open until 10 on weeknights and 11 on Friday and Saturdays.
I never have had much regard for non-buffet restaurant chain all you can eat special offers. I have tried them in years past at both this chain and also the Red Lobster, a seafood chain across the U.S. that frequently offers specials of all you can eat shrimp, crab legs, etc. How this works is that yu order from the menu and your waiter or waitress brings you the first dish and when y9u want more the server must bring you another plate, and so on. My experience always has been that the first serving is brought and then when you are ready for more you can try to find your server who is avoiding your table, and when and if you find the server and ask for me, it is a big surprise - I recall the scene from the play/movie, Oliver - "Please, Sir, may I have some more?" "SOMEMORE...the boy wants somemore?" And then a song and dance number starts about how never before has a boy wanted more. Well, once you get past the - yes, bring me somemore!- the server comes back after a considerable amount of time with a few pieces of whatever it was you asked for on a small plate. Yes, this has happened consistently to me in the long past at both of these chains - and I have not gone back for one of these specials since. Until now.
The television commercial for the Olive Garden's Never Ending Pasta Bowl tempted me enough to bring me back to the Olive Garden after oh so many years for one more try. I have to say that I was pleasingly surprised.
The offer is this - order a bowl of pasta in one of six pasta shapes covered in one of six different sauces. As their advertising states, there are forty two different combinations. You can keep asking for as many of these combinations as you would like. With the pasta you will also get unlimited breadsticks (more like long, narrow garlic bread rolls) and a choice of unlimited soup of your choice from the soups on the menu OR unlimited salad. The amazing price for all of this is just $8.95. If you enjoy your pasta with Italain meatballs or sausage, for an additional $1.95 you can order unlimited meatballs or sausage to accompany your pasta. You can order unlimited softdrinks - but there is no price for this on the menu. We decided on just water, but certainly it could not be much more than another $2 each, if you are inclined to soda. Right at this point, the price is good. If you are inclined to dessert you are going to pay over $6.00 or more for ONE piece of cake. Add single serving appetizers and you are getting into serious money. But the pasta is unlimited so you don't really need much more - much to our waiter's chagrin. One other word before I continue on - they are big on wine here and it is the first thing the waiter offered while holding a bottle in his hand ready to pour into the glasses on our table before offering the special menu choices. If you are so inclined, it is not cheap.
Now, we went to one of the two local Olive Gardens in our area and there was a short wait top get in - they said fifteen minutes, it was more like ten or less. I am not sure why there was a wait aother than to show off the fancy electronic pager system - not sure why they have that either as there was no place to go but the parking lot or the lobby of the restaurant. Once we were seated there were a number of vacant tables. The restaurant was not empty, but other than staggering server assignments, there was no reason to have anyone wait. But the wait was not bad - though one family came in, heard about the wait and left (I am not sure what other restaurant they were going to get to in the fifteen minutes they were told they would have to wait). Any way, we were tyaken into one of the several dining rooms and seated. Very nice, faux-rustic Italain decor. On the table was a special menu and on the front of that was the Never Ending Pasta Bowl and all of the choices for it. They did not hide the special, and while it was not the only thing we saw people at other tables ordering, it was one of the more popular choices. As I said, you order your "first" bowl of whatever combination you would like and also order soup or a salad.
Ok - the pastas - spagetti, whole wheat spagetti, linuini, fettachini, penne, and orechiette (ear-shaped pasta, similar to shells). The sauces - marinara, five cheese marinara, alfredo, meat sauce with beef and sausage within, and two new sauces introduced with this offer - Roasted Portabello Pomadoro and Creamy Parmesean Florentine. You order a pasta and a sauce. When yu want more you order any pasta and any sauce, and you can change as many times as you order another bowl. There are a nice selection of soups and you are ordering these from the standard menu - these include minnestrone, chicken and gnocci, macaroni and beans, and a spicy sausage soup. I have not used the Italian names that these soups have on the menu. If you roder salad you get a very large bowl of greens served family style to all those who order it. If you would like more soup or salad, it will be brought to you.
Together, my wife and I tasted an assortment. We went for the soup instead of the salad. I had the Chicken and Gnocci and she had the Minnestrone. The chicken soup was a cream of chicken soup that contained small chunks of chicken and a few gnocci. Gnocci is potato dumpling pasta - little balls of potato dough that is boiled like pasta to cook. My first experience with gnocci was wwhen my father made it when I was young using my Grandmother's recipe. The gnocci in the soup was not quite like Dad's, but they were not bad - though there were maybe four in the whole bowl. Of course, if I wanted more I could have asked for another bowl - which was offered when we had finished our bowls of soup. The Minnestrone was the usual tomato based, Italian vegtable soup. This one was fine, yet again, not as full of vegetables as some. All in all, the soups were good, We saw salad served on other tables and they bring a VERY large bowl for those who ordered it to share - or a similarly large bowl for one. And again, you can get more if y9u wish.
We did not get more soup - the attraction for the evening is the pasta and why get full on soup or salad - or the breadstick/garlic bread. The waiter brought out two bowls of pasta. The bowls were large in size - perhaps as large as a dinner plate about ten inches. The bowl was full of pasta but not overflowing. The pasta was covered in sauce. All was very hot when it came out - and stayed close to that throughout. I started with the fetticini with the specail roasted portobello pomadoro sauce and my wife had the whole wheat pasta with marinara sauce,. Each pasta was good. The whole wheat pasta was actually too good to be whole wheat - so much so that my wife doubted that it was - though the waiter said that it was when he put it in front of her. The Roasted Portobello Pomodoro was a chunky tomato sauce with regular mushroom slices mixed in and on the top were a few strips of portobello mushrooms. It was tasty. My wife felt that the marinara was spicy. It should not have been. I tried some of hers and did not find it that. It seemed mild to me. It is possible that she was just feeling whatever spice had been in the Minnestrone. When the pasta is served you are offered freshly grated cheese which is ground over your bowl by your server. I enjoyed my first bowl eager to see what was to come. Would the waiter dissappear?
As we were coming to the bottom of our bowls of pasta the waiter appeared. To my pleasant surprise he asked if we wanted then to order the next bowl or would we want to finish our bowls and then order another - as they come out quickly, he said. We said we would wait. When we had finished, in a few minutes the waiter reappeared and asked if we were ready to order more. This time I ordered the little ear pasta and the creamy parmasean florentine sauce adn my wife ordered the penne with meat sauce. True to form for these types of specials in this type of restaurant, when the next bowls were served, gone where the large, dinner plate sized bowls and now the pasta was served in a smaller bowl - perhaps six or seven inches across. Ok, less pasta - or at least the suggestion of less pasta, but you can still ask for more. The creamy parmasean florentine is described as an alfredo sauce with spinich. What they do not say is that this is raw spinach leaves torn up and put over the top of the pasta and alfredo sauce. The taste was nice but I had expected cooked spinach and did care as much as I would have liked. The meat sauce was not heavily loaded with meat but the meat was evident. My wife says that she did not notice if there actually was sausage meat mixed in with the beef. I tasted it and it was not bad.
Let's face it - and this is what Olive Garden is counting on for a $9 all you care to eat dinner - there is just so much pasta one can eat at one meal. By the end of the second bowl my wife was ready to stop and I was not far from it. But, of course, I had to go on to at least one more bowl. Again, the waiter did not dissapoint and appeared in a timely manner to ask if we would like another bowl. I had the penne in five cheese marinara sauce. This sauce was much like an ala vodka sauce with9ut the vodoka - a creamy red tomato sauce that was thick with cheese - which may have been what made it creamy in the first place. It was a very nice sauce. Again, this pasta arrived in the small bowl. I made it through three quartes of the bowl before I had to call it quits. Unlless you intend to marathon eat this meal, there is not much more than three bowls that the average preson is going to eat.
I was full, but I also wanted to see something involving my left over pasta. At every other table, there servers were rushing to bring take out boxes and bags for people to take their left overs hoke with them including the garlic rolls. Would I be offered to take my left over pasta home and the almost full basket of garlic bread breadsticks? The answer is no.
I found the $8.95 Never Ending Pasta Bowl to be a very satisfying meal. The value was great, the food was good, and there was plenty to eat without any real effort to get the refills. If you like pasta and can eat your fill of it - this is the dinner to go for.
Olive Garden restaurants are all over in many states. This offer is for a limited time and in a few months or even less, call first to see if it is still offered (if you are no longer seeing the commercials). If it is gone, it will come back at some point. The hours at the Olive Garden may vary by location but many are open until 10 on weeknights and 11 on Friday and Saturdays.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Gatti's Pizza - A Pizza Buffet
When I think Pizza Buffet, I think Cici's but that is only because that is the chain most local to me - if local is 200 miles. There are other pizza buffet chain restaurants as well. We wrote about a new, small, two location chain in Pennsylvania a year ago. I recently found another chain that is much more wide-spread across the country. That chain is Gatti's Pizza.
Now, as always, I tell you right up front when I am writing about a restaurant or chain that I have not been to and this is another of those. I have not eaten at Gatti's Pizza, but I will share with you all that I have learned.
Gatti's presentation is very much like Cici's - a buffet comprised of pizza, salad bar, pasta, and dessert. There are also chicken wings - though it appears that these are not included on the buffet, . There is a take out option and there is also the ability to internet order from some of the locations, particularly those in Texas.
Locations are across the US as far west as Texas. There are Gatti's Pizza locations in Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Most states listed have several locations with the most in Texas. This is not surprising as this is the state where the chain was founded in 1964 with a pizza restaurant called The Pizza Place. In 1969 the founder moved to Austin, Texas and renamed the restaurant using his wife's maiden name, it the restaurant became Mr. Gatti's. The restaurant prided itself on using all natural ingredients to make the best tasting pizza possible. In the 1980's the restaurant expanded to a chain of game rooms that included a pizza buffet. Interestingly, Cici's also began its pizza buffet restaurants in Texas in 1985. (So, who came first?) There are now 140 + locations of Gatti's Pizza. Locations are franchises.
So what types of pizza will you find on the buffet? This is another of the every combination you can think of assortment of pizzas. There is a Sampler pizza, a Bacon Double Cheeseburger pizza, BBQ Chicken pizza, Meat Market pizza, Vegetarian Sampler pizza, Superoni (pepperoni) pizza, Gatti's Deluxe pizza, Buffalo Chicken Pizza, Veggi Sicilian, and Meat Sicilian. There is a separate list of toppings so we can presume that other combinations are possible. Personally, I like to try the exotic when I go to pizza buffets but I am usually happier when I find basic cheese pizza also available.
The salad bar is what you would expect. Salad greens, tomatoes, and toppings with a variety of dressings. The pasta is spagetti with tomato sauce. There is a mention of macaroni and cheese as well. Most locations have a website and these tend to get a little more specific as to what you might find at that location.
The dessert choices are apple pizza and cinnamon bread sticks (what appears to be pizza dough baked with cinnamon). Of course there are soft drinks and it is stated that these vary by location.
To find prices you need to look at the websites of the individual restaurants which are linked on the locations page. For an example over 12 at the West Virginia location the buffet is $7.99. Not bad, but two to three dollars higher than Cici's. Kids over 6 pay $6.49. Only children under 2 are free and there is a senior discounted price of $6.49.
Each restaurant features a game room and large screen TV's in the dining room. There are larger locations call GattiTown which have party rooms and are listed as "destination" locations. Generally, destination means "shoppertainment" - an attraction location offering entertainment, food, etc. These are stand-alone restaurants meaning that they are not inset into other stores, etc. but a larger facility all on its own.
The food looks good. That is no recommendation. If I am in Virginia, West Virginia, or one of the Carolinas I will try it. The corporate website is linked at the side of this page. It is light on buffet information but if you go to the locations page and click on a location's website you will see much more about the buffet, prices, hours, etc.
If you have been to a Gatti's Pizza please leave a comment and tell us all about it!
Now, as always, I tell you right up front when I am writing about a restaurant or chain that I have not been to and this is another of those. I have not eaten at Gatti's Pizza, but I will share with you all that I have learned.
Gatti's presentation is very much like Cici's - a buffet comprised of pizza, salad bar, pasta, and dessert. There are also chicken wings - though it appears that these are not included on the buffet, . There is a take out option and there is also the ability to internet order from some of the locations, particularly those in Texas.
Locations are across the US as far west as Texas. There are Gatti's Pizza locations in Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Most states listed have several locations with the most in Texas. This is not surprising as this is the state where the chain was founded in 1964 with a pizza restaurant called The Pizza Place. In 1969 the founder moved to Austin, Texas and renamed the restaurant using his wife's maiden name, it the restaurant became Mr. Gatti's. The restaurant prided itself on using all natural ingredients to make the best tasting pizza possible. In the 1980's the restaurant expanded to a chain of game rooms that included a pizza buffet. Interestingly, Cici's also began its pizza buffet restaurants in Texas in 1985. (So, who came first?) There are now 140 + locations of Gatti's Pizza. Locations are franchises.
So what types of pizza will you find on the buffet? This is another of the every combination you can think of assortment of pizzas. There is a Sampler pizza, a Bacon Double Cheeseburger pizza, BBQ Chicken pizza, Meat Market pizza, Vegetarian Sampler pizza, Superoni (pepperoni) pizza, Gatti's Deluxe pizza, Buffalo Chicken Pizza, Veggi Sicilian, and Meat Sicilian. There is a separate list of toppings so we can presume that other combinations are possible. Personally, I like to try the exotic when I go to pizza buffets but I am usually happier when I find basic cheese pizza also available.
The salad bar is what you would expect. Salad greens, tomatoes, and toppings with a variety of dressings. The pasta is spagetti with tomato sauce. There is a mention of macaroni and cheese as well. Most locations have a website and these tend to get a little more specific as to what you might find at that location.
The dessert choices are apple pizza and cinnamon bread sticks (what appears to be pizza dough baked with cinnamon). Of course there are soft drinks and it is stated that these vary by location.
To find prices you need to look at the websites of the individual restaurants which are linked on the locations page. For an example over 12 at the West Virginia location the buffet is $7.99. Not bad, but two to three dollars higher than Cici's. Kids over 6 pay $6.49. Only children under 2 are free and there is a senior discounted price of $6.49.
Each restaurant features a game room and large screen TV's in the dining room. There are larger locations call GattiTown which have party rooms and are listed as "destination" locations. Generally, destination means "shoppertainment" - an attraction location offering entertainment, food, etc. These are stand-alone restaurants meaning that they are not inset into other stores, etc. but a larger facility all on its own.
The food looks good. That is no recommendation. If I am in Virginia, West Virginia, or one of the Carolinas I will try it. The corporate website is linked at the side of this page. It is light on buffet information but if you go to the locations page and click on a location's website you will see much more about the buffet, prices, hours, etc.
If you have been to a Gatti's Pizza please leave a comment and tell us all about it!
Friday, April 03, 2009
Royal Fork Buffet - Mount Vernon, Washington
I am always searching for buffet restaurants and I often find ones that chances are I will never get to because of their location - but not everyone who reads this site is on the East Coast of the United States and some of my readers have asked about buffets in other parts of the country. Whenever I find one I want to pass it along. Despite the historic association of the name of the location of this buffet, it is not in Virginia, but in the State of Washington, completely across the country.
Now, as always, when I have not been to a buffet myself, I let you know right up front that I have no personal experience with this restaurant. I have never been to the Royal Fork Buffet and it is probably unlikely that I will get to the State of Washington. But this is our West Coast readers and this one does look interesting.
The Royal Fork Buffet is located in Mount Vernon, Washington in the Skagit Valley. The buffet has been in business for 17 years. This restaurant appears to be a part of a chain of Roayl Fork Buffet restaurants with other locations that I have found elsewhere in Washington, North Dakota, Idaho, Alaska, and Alberta, Canada. As this restauant's web site makes no mention of other restaurants I cannot verify this, nor can I find details on these other locations - other than addresses on a variety of restaurant listings. Generally a chain, especially one with a number of locations across several states and crossing into Canada has its own web site for the chain - I cannot find anything like that for Royal Fork. Only this particular Royal Fork Buffet has its own web site.
I can not tell you about the prices but the restaurant is open seven days a week. They serve lunch from Monday to Saturday from 11 am to 4 pm. Dinner from Monday to Thursdays is to 8:00 pm and on Friday and Saturday to 8:30 pm. On Sundays dinner is served from 11:30 am to 8:00 pm - and on Sundays there is a breakfast buffet from 8:30 am to 11:30 am. There are special prices for children and seniors - and on their web site there is a coupon for money off dinner or breakfast for adults.
The restaurant has eight food lines. The menu changes daily with different offerings at lunch and dinner. There are some good things on the menu on various nights including bbq spare ribs, Swedish meatballs, chicken and dumplings, fish and chips, sausage and peppers, Polish sausage and suerkraut, country fried steak, meatloaf, poached whitefish, fajitas, shrimp scampi, and baked salmon. Also scattered through the days are the usual roast beef, fried chicken, spagetti, roast chicken, baked ham, etc. There is a complete salad bar, an assortment of vegetables and desserts to go with the meal. There is also a different soup every day.
There is also something on the menu each day that sets this buffet apart from all of the rest. Breakfast on Saturdays and all day dinner on Sundays include Belgium Waffles. These are very large and thick waffles topped with your choice of fruits, whipped cream, and other toppings. At these meals there is a Belgium Waffle Bar for you to top your waffles. When I first looked at the menu for this restaurant I thought that the waffles were included at every meal - which would have been a real treat, but they are there for dinner on Sunday. That makes Sunday dinner dessert a real treat!
The restaurant is located at 2300 Freeway Drive, Mount Vernon, Washington 98273. The phone number is (360)424-4044. There is a web site and a link may be found at the side of this page. The web site details the menu for each day for each meal.
If you have ever been to the Royal Forks Buffet in Mount Vernon, Washington please leave a comment and share your experience with all of us. If you know about other Royal Forks Buffet restaurants, please let us know about those too!
Now, as always, when I have not been to a buffet myself, I let you know right up front that I have no personal experience with this restaurant. I have never been to the Royal Fork Buffet and it is probably unlikely that I will get to the State of Washington. But this is our West Coast readers and this one does look interesting.
The Royal Fork Buffet is located in Mount Vernon, Washington in the Skagit Valley. The buffet has been in business for 17 years. This restaurant appears to be a part of a chain of Roayl Fork Buffet restaurants with other locations that I have found elsewhere in Washington, North Dakota, Idaho, Alaska, and Alberta, Canada. As this restauant's web site makes no mention of other restaurants I cannot verify this, nor can I find details on these other locations - other than addresses on a variety of restaurant listings. Generally a chain, especially one with a number of locations across several states and crossing into Canada has its own web site for the chain - I cannot find anything like that for Royal Fork. Only this particular Royal Fork Buffet has its own web site.
I can not tell you about the prices but the restaurant is open seven days a week. They serve lunch from Monday to Saturday from 11 am to 4 pm. Dinner from Monday to Thursdays is to 8:00 pm and on Friday and Saturday to 8:30 pm. On Sundays dinner is served from 11:30 am to 8:00 pm - and on Sundays there is a breakfast buffet from 8:30 am to 11:30 am. There are special prices for children and seniors - and on their web site there is a coupon for money off dinner or breakfast for adults.
The restaurant has eight food lines. The menu changes daily with different offerings at lunch and dinner. There are some good things on the menu on various nights including bbq spare ribs, Swedish meatballs, chicken and dumplings, fish and chips, sausage and peppers, Polish sausage and suerkraut, country fried steak, meatloaf, poached whitefish, fajitas, shrimp scampi, and baked salmon. Also scattered through the days are the usual roast beef, fried chicken, spagetti, roast chicken, baked ham, etc. There is a complete salad bar, an assortment of vegetables and desserts to go with the meal. There is also a different soup every day.
There is also something on the menu each day that sets this buffet apart from all of the rest. Breakfast on Saturdays and all day dinner on Sundays include Belgium Waffles. These are very large and thick waffles topped with your choice of fruits, whipped cream, and other toppings. At these meals there is a Belgium Waffle Bar for you to top your waffles. When I first looked at the menu for this restaurant I thought that the waffles were included at every meal - which would have been a real treat, but they are there for dinner on Sunday. That makes Sunday dinner dessert a real treat!
The restaurant is located at 2300 Freeway Drive, Mount Vernon, Washington 98273. The phone number is (360)424-4044. There is a web site and a link may be found at the side of this page. The web site details the menu for each day for each meal.
If you have ever been to the Royal Forks Buffet in Mount Vernon, Washington please leave a comment and share your experience with all of us. If you know about other Royal Forks Buffet restaurants, please let us know about those too!
Friday, October 10, 2008
Something New at Old Country Buffet
Actually, there are three somethings new at Old Country Buffet. Every so often we will go to Old Country Buffet for lunch. On the window there were two large posters. - one featured TAKE OUT buffet meals and the other featured Soup and Salad Bar Lunch. Hmm. Interesting.
We went inside and at the cashier there was another poster. This one said "New Feature". Old Country Buffet has not had a menu feature in almost a year - maybe longer. I have written about this during the year. I waited in anticipation of the "summer barbecue" feature that has been the highlight at OCB in July and August. It never came. I put it up to one of the consequences of a restaurant chain in bankruptcy. But now, looking up at this new poster, what do I see? Kansas City Ribs! Kansas City Ribs have been the center point of that summer barbecue feature. They are one of the few things that I will actually say that OCB does well. The new feature is Kansas City Ribs and Butterfly Shrimp. Now, butterfly shrimp have been around on and off for a while. A week ago they were on the Friday night buffet. Shrimp at OCB is no big deal. There is almost always fried shrimp in one form or another on the buffet. It was even there on the lunch buffet. But Kansas City Ribs are special and make an appearance for a very short time when there has been a featured bbq special. According to the poster, the Kansas City Ribs and Butterfly Shrimp are featured right now every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night at dinner. Let's hope that it sticks around for a while.
Now, the other two "new" ideas at OCB. The first is Soup and Salad Bar lunch. This is available Monday to Friday at lunch only and costs $4.99. The regular lunch price costs $7.99 so you save $3.00 by skipping the hot food and the dessert bar. You can add the dessert bar for another $0.99. But how would this work in a buffet where everyone is mixed together, the buffet servers are all grouped together, and there are no wait staff returning to your table to refill drinks who will keep an eye on what you are taking? I was very curious.
I watched through our lunch to see if anyone was having the Soup and Salad Only lunch. As far as I could see, no one was. We looked around tables to see if there were different color table reserved tickets. We did not say any different from the lunch buffet ticket that we had. Finally, we found one of the staff that we know and asked (this person does not know that there is any connection between me and this site - as it is at every buffet that I go to). It was just a curious question about how does the soup and salad only lunch work. What we learned is that, indeed, you are given a different color ticket - and it is up to your table cleaner to keep an eye on you and make sure that all you take is from the soup and salad bar. I waited until we got outside after lunch to laugh. Here is a restaurant where the table cleaner barely comes around - if at all - to take away dirty dishes from the table. This is the person who is supposed to "watch" the tables to make sure no one is eating from the wrong buffet. I suspect that this new idea will be short lived when they find out that many who pay the $4.99 are eating everything - and not just soup and salad - with no one the wiser. (I AM NOT SUGGESTING THAT ANYONE DO THIS - IT IS ILLEGAL AND WRONG!) This is certainly going to happen. This especially will happen if the table is mixed with full buffet and soup and salad bar diners.
I have been to buffets that offer this and it does work, but at those buffets - as I alluded to above, there is a waitress or waiter assigned to your table to bring you drink refills. They are general around and about and will visit your table regularly. If you were to take something from the wrong buffet server at one of these restaurants, that waiter/waitress is going to know immediately. Whoever had this idea at OCB in upper corporate management either is unaware or does not care. I guess in disparate times of bankruptcy and a bad economy, desperate ideas will be tried.
The other new feature is Take Out Buffets. This is actually a good idea and from what I was able to learn an actually generous offer. Take Out lunch buffet is $5.99, dinner is $7.99, and soup and salad bar is $3.99. You are given a foam clam-shell tray, a foam soda cup with lid - and I am assuming something to put soup in. There was no sign of a scale at the cashier and a comment was made by a customer that you are able to fill the tray with whatever and as much as you want - as long as it is not overflowing before it is closed. Done wisely, you can assemble a nice meal for a good price - of course it is not "all that you care to eat", but that is why it is less money. There are many who would like to have the buffet meal but need to be home or want to pick up a nice meal on the way home from work. This will work nicely for them.
None of these new features are listed on the OCB website - curious, but they are not. It may be that these are locally offered. Every poster was an OCB corporate printing - so the offer is coming out of the corporate offices and may be featured at some locations and not or before other locations. Not even the little sign on the tables mentioned these features - these were still pushing the breakfast buffet. But I can say, that these features do currently exist and if they have not come to your OCB, ask why not!
**** Just after I finished writing this article I received an email coupon from OCB (just sign up with an email address on their website) for a free dessert upgrade if a soup and salad lunch is purchased. So I guess they are now starting their campaign!
We went inside and at the cashier there was another poster. This one said "New Feature". Old Country Buffet has not had a menu feature in almost a year - maybe longer. I have written about this during the year. I waited in anticipation of the "summer barbecue" feature that has been the highlight at OCB in July and August. It never came. I put it up to one of the consequences of a restaurant chain in bankruptcy. But now, looking up at this new poster, what do I see? Kansas City Ribs! Kansas City Ribs have been the center point of that summer barbecue feature. They are one of the few things that I will actually say that OCB does well. The new feature is Kansas City Ribs and Butterfly Shrimp. Now, butterfly shrimp have been around on and off for a while. A week ago they were on the Friday night buffet. Shrimp at OCB is no big deal. There is almost always fried shrimp in one form or another on the buffet. It was even there on the lunch buffet. But Kansas City Ribs are special and make an appearance for a very short time when there has been a featured bbq special. According to the poster, the Kansas City Ribs and Butterfly Shrimp are featured right now every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night at dinner. Let's hope that it sticks around for a while.
Now, the other two "new" ideas at OCB. The first is Soup and Salad Bar lunch. This is available Monday to Friday at lunch only and costs $4.99. The regular lunch price costs $7.99 so you save $3.00 by skipping the hot food and the dessert bar. You can add the dessert bar for another $0.99. But how would this work in a buffet where everyone is mixed together, the buffet servers are all grouped together, and there are no wait staff returning to your table to refill drinks who will keep an eye on what you are taking? I was very curious.
I watched through our lunch to see if anyone was having the Soup and Salad Only lunch. As far as I could see, no one was. We looked around tables to see if there were different color table reserved tickets. We did not say any different from the lunch buffet ticket that we had. Finally, we found one of the staff that we know and asked (this person does not know that there is any connection between me and this site - as it is at every buffet that I go to). It was just a curious question about how does the soup and salad only lunch work. What we learned is that, indeed, you are given a different color ticket - and it is up to your table cleaner to keep an eye on you and make sure that all you take is from the soup and salad bar. I waited until we got outside after lunch to laugh. Here is a restaurant where the table cleaner barely comes around - if at all - to take away dirty dishes from the table. This is the person who is supposed to "watch" the tables to make sure no one is eating from the wrong buffet. I suspect that this new idea will be short lived when they find out that many who pay the $4.99 are eating everything - and not just soup and salad - with no one the wiser. (I AM NOT SUGGESTING THAT ANYONE DO THIS - IT IS ILLEGAL AND WRONG!) This is certainly going to happen. This especially will happen if the table is mixed with full buffet and soup and salad bar diners.
I have been to buffets that offer this and it does work, but at those buffets - as I alluded to above, there is a waitress or waiter assigned to your table to bring you drink refills. They are general around and about and will visit your table regularly. If you were to take something from the wrong buffet server at one of these restaurants, that waiter/waitress is going to know immediately. Whoever had this idea at OCB in upper corporate management either is unaware or does not care. I guess in disparate times of bankruptcy and a bad economy, desperate ideas will be tried.
The other new feature is Take Out Buffets. This is actually a good idea and from what I was able to learn an actually generous offer. Take Out lunch buffet is $5.99, dinner is $7.99, and soup and salad bar is $3.99. You are given a foam clam-shell tray, a foam soda cup with lid - and I am assuming something to put soup in. There was no sign of a scale at the cashier and a comment was made by a customer that you are able to fill the tray with whatever and as much as you want - as long as it is not overflowing before it is closed. Done wisely, you can assemble a nice meal for a good price - of course it is not "all that you care to eat", but that is why it is less money. There are many who would like to have the buffet meal but need to be home or want to pick up a nice meal on the way home from work. This will work nicely for them.
None of these new features are listed on the OCB website - curious, but they are not. It may be that these are locally offered. Every poster was an OCB corporate printing - so the offer is coming out of the corporate offices and may be featured at some locations and not or before other locations. Not even the little sign on the tables mentioned these features - these were still pushing the breakfast buffet. But I can say, that these features do currently exist and if they have not come to your OCB, ask why not!
**** Just after I finished writing this article I received an email coupon from OCB (just sign up with an email address on their website) for a free dessert upgrade if a soup and salad lunch is purchased. So I guess they are now starting their campaign!
Friday, October 03, 2008
Ponderosa
Ponderosa Steak Restaurants are often called buffet restaurants. I have put off publishing this article several times. I hesitated each time that I thought of posting it. There is an uncertainty about Ponderosa. The reason will be clearer as you read this article. Perhaps it should be titled, "Ponderosa, Is it a Buffet?" In the past month I have learned news that bring up a more important and timely question, "Does Ponderosa as a chain still exist?".
The chain of Ponderosa restaurants is owned by a parent company called Metromedia Restaurant Group. This company also owned and operated Bennigans Restaurants and Steak and Ale Restaurants. In July 2008, the parent company declared bankruptcy, under Chapter 7 and in August closed all of the Bennigans and Steak and Ale restaurants in its holdings - with the exception of very few which were franchised and would continue under independent ownership. The question was raised at the time as to what would become of the Ponderosa/Bonanza chain. Metromedia stated publicly at the time that Ponderosa was operated by a sub-division of thier company that was not declaring bankruptcy and that these restaurants would continue to be open as usual. In September 2008 Metromedia took down the Ponderosa chain website. It was suspected that they would reopen the website at a future date, but going to that web address now brings you to a GoDaddy.com home page that says that the domain name is "parked there for free". This seems odd to me. If the business will continue as usual, why not have a website for the chain? Why would you not have just a home page that said, "Ponderosa website will be back". The website, when operating, listed the menu, briefly mentioned a "buffet", had a location finder, and had an email club for discount offers on meals. All of that is now gone.
From Internet searches I come across many articles about Ponderosa restaurants closing - some very suddenly, others as a result of law suits against them, and still others due to illegal activities by their franchise owners. It appears that many of the Ponderosa restaurants (perhaps all of them) are franchised ownerships. Franchise owners with more than one Ponderosa are closing all of the stores at once. Articles refer to employees being told not to come to work the next day - there is no work any longer. At one restaurant employees staged a public protest because not only were they told that the restaurant was closing the next day but they would not be receiving their pay checks!
Current searches for individual Ponderosa Restaurants come up with nothing recent. I cannot find a website or customer rating newer than several months ago for any Ponderosa Restaurant.
Prior to this news I had written the following article about Ponderosa restaurants. I present that articel here, but will conclude with some questions for you, our readers.
________________
Several times in my searches for buffets the Ponderosa Restaurants have come up and some of my readers have written and asked why I have not reviewed the chain. Many, many years ago there were Ponderosa restaurants in my area and I did dine there. Back then, there was no buffet. The restaurant was a "discount" steak restaurant that you ordered your meal at a counter and then were seated and wait staff would carry your steak and potato out to you from the kitchen when it was ready. The Ponderosa Restaurants closed around here many years ago. Since then I had never connected Ponderosa with buffet. More recently, there were other Ponderosa restaurants in areas that I have traveled and those I passed seemed to feature a salad bar with your steak order, but that never much appealed to me and I did not go in. Those have closed as well. There are Ponderosa Restaurants in several states and even one as close to me as the Bronx (You know, The Bronx - New York Yankees, Yankee Stadium. Some parts nice and some parts are not the safest areas to travel in).
I asked one of the readers who I was communicating with by email if the Ponderosa Restaurants had full buffets now or was it still an order off the menu restaurant with a salad bar. I was assured that it is a full buffet of the same type as Golden Corral, OCB, etc. With that understanding I decided to do a bit of research and see what I could find out and share with you about Ponderosa. This is another of my discovery articles and I want to be right up front with you all that I have not yet eaten at a Ponderosa Resaturant (at least not for the past 20 or more years), but I will share with you what I have been able to find out. And that is not much.
The Ponderosa website (when there was a website) home page says "Big Honkin' Buffet". That was encouraging. Beyond that there is a description of an order from the menu menu of steaks, chicken, and seafood - much as I remember it 20 years ago. The buffet is mentioned in a small side box with the description of a salad and appetizer bar that includes soups, vegetables, salad, and dessert. The last line states that a variety of beef, chicken, seafood. and pasta dishes appear on the buffet - but items will vary by location and are not at all restaurants. Hmm. I have been through this sought of buffet before - one of my worst buffet experiences was at a Western Sizzlin' in Maryland several years ago.
It has been my experience that when the main business of the chain restaurant is not buffet, the buffet is just a compliment to the items that they want you to order off the menu. Ponderosa talks about getting the buffet with your entree instead of a vegetable and potato. In the restaurants that I have been in that do this ,the buffet is not well maintained and the offerings on the buffet beyond the salad bar are minimal.
A recent special feature at Ponderosa was an All You Can Eat Shrimp Platter served to you at your table and refilled for you by your waiter at your request. This makes me wonder that if there is a buffet, why isn't the all you can eat shrimp on the buffet? Why does this need to be a special that must be brought to you? Another indication that this will not be the type of buffet that we all would expect. Everything on the website is focused around the entree menu including the buffet served as a side dish.
And yet, buffet keeps being associated with Ponderosa - in business articles and in several emails that I have had from readers. On a restaurant trade rating scale of buffet restaurants, Ponderosa was rated higher than OCB. When I went to the Ponderosa website, I truly expected to find a restaurant description that would equal that of Golden Corral, Old Country Buffet, or Ryans, but as I have said it did not.
With what I have learned about Ponderosa (also called Bonanza in some locations) I would want to see the buffet before I committed to eating there. Without one local to me I am not certain that I would travel to one, if I am near one of their locations, to walk in and look around. I certainly would not want to spend money for meals for my wife and myself to find out that we are having a salad bar and hot wings for dinner, which one source stated was what a Ponderosa buffet often has to offer - hot wings, pizza, and pasta - along with a soup and salad bar and small desert selection. Another source stated that some Ponderosa's just have salad bars and not buffets, while others offer a few entrees like fried chicken and meatloaf.
I had been hoping that I would find a description of a "real" buffet restaurant. I was hoping for another chain to explore like Golden Corral, Ryan's, or OCB. I do not think that I have found one.
____________________________
Now, my questions for our readers - if you have an answer please post a comment.
If you have ever been to a Ponderosa Restaurant what there is to be found on the buffet and how extensive a buffet meal one can have (could one once have had) there?
Is there a Ponderosa Restaurant near you that is still open for business? Have there been any changes there recently? Does it appear that it may be closing?
Has a Ponderosa Restaruant near you or that you know of closed recently?
The chain of Ponderosa restaurants is owned by a parent company called Metromedia Restaurant Group. This company also owned and operated Bennigans Restaurants and Steak and Ale Restaurants. In July 2008, the parent company declared bankruptcy, under Chapter 7 and in August closed all of the Bennigans and Steak and Ale restaurants in its holdings - with the exception of very few which were franchised and would continue under independent ownership. The question was raised at the time as to what would become of the Ponderosa/Bonanza chain. Metromedia stated publicly at the time that Ponderosa was operated by a sub-division of thier company that was not declaring bankruptcy and that these restaurants would continue to be open as usual. In September 2008 Metromedia took down the Ponderosa chain website. It was suspected that they would reopen the website at a future date, but going to that web address now brings you to a GoDaddy.com home page that says that the domain name is "parked there for free". This seems odd to me. If the business will continue as usual, why not have a website for the chain? Why would you not have just a home page that said, "Ponderosa website will be back". The website, when operating, listed the menu, briefly mentioned a "buffet", had a location finder, and had an email club for discount offers on meals. All of that is now gone.
From Internet searches I come across many articles about Ponderosa restaurants closing - some very suddenly, others as a result of law suits against them, and still others due to illegal activities by their franchise owners. It appears that many of the Ponderosa restaurants (perhaps all of them) are franchised ownerships. Franchise owners with more than one Ponderosa are closing all of the stores at once. Articles refer to employees being told not to come to work the next day - there is no work any longer. At one restaurant employees staged a public protest because not only were they told that the restaurant was closing the next day but they would not be receiving their pay checks!
Current searches for individual Ponderosa Restaurants come up with nothing recent. I cannot find a website or customer rating newer than several months ago for any Ponderosa Restaurant.
Prior to this news I had written the following article about Ponderosa restaurants. I present that articel here, but will conclude with some questions for you, our readers.
________________
Several times in my searches for buffets the Ponderosa Restaurants have come up and some of my readers have written and asked why I have not reviewed the chain. Many, many years ago there were Ponderosa restaurants in my area and I did dine there. Back then, there was no buffet. The restaurant was a "discount" steak restaurant that you ordered your meal at a counter and then were seated and wait staff would carry your steak and potato out to you from the kitchen when it was ready. The Ponderosa Restaurants closed around here many years ago. Since then I had never connected Ponderosa with buffet. More recently, there were other Ponderosa restaurants in areas that I have traveled and those I passed seemed to feature a salad bar with your steak order, but that never much appealed to me and I did not go in. Those have closed as well. There are Ponderosa Restaurants in several states and even one as close to me as the Bronx (You know, The Bronx - New York Yankees, Yankee Stadium. Some parts nice and some parts are not the safest areas to travel in).
I asked one of the readers who I was communicating with by email if the Ponderosa Restaurants had full buffets now or was it still an order off the menu restaurant with a salad bar. I was assured that it is a full buffet of the same type as Golden Corral, OCB, etc. With that understanding I decided to do a bit of research and see what I could find out and share with you about Ponderosa. This is another of my discovery articles and I want to be right up front with you all that I have not yet eaten at a Ponderosa Resaturant (at least not for the past 20 or more years), but I will share with you what I have been able to find out. And that is not much.
The Ponderosa website (when there was a website) home page says "Big Honkin' Buffet". That was encouraging. Beyond that there is a description of an order from the menu menu of steaks, chicken, and seafood - much as I remember it 20 years ago. The buffet is mentioned in a small side box with the description of a salad and appetizer bar that includes soups, vegetables, salad, and dessert. The last line states that a variety of beef, chicken, seafood. and pasta dishes appear on the buffet - but items will vary by location and are not at all restaurants. Hmm. I have been through this sought of buffet before - one of my worst buffet experiences was at a Western Sizzlin' in Maryland several years ago.
It has been my experience that when the main business of the chain restaurant is not buffet, the buffet is just a compliment to the items that they want you to order off the menu. Ponderosa talks about getting the buffet with your entree instead of a vegetable and potato. In the restaurants that I have been in that do this ,the buffet is not well maintained and the offerings on the buffet beyond the salad bar are minimal.
A recent special feature at Ponderosa was an All You Can Eat Shrimp Platter served to you at your table and refilled for you by your waiter at your request. This makes me wonder that if there is a buffet, why isn't the all you can eat shrimp on the buffet? Why does this need to be a special that must be brought to you? Another indication that this will not be the type of buffet that we all would expect. Everything on the website is focused around the entree menu including the buffet served as a side dish.
And yet, buffet keeps being associated with Ponderosa - in business articles and in several emails that I have had from readers. On a restaurant trade rating scale of buffet restaurants, Ponderosa was rated higher than OCB. When I went to the Ponderosa website, I truly expected to find a restaurant description that would equal that of Golden Corral, Old Country Buffet, or Ryans, but as I have said it did not.
With what I have learned about Ponderosa (also called Bonanza in some locations) I would want to see the buffet before I committed to eating there. Without one local to me I am not certain that I would travel to one, if I am near one of their locations, to walk in and look around. I certainly would not want to spend money for meals for my wife and myself to find out that we are having a salad bar and hot wings for dinner, which one source stated was what a Ponderosa buffet often has to offer - hot wings, pizza, and pasta - along with a soup and salad bar and small desert selection. Another source stated that some Ponderosa's just have salad bars and not buffets, while others offer a few entrees like fried chicken and meatloaf.
I had been hoping that I would find a description of a "real" buffet restaurant. I was hoping for another chain to explore like Golden Corral, Ryan's, or OCB. I do not think that I have found one.
____________________________
Now, my questions for our readers - if you have an answer please post a comment.
If you have ever been to a Ponderosa Restaurant what there is to be found on the buffet and how extensive a buffet meal one can have (could one once have had) there?
Is there a Ponderosa Restaurant near you that is still open for business? Have there been any changes there recently? Does it appear that it may be closing?
Has a Ponderosa Restaruant near you or that you know of closed recently?
Friday, September 26, 2008
A Nice Little Buffet - Dienners Country Restaurant
On July 4, 2008 I published an article about a buffet in Lancaster County, Pa called Dienners Country Restaurant. In the article I stated that I had dined from the menu in the restaurant but had never tried the buffet. The food is the same so I could easily recommend the buffet. Well, for the record, I was right. I have just had the dinner buffet and it was all that I expected.
Dienners, as you know if you read the article has unusual hours. It is open from Monday to Saturday but closes at 6:00 PM every night except Friday - which recently started to be open until 8:00 PM. I don't dine early enough to go before 6:00 - which means arriving at no later than 4:30 PM because there is always a wait to get in. When I discovered the Friday night "late" hours I decided that when I could I would get there on a Friday and have the dinner buffet. This was it.
We arrived at 6:10 PM and , yes, there was a wait to get in. The wait was short - just ten minutes. This is a Friday in early September - not Labor Day weekend. The restaurant was full. This is a small restaurant - two small dining rooms with one sharing the buffet serving area.
The dinner price on Friday and Saturday nights has gone up fifty cents in the past two months - along with the prices at every buffet that I have been to. This brings the price for an adult dinner to a whopping $10.75! This is incredible for what you get! It is no wonder that this restaurant is always busy. The restaurant attracts not only tourists but many locals including Old Order Amish - this area is the center of a religious, farm community of people who live much as they did in the 1800's - no electricity, no cars, horse transportation, and a specific form of dress. The kitchen staff appear to be all Amish women and this night when I dined there I had a view inside the kitchen and the women doing the cooking were Amish. The serving staff are not Amish, though the young lady at the cashier desk was.
Why am I tell you this? 1) Local color and 2) you know that the recipes and cooking are going to be authentic to this area. One of the things that I said in that first article in July was that the recipes used were going to be the same as those used at another local buffet run by relatives of the owners of this buffet. Many of the items served on the buffet here are the same, but the recipes are not. While the food at the other restaurant is excellent, the food here - the same items - taste a bit more authentic. I have been eating Pennsylvania Dutch (Amish) cooking for over 40 years. The recipes vary from restaurant to restaurant but over time many have been seasoned for and made toward the tourist's taste. There is nothing wrong with that, but if you come to Dienners you are going to experience Pennsylvania Dutch cooking as it should be.
The buffet servers are a larger than double-sided single buffets but smaller than full double length buffet servers. There are three of them. Less serving area than the buffet servers at the relatives' restaurant (Family Cupboard) and fewer dishes. The decrease is primarily in the entrees offered, though if you are not comparing you would never know - because there are plenty of choices and plenty of good food to eat.
The middle buffet server is a salad and soup bar. There are two soups - on this night there was chicken corn soup and clam chowder. Chicken corn soup is one of my favorites and I will always choose that before all others. This one was a bit different - it was a cream based soup, usually it is a thin or thick but not cream. The soup was loaded with noodles, kernels of corn and large chunks of chicken. It was good.
The salad bar had the usual assorment of lettuce, salad toppings, and prepared salads. There were sliced tomatoes that were deep red and ripe. This is the season for tomatoes and these were fresh from the farm. I am sure that you will not find such tomatoes at any other time of the year. On the salad bar were local favorites such as Chow Chow - sweet pickled vegetables - and red beat eggs. These are common in restaurants and buffets in this area.
On the two sides of the salad and soup server are an entree and side dish server and a dessert server. The entree buffet server had the main dishes together on one end and then went along with side dishes. The entrees included nicely cooked rotisserie chicken, sliced baked ham, fried chicken, fried shrimp, chunks of fried codfish, a local dish that I have mentioned before - pork with sauerkraut, and large cubes of beef in brown gravy. The shrimp and cod are features of the Friday and Saturday dinner buffet. I very much enjoyed the fried cod. It was moist and lightly fried in a batter. There was a thin tartar sauce for the fish. The rotisserie chicken was very good, as well. It was all good. These were my preferences this night.
The side dishes followed along on the server. There were mashed potatoes made from potatoes and not from flakes, kernal corn, string beans, carrots, broccoli, rice, beets, stewed tomatoes, macaroni and cheese, bread filling (what they call stuffing in this area - but actually better with a sweeter taste and more pancake like in consistency) and brown butter noodles. Brown butter noodles is another local dish. It is a cardiologist's nightmare. Take whole butter and put it in a pan over heat. Keep cooking until the butter burns and dark brown pieces form from the burned butter fat. Take all of the mixture of burned butter fat and clarified butter and pour it over cooked noodles so that the noodles soak up all of the butter and are now colored light brown with dark brown spots. The noodles are freshly made, narrow egg noodles and soak up the butter and all of the flavor well. This was one of the dishes that you could tell was made by the Amish and was deeper in flavor than others that I have had in the past several years at other restaurants. At the end of this buffet server were chicken and beef gravy - two of each. Mixed into the middle of the gravy serving trays was a small tray of the stewed tomatoes. If you did not look at the gravies you would not have noticed the stewed tomatoes. That would be unfortunate because they were good. If you are a bread eater there were very good rolls - both white flour and whole wheat.
There is a nice assortment of desserts and they fill an entire buffet server, a refrigerator case, and a soft ice cream machine and sundae bar. There were puddings, tapioca, egg custard, carrot cake, and and something quite different - a chocolate applesauce cake, along with other desserts including hot chocolate fudge dessert and a hot fruit cobbler. In the refrigerator case were an assortment of pies - fruit, custard, shoo fly, and cream. There were two sugarfree fruit pies. The baking (at least the pies) seem to come from one of the local bakeries - one that is quite well known in this area and has been featured on food and travel television shows. I could not resist the blueberry pie and it was wonderful. I had a hard time deciding between that and a blueberry covered slice of angel food cake with whipped cream on top. If I was not feeling already full I could have had both - but I let reason prevale. I did try some of the egg custard before the pie - good- and after the pie, after tasing a spoon of the soft serve ice cream that my wife took, I had to go and get a small serving for myself. There is only vanilla ice cream but it was creamy and good. Not the icy soft serve that many buffets offer. There was chocolate and caramel syrups and other ice cream toppings. My wife took a piece of the chocolate applesauce cake and I tried a spoon of that too. This was very different. It tasted like a chocolate fruit cake. It very much reminded me in taste of fruit cake but not as dense in texture, but then under the fruit cake flavor was chocolate.
This buffet does what the best of buffets do and what all buffets should do - they put a card on your table that shows that the table is occupied and you are still eating. While you are dining you keep the card face up. When you are leaving you turn the card over and it says "We're Finished". With this there are no server errors of thinking that you have left while you are away from the table and up at the buffet server - and clearing your table away of everything. This has happened too often at other buffets. I love it when buffets have this system in place - it makes for a much more relaxing evening.
Service was excellent. The server came regularly when we emptied a plate and took it away. Drink refills were offered, refilled, and offered again. The restaurant is very clean. The rest rooms were very clean.
I said in July that this is a great restaurant. I will say it again - this is a great restaurant. You could even order from a menu and they will allow some at the table to buffet while others menu -which many restaurants will not do.
I very much recommend Dienners Country Restaurant. If you are an early diner go any night (never on a Sunday). If you eat later like me then make sure to get here on a Friday.
Dienner's Family Restaurant is located at 2855 Lincoln Highway East in East Ronks, Pennsylvania (This is US Route 30). Their phone number is 717-687-9571. There is a website and that is listed at the side of this page.
Dienners, as you know if you read the article has unusual hours. It is open from Monday to Saturday but closes at 6:00 PM every night except Friday - which recently started to be open until 8:00 PM. I don't dine early enough to go before 6:00 - which means arriving at no later than 4:30 PM because there is always a wait to get in. When I discovered the Friday night "late" hours I decided that when I could I would get there on a Friday and have the dinner buffet. This was it.
We arrived at 6:10 PM and , yes, there was a wait to get in. The wait was short - just ten minutes. This is a Friday in early September - not Labor Day weekend. The restaurant was full. This is a small restaurant - two small dining rooms with one sharing the buffet serving area.
The dinner price on Friday and Saturday nights has gone up fifty cents in the past two months - along with the prices at every buffet that I have been to. This brings the price for an adult dinner to a whopping $10.75! This is incredible for what you get! It is no wonder that this restaurant is always busy. The restaurant attracts not only tourists but many locals including Old Order Amish - this area is the center of a religious, farm community of people who live much as they did in the 1800's - no electricity, no cars, horse transportation, and a specific form of dress. The kitchen staff appear to be all Amish women and this night when I dined there I had a view inside the kitchen and the women doing the cooking were Amish. The serving staff are not Amish, though the young lady at the cashier desk was.
Why am I tell you this? 1) Local color and 2) you know that the recipes and cooking are going to be authentic to this area. One of the things that I said in that first article in July was that the recipes used were going to be the same as those used at another local buffet run by relatives of the owners of this buffet. Many of the items served on the buffet here are the same, but the recipes are not. While the food at the other restaurant is excellent, the food here - the same items - taste a bit more authentic. I have been eating Pennsylvania Dutch (Amish) cooking for over 40 years. The recipes vary from restaurant to restaurant but over time many have been seasoned for and made toward the tourist's taste. There is nothing wrong with that, but if you come to Dienners you are going to experience Pennsylvania Dutch cooking as it should be.
The buffet servers are a larger than double-sided single buffets but smaller than full double length buffet servers. There are three of them. Less serving area than the buffet servers at the relatives' restaurant (Family Cupboard) and fewer dishes. The decrease is primarily in the entrees offered, though if you are not comparing you would never know - because there are plenty of choices and plenty of good food to eat.
The middle buffet server is a salad and soup bar. There are two soups - on this night there was chicken corn soup and clam chowder. Chicken corn soup is one of my favorites and I will always choose that before all others. This one was a bit different - it was a cream based soup, usually it is a thin or thick but not cream. The soup was loaded with noodles, kernels of corn and large chunks of chicken. It was good.
The salad bar had the usual assorment of lettuce, salad toppings, and prepared salads. There were sliced tomatoes that were deep red and ripe. This is the season for tomatoes and these were fresh from the farm. I am sure that you will not find such tomatoes at any other time of the year. On the salad bar were local favorites such as Chow Chow - sweet pickled vegetables - and red beat eggs. These are common in restaurants and buffets in this area.
On the two sides of the salad and soup server are an entree and side dish server and a dessert server. The entree buffet server had the main dishes together on one end and then went along with side dishes. The entrees included nicely cooked rotisserie chicken, sliced baked ham, fried chicken, fried shrimp, chunks of fried codfish, a local dish that I have mentioned before - pork with sauerkraut, and large cubes of beef in brown gravy. The shrimp and cod are features of the Friday and Saturday dinner buffet. I very much enjoyed the fried cod. It was moist and lightly fried in a batter. There was a thin tartar sauce for the fish. The rotisserie chicken was very good, as well. It was all good. These were my preferences this night.
The side dishes followed along on the server. There were mashed potatoes made from potatoes and not from flakes, kernal corn, string beans, carrots, broccoli, rice, beets, stewed tomatoes, macaroni and cheese, bread filling (what they call stuffing in this area - but actually better with a sweeter taste and more pancake like in consistency) and brown butter noodles. Brown butter noodles is another local dish. It is a cardiologist's nightmare. Take whole butter and put it in a pan over heat. Keep cooking until the butter burns and dark brown pieces form from the burned butter fat. Take all of the mixture of burned butter fat and clarified butter and pour it over cooked noodles so that the noodles soak up all of the butter and are now colored light brown with dark brown spots. The noodles are freshly made, narrow egg noodles and soak up the butter and all of the flavor well. This was one of the dishes that you could tell was made by the Amish and was deeper in flavor than others that I have had in the past several years at other restaurants. At the end of this buffet server were chicken and beef gravy - two of each. Mixed into the middle of the gravy serving trays was a small tray of the stewed tomatoes. If you did not look at the gravies you would not have noticed the stewed tomatoes. That would be unfortunate because they were good. If you are a bread eater there were very good rolls - both white flour and whole wheat.
There is a nice assortment of desserts and they fill an entire buffet server, a refrigerator case, and a soft ice cream machine and sundae bar. There were puddings, tapioca, egg custard, carrot cake, and and something quite different - a chocolate applesauce cake, along with other desserts including hot chocolate fudge dessert and a hot fruit cobbler. In the refrigerator case were an assortment of pies - fruit, custard, shoo fly, and cream. There were two sugarfree fruit pies. The baking (at least the pies) seem to come from one of the local bakeries - one that is quite well known in this area and has been featured on food and travel television shows. I could not resist the blueberry pie and it was wonderful. I had a hard time deciding between that and a blueberry covered slice of angel food cake with whipped cream on top. If I was not feeling already full I could have had both - but I let reason prevale. I did try some of the egg custard before the pie - good- and after the pie, after tasing a spoon of the soft serve ice cream that my wife took, I had to go and get a small serving for myself. There is only vanilla ice cream but it was creamy and good. Not the icy soft serve that many buffets offer. There was chocolate and caramel syrups and other ice cream toppings. My wife took a piece of the chocolate applesauce cake and I tried a spoon of that too. This was very different. It tasted like a chocolate fruit cake. It very much reminded me in taste of fruit cake but not as dense in texture, but then under the fruit cake flavor was chocolate.
This buffet does what the best of buffets do and what all buffets should do - they put a card on your table that shows that the table is occupied and you are still eating. While you are dining you keep the card face up. When you are leaving you turn the card over and it says "We're Finished". With this there are no server errors of thinking that you have left while you are away from the table and up at the buffet server - and clearing your table away of everything. This has happened too often at other buffets. I love it when buffets have this system in place - it makes for a much more relaxing evening.
Service was excellent. The server came regularly when we emptied a plate and took it away. Drink refills were offered, refilled, and offered again. The restaurant is very clean. The rest rooms were very clean.
I said in July that this is a great restaurant. I will say it again - this is a great restaurant. You could even order from a menu and they will allow some at the table to buffet while others menu -which many restaurants will not do.
I very much recommend Dienners Country Restaurant. If you are an early diner go any night (never on a Sunday). If you eat later like me then make sure to get here on a Friday.
Dienner's Family Restaurant is located at 2855 Lincoln Highway East in East Ronks, Pennsylvania (This is US Route 30). Their phone number is 717-687-9571. There is a website and that is listed at the side of this page.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Virginia City Buffet - Wild, Wild West Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey
It has been quite some time since I have been to a casino buffet. I am not much of a gambler despite a rich fantasy life of playing against foreign spies in a Monte Carlo casino. I find myself in Atlantic City for two days and an opportunity to try two of the casino buffets. The first that I will tell you about is one that I have written about before. This has been my favorite Atlantic City casino buffet – the buffet at The Wild, Wild West Casino, one of the Bally casinos and it is called The Virginia City Buffet. The theme here is – you guessed it – the wild, Wild West and the theme throughout the casino and the buffet is just that.
This is an unusual buffet in one way. It is an adult only buffet. Yes, no children allowed in this buffet restaurant. In fact no one under twenty one is allowed in this buffet. Why? Because the only access to the restaurant is directly through the casino – and unlike other casinos, there is no public space other than the lobby and one must walk across the casino floor to get to the escalator that leads you up to the restaurant.
It has been several years since I have been to the Wild, Wild West’s buffet and some things have changed while others have stayed the same. The most evident change is where you pay to get into the buffet. Like most casino buffets you pay as you enter. In the past you took the escalator up to the restaurant where you were guided along to a cashier line. Now the cashier is on the casino level just to the left of the escalator. There are three lines – which is not evident unless you know to look for the signs above the alcove that holds the cashier area. Two lines are for the general public – regular folks like you and me. The third line is for Diamond Card holders. These are the casino’s high rollers and not only do they get their own line – and probably free eats – they have their own dining room separated by a fence from the rest of us regular folk. Another change that may just be evidenced by the Sunday night that I went to the buffet is that it was not crowded, there was no line to get in, and no need to make advanced (in person) reservations. Years back when I would come here more often there was always a need to get to the restaurant early – sometimes mid-afternoon to make a reservation for dinner and then you would be reserving a spot on a line no earlier than 8:30 pm. We anticipated this and when we arrived at 6 we were told there was no wait. We did not want to eat that early and went back and hour later at 7:00 pm and walked right in. Sign of the times and the economy? The factor may be Sunday night because on Monday casino buffets were jammed.
The hours of the buffet seem to be earlier as well with the buffet closing now at 9:00 pm Sunday through Friday and 10 pm on Saturday night. Dinner is now $21.99 per person. This is not that far off from the better buffets and certainly worth the money for you get. Soft drinks are included and they serve Pepsi products. Some casino buffets are more expensive on Saturday nights and expand their menu. This buffet is the same price every night and the menu is not expanded. You will get the same great meal no matter what evening you go.
The buffet is laid out in counter stations with different themes at each. The first that you come upon is a large counter of soup tureens with a choice of five soups including both red and white clam chowders, cabbage soup, mushroom barley, and chicken noodle. Here there is another change from the past. There used to be won tons and matzo balls to put into the chicken soup. Now it is just chicken noodle soup.
Follow the soup area around and you come to a selection of rolls and breads. Keep going and you come to the salad area. There is a variety of prepared, mixed, and tossed salad here. You can have plain mixed lettuces that you create a salad with from the many toppings and dressings. You could also pick a mixed Greek salad or a Caesar salad. For the side there were tuna salad and chicken salad. I tried the chicken salad which was very good with tender small chunks of chicken. I also tried the Caesar salad which was as good as “fancy” restaurant Caesar salads that I have had. At the end of the salad area just before the dressings, there is a large bowl on ice of large peel and eat shrimp. These shrimp were very good and what you would expect in a good shrimp cocktail.
Next to the salad area is a counter with Italian specialties. Here, on this night, there were stuffed baked shells, shrimp parmesan, pasta with oil and garlic, bow tie pasta in an alfredo sauce with peas and ham, sausage and peppers, and mixed Italian vegetables. At the side of the counter was pizza. It was all good – between us we sampled it all. (This is the best part of a buffet – you can sample. Take small amounts of many things that you would like to try and then if you are still wanting more – go back and take some more of what you liked best. Now, don’t mush it all on your plate at once. Remember the rules – you can go back!) This is not you usual stainless buffet server. This is all inset into a stone – marble or granite – counter, and behind, there is a chef who is cooking the sauté items and replenishing the dishes. The Italian area is just as I remember it. There are no changes here since I was last at the buffet.
Move along from the Italian station and you come to the biggest change in what is offered since I was here last. This area USED TO be a deli counter with hot pastrami and hot corned beef, and a variety of hot delicatessen dishes. NOW, this station is called “New Frontiers” and the selection here changes on a schedule each time to a different theme. This theme was Barbecue and apparently, according to a nearby sign, this is the second incarnation of the barbecue offerings because they call this Barbecue II. There was an interesting selection of barbecue here. A chef was carving beef brisket and basting it in a sauce that a sign proclaimed as Bo Diddly barbecue brisket. Along the line there was pulled pork that was in a mild red sauce, fried fish, barbecued chicken in sauce, smoked sausages (they called it “grilled Milwaukee bratwurst”) in sauerkraut, and several other barbecue dishes. There was also corn on the cob. I tried the beef, the pork, and the sausage – all good.
Move past the Barbecue station and you will be at the Chinese station. Here there are woks full of oriental dishes. Each is being made just behind the counter by a chef who replenishes woks as they need be. The dishes are good and make both entrees and serve as good side dishes to go with items from other stations.
At this point in the buffet area you take a jump back to the beginning and cross to the other side. The whole buffet area is shaped like a horseshoe. By moving across to the opposite side of the front you come to the carving stations and meats. Included here is steak and Prime Rib, along with carved turkey and chicken. The steak and Prime Rib require a ticket and with each meal you are given one ticket. This is done to put a one steak or Prime Rib limit per person. Read my last article about the Wild, Wild West Casino buffet and you will see that I go on about how wonderful this steak is (was). Here is another change. The steaks USED to be large, thick sirloin steaks. They were cooked over a flame grill and were like good steakhouse steaks. There always seemed to be the same lady cooking the steaks and she always got the requested doneness perfect. Well, she appears to be gone and the steak that is served NOW is a Strip Steak. The steak is thin and the cut of meat is not as tender as it once was. The taste was good, but nowhere as good as it was. My requested rare steak was more like medium well and seemed to continue to cook on my plate because it was well done as I finished it. Frankly, it had been the steak that made this particular buffet my favorite casino buffet (years back we would make this trip often as a one day diversion – I like walking on the Boardwalk – and then there is that casino fantasy thing (from the first paragraph). We would try a lot of the buffets and this one wound up on top of the list). With that fabulous steak a thing of the past this buffet (for me) is not what it had been. It is still good but what I liked best is just not the same.
Past the meats is a serving counter with side dishes and these include sweet potato fries, fried potato pancakes, mashed sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes with garlic, carrots, and a few more assorted vegetables. Side dishes here are good but the least of everything else that is served and for me, I would rather go over the Chinese station or the Italian station and take some of those dishes to serve as sides. I must say that the mashed sweet potatoes were very good.
Ready for dessert? Go back to the buffet area and head for the center of the horseshoe. There you will find a rectangular serving station with a serving person in the inside. On one side of the rectangle are regular desserts – the other side is all sugar free. There are a number of cakes to pick from and real cheesecake. There is a sundae bar in the middle and the serving person is scooping hard ice cream for you. Put hot fudge, strawberries and a variety of other toppings with whipped cream on your sundae. Still want something else- there are hot cobblers. On a diet? There are a number of sugar free desserts – some of which look more tempting than the sugar desserts. Here is just a small warning about “sugar-free” – some sugar free items, especially commercial ones, are sweetened with an artificial sweetener that is actually a laxative. These sugar-alcohol sweeteners are very common and if you look at any sugar free item in your grocery store and read the ingredients you are going to find a word that ends in “tol”. It might be sorbitol or malitol or a large number of other “tols”. These are not something that you really want to put into your system. Not much of it will make you need to make a quick trip to the nearest restroom. Now I am not saying that this buffet is using this to sweeten their sugar free desserts, but I never take that risk and I always avoid the sugar free. In actuality, they are just as high in carbohydrates as their sugar equivalents. So much for the science lesson. Back to the buffet.
Service is excellent. A server is assigned to your table and he/she will bring your soft drinks and coffee with dessert, as well as pick up your plates regularly.
You are getting plenty and there is plenty of variety. The quality is a cut above many of the buffets that I have written about. Here the casinos have buffets and menu restaurants – some which cater to the “elite”. What you are getting at the buffet is not much different (it at all) than the food being served in those “fancy” restaurants.
If you are going to Atlantic City and you want to try a good buffet, try the Virginia City Buffet at Wild, Wild West Casino – but as I said, leave the kids at home.
There is a website link at the side of this page to the casino which will lead you to a brief description of the buffet.
This is an unusual buffet in one way. It is an adult only buffet. Yes, no children allowed in this buffet restaurant. In fact no one under twenty one is allowed in this buffet. Why? Because the only access to the restaurant is directly through the casino – and unlike other casinos, there is no public space other than the lobby and one must walk across the casino floor to get to the escalator that leads you up to the restaurant.
It has been several years since I have been to the Wild, Wild West’s buffet and some things have changed while others have stayed the same. The most evident change is where you pay to get into the buffet. Like most casino buffets you pay as you enter. In the past you took the escalator up to the restaurant where you were guided along to a cashier line. Now the cashier is on the casino level just to the left of the escalator. There are three lines – which is not evident unless you know to look for the signs above the alcove that holds the cashier area. Two lines are for the general public – regular folks like you and me. The third line is for Diamond Card holders. These are the casino’s high rollers and not only do they get their own line – and probably free eats – they have their own dining room separated by a fence from the rest of us regular folk. Another change that may just be evidenced by the Sunday night that I went to the buffet is that it was not crowded, there was no line to get in, and no need to make advanced (in person) reservations. Years back when I would come here more often there was always a need to get to the restaurant early – sometimes mid-afternoon to make a reservation for dinner and then you would be reserving a spot on a line no earlier than 8:30 pm. We anticipated this and when we arrived at 6 we were told there was no wait. We did not want to eat that early and went back and hour later at 7:00 pm and walked right in. Sign of the times and the economy? The factor may be Sunday night because on Monday casino buffets were jammed.
The hours of the buffet seem to be earlier as well with the buffet closing now at 9:00 pm Sunday through Friday and 10 pm on Saturday night. Dinner is now $21.99 per person. This is not that far off from the better buffets and certainly worth the money for you get. Soft drinks are included and they serve Pepsi products. Some casino buffets are more expensive on Saturday nights and expand their menu. This buffet is the same price every night and the menu is not expanded. You will get the same great meal no matter what evening you go.
The buffet is laid out in counter stations with different themes at each. The first that you come upon is a large counter of soup tureens with a choice of five soups including both red and white clam chowders, cabbage soup, mushroom barley, and chicken noodle. Here there is another change from the past. There used to be won tons and matzo balls to put into the chicken soup. Now it is just chicken noodle soup.
Follow the soup area around and you come to a selection of rolls and breads. Keep going and you come to the salad area. There is a variety of prepared, mixed, and tossed salad here. You can have plain mixed lettuces that you create a salad with from the many toppings and dressings. You could also pick a mixed Greek salad or a Caesar salad. For the side there were tuna salad and chicken salad. I tried the chicken salad which was very good with tender small chunks of chicken. I also tried the Caesar salad which was as good as “fancy” restaurant Caesar salads that I have had. At the end of the salad area just before the dressings, there is a large bowl on ice of large peel and eat shrimp. These shrimp were very good and what you would expect in a good shrimp cocktail.
Next to the salad area is a counter with Italian specialties. Here, on this night, there were stuffed baked shells, shrimp parmesan, pasta with oil and garlic, bow tie pasta in an alfredo sauce with peas and ham, sausage and peppers, and mixed Italian vegetables. At the side of the counter was pizza. It was all good – between us we sampled it all. (This is the best part of a buffet – you can sample. Take small amounts of many things that you would like to try and then if you are still wanting more – go back and take some more of what you liked best. Now, don’t mush it all on your plate at once. Remember the rules – you can go back!) This is not you usual stainless buffet server. This is all inset into a stone – marble or granite – counter, and behind, there is a chef who is cooking the sauté items and replenishing the dishes. The Italian area is just as I remember it. There are no changes here since I was last at the buffet.
Move along from the Italian station and you come to the biggest change in what is offered since I was here last. This area USED TO be a deli counter with hot pastrami and hot corned beef, and a variety of hot delicatessen dishes. NOW, this station is called “New Frontiers” and the selection here changes on a schedule each time to a different theme. This theme was Barbecue and apparently, according to a nearby sign, this is the second incarnation of the barbecue offerings because they call this Barbecue II. There was an interesting selection of barbecue here. A chef was carving beef brisket and basting it in a sauce that a sign proclaimed as Bo Diddly barbecue brisket. Along the line there was pulled pork that was in a mild red sauce, fried fish, barbecued chicken in sauce, smoked sausages (they called it “grilled Milwaukee bratwurst”) in sauerkraut, and several other barbecue dishes. There was also corn on the cob. I tried the beef, the pork, and the sausage – all good.
Move past the Barbecue station and you will be at the Chinese station. Here there are woks full of oriental dishes. Each is being made just behind the counter by a chef who replenishes woks as they need be. The dishes are good and make both entrees and serve as good side dishes to go with items from other stations.
At this point in the buffet area you take a jump back to the beginning and cross to the other side. The whole buffet area is shaped like a horseshoe. By moving across to the opposite side of the front you come to the carving stations and meats. Included here is steak and Prime Rib, along with carved turkey and chicken. The steak and Prime Rib require a ticket and with each meal you are given one ticket. This is done to put a one steak or Prime Rib limit per person. Read my last article about the Wild, Wild West Casino buffet and you will see that I go on about how wonderful this steak is (was). Here is another change. The steaks USED to be large, thick sirloin steaks. They were cooked over a flame grill and were like good steakhouse steaks. There always seemed to be the same lady cooking the steaks and she always got the requested doneness perfect. Well, she appears to be gone and the steak that is served NOW is a Strip Steak. The steak is thin and the cut of meat is not as tender as it once was. The taste was good, but nowhere as good as it was. My requested rare steak was more like medium well and seemed to continue to cook on my plate because it was well done as I finished it. Frankly, it had been the steak that made this particular buffet my favorite casino buffet (years back we would make this trip often as a one day diversion – I like walking on the Boardwalk – and then there is that casino fantasy thing (from the first paragraph). We would try a lot of the buffets and this one wound up on top of the list). With that fabulous steak a thing of the past this buffet (for me) is not what it had been. It is still good but what I liked best is just not the same.
Past the meats is a serving counter with side dishes and these include sweet potato fries, fried potato pancakes, mashed sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes with garlic, carrots, and a few more assorted vegetables. Side dishes here are good but the least of everything else that is served and for me, I would rather go over the Chinese station or the Italian station and take some of those dishes to serve as sides. I must say that the mashed sweet potatoes were very good.
Ready for dessert? Go back to the buffet area and head for the center of the horseshoe. There you will find a rectangular serving station with a serving person in the inside. On one side of the rectangle are regular desserts – the other side is all sugar free. There are a number of cakes to pick from and real cheesecake. There is a sundae bar in the middle and the serving person is scooping hard ice cream for you. Put hot fudge, strawberries and a variety of other toppings with whipped cream on your sundae. Still want something else- there are hot cobblers. On a diet? There are a number of sugar free desserts – some of which look more tempting than the sugar desserts. Here is just a small warning about “sugar-free” – some sugar free items, especially commercial ones, are sweetened with an artificial sweetener that is actually a laxative. These sugar-alcohol sweeteners are very common and if you look at any sugar free item in your grocery store and read the ingredients you are going to find a word that ends in “tol”. It might be sorbitol or malitol or a large number of other “tols”. These are not something that you really want to put into your system. Not much of it will make you need to make a quick trip to the nearest restroom. Now I am not saying that this buffet is using this to sweeten their sugar free desserts, but I never take that risk and I always avoid the sugar free. In actuality, they are just as high in carbohydrates as their sugar equivalents. So much for the science lesson. Back to the buffet.
Service is excellent. A server is assigned to your table and he/she will bring your soft drinks and coffee with dessert, as well as pick up your plates regularly.
You are getting plenty and there is plenty of variety. The quality is a cut above many of the buffets that I have written about. Here the casinos have buffets and menu restaurants – some which cater to the “elite”. What you are getting at the buffet is not much different (it at all) than the food being served in those “fancy” restaurants.
If you are going to Atlantic City and you want to try a good buffet, try the Virginia City Buffet at Wild, Wild West Casino – but as I said, leave the kids at home.
There is a website link at the side of this page to the casino which will lead you to a brief description of the buffet.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Friends and Family Pizza Buffet
THE LOCATION REVIEWED OF THIS RESTAURANT HAS CLOSED. THE LOCATION AT Bristol Plaza Shopping Center
2669 Durham Road
Bristol, Pa. 19007
(Just northeast of Philadelphia, PA)
REMAINS OPEN. THIS REVIEW IS BASED UPON THE RESTAURANT THAT IS CLOSED BUT THE MAIN FEATURES OF THE RESTAURANT TO THE CURRENT LOCATION ARE THE SAME.
__________________________
There are a number of small pizza buffet chains across the United States that are trying to do what Cici's is doing. While doing a search for buffet restaurants in Central Pennsylvania (out of the Pennsylvania Amish area and away from Lancaster County) I came across a recent pizza buffet chain that is corporate based in Pennsylvania. Now, note that this chain came up on somewhere near page 45 of the search engine. I was about to give up my looking page by page to see what I would find when Pizza Buffet caught my eye.
Friends and Family Pizza Buffet started its first restauant about three years ago in Bristol, Pennsylvania which is near Philadelphia. About a year ago they opened their second franchised restaurant in Mechanicsburg, PA. Reading their website I was delighted at what I was seeing. The chain is looking to expand across the North East U.S. - an area that Cici's has not yet set its sights on. The description of the restaurant was great. The decor is Roman with columns and an Italian flair. The descriptions of the pizzas, pastas, and desserts were tantalizing. I was going to be about thirty miles from the Mechanicsburg location - south of the state capital of Harrisburg. I had to go to Friends and Family Pizza Buffet.
I should learn that not everything always lives up to its description and my high hopes.
We found the buffet restaurant with some difficulty. Unless you can see the small sign on the shopping center sign that says "Pizza Buffet" you will never know that this restaurant exists. It is located in a side (not the front) storefront on an L-shaped row of stores. You do not see it from the busy four lane road and if you are traveling on the either side of the road it is difficult to turn around if you miss it. We managed to find it on the second pass and drove up to the side of the building and parked.
The restaurant has a small sign above that says its name. Apparently the large sign in the photo on the website is the other location. We entered and paid at the cash register that is situated much like the set up at Cici's - in fact the counter set up is similar to Cici's but smaller. The dining room is smaller than Cici's but the decor does live up to the description - it is pleasantly decorated with Roman colums at the walls and photographs of Italy. It is very pleasant and carpeted. There are real restaurant tables on a carpeted floor. The room is much quieter than Cici's and does not have the atmospher of a fast food restaurant that is Cici's. Notice that I keep comparing to Cici's - well, if this is a Cici's copy which it is trying to be that will be my basis for comparison. We went on a summer Friday night - not a hot night - at 6:30 pm so we were certainly there at dinner time. Any Cici's would have been packed. This restaurant was almost empty. It remained near empty until we left an hour and a half later. The clientele was mostly families with a table or two of teens. Can no one find this buffet that has been open for a year - or does everyone know somehting that keeps them away?
You take your own silverware and grab a plate. No trays. You seat yourself at any table and then proceed to get your meal. The price for adults is $5.99 all of the time and unlimited soda is $1.69 each. The price is fair - but more expensive than Cici's. The first thing that we noticed was the silverware was clean but cloudy - as if it did not quite go through the full cleaning cycle. Usually the silverware has a shine - no matter what restaurant you are in.The second thing noticed was that the plates were not all clean. Many were, but a number were dirty - some just on the back but someone's plates surface came out sitting on that dirty plate back. I don't mean discolored but dirty. A number of things that were very evident lead us to feel that cleanliness at this buffet is marginal. And this cleanliness problem is with the dishes and at the buffet counter. Many of the covers that covered serving trays were not clean and throughout the evening no one stopped to clean or replace them. And as I said - it was not busy.
The layout of the serving counter is opposite to the counter at Cici's. The pizza starts at the right and the salad area is at the left end of the counter. My wife headed down to the salad area - I can't really call it a salad bar because there was not enough salad items to make a bar. The lettuce was shredded like you would have for hero (hoagie, sub) sandwiches. To add was chopped carrots, shopped olives, and a few dressings. Most of the area was taken up with toppings for hot dogs, which to our surprise were on the next space on the counter next to the pasta tray. According to the website description we were to find a selection of several different pasta shapes and a choice of tomato sauce and Alfredo sauce. There was no Alfredo sauce - unless the melted orange cheese was their idea of alfredo sauce. I think it was actually there to pour over the hot dogs. Well, there was no choice of pasta shapes either - just one shape of pasta which was a twist of two strands of pasta each about three inches long. When we first went to take the pasta we were scooping the bottom of the tray of pasta and the same of the red tomato sauce. It took a while before anyone noticed that these were empty and went to get more.
The website said that there would be soup - there were two soup servers. One had Chili which in many areas is considered a soup. The other had what looked like baked beans in it - it did not resemble soup. So I would say that again, these were to go with the hot dogs.
There was also a tray in this area that was covered in another of the not so clean covers. I opened and looked in to see what looked like the remains of dried out and darkish in color macaroni and cheese. I recalled the website saying that there was mac and cheese for the kids. Well, I would not have given this t o anyone's kids. And it remained just like that the entire time that we were there.
All right already, it is not a pasta, soup, or salad buffet - it is a pizza buffet so what was the pizza like? The pizza was pretty good. The pizza actually might even be better than Cici's. There was more of a variety of regular pizzas out and little duplication. They also make it very obvious with signs all over the counter and the table that if you do not see what you like just ask and they will make it for you in minutes - just like Cici's but Cici's does not come out and say that you may do this. Each pizza was also labeled with a sign identifying it. If you would like a pizza of your own creation there is a list of toppings and you may add any three to cheese. They say that it will be ready in five minutes but do not time them. We asked for a rather unusual combination and it took about ten minutes for it to come out. When it did is is announced by its toppings and it is placed on the pizza counter for you to come back to take. The pizza that was made for us was almost what we asked for - close enough, but not exact. In addition to the standards and create it yourself - and by standards I mean regular cheese pizza, pepperoni pizza, sausage pizza, mushroom pizza, whole wheat crust pizza, white pizza, etc. - there are "Gourmet Pizzas". These include barbecue chicken pizza, hot wing pizza, ham and chees hoagie pizza, blt pizza, spicy barbecue pizza, Hawaiian pizza, chicken Alfredo pizza, meat lovers pizza, mac and cheese pizza, veggie pizza, cheese steak pizza, taco pizza, and Grandma's pizza which is a robust cheese pizza with pepper flakes. Not all of these are out all of the time, and this night only the bbq chicken and hot wing pizza were out from this list. The counter and overhead lights keep the pizza sufficiently hot and each is sliced into uneven slices. Each is set out on a small pizza tray and not the wire screens that Cici's uses. None of the pizzas that were out for any time dried out or got hard. What we tried were tasty and new pizza's came out sporadically - perhaps more would have come out if there were more customers eating.
Where Friends and Family Pizza Buffet shines is the dessert pizzas! There are 15 different hot and cold dessert pizzas and what we tried were great. I had blueberry cheese pizza - cream cheese and blueberry topping mixed in with a sugar icing glaze. We both tried the apple crumb pizza and this was much better than the apple pizza served at Cici's. We both tried the small rolled cinnamon buns which were good and my wife tried vanilla pudding pizza which was the cold pizza that was out. There is even a peanut butter and jelly pizza and a peanut butter and chocolate pizza. These were not out on this night.
The website says that there is scooped hard ice cream but there was no ice cream freezer anywhere to be seen, no signs or mention of ice cream, and no offer of ice cream. Perhaps you could ask for it but if you have to ask and there is no indication anywhere that it even exists then I consider that as there is no ice cream. Again, what you read is not always what you get.
Service was marginal. The stacks of dirty dishes were taken off of our table twice by the young lady who walked around the near empty dining room. Happily, there was no large cleaning cart wheeled around the room which is a negative at Cici's. (That cart at Cici's is put to use cleaning away dirty dishes and cleaning tables but it is disgusting to have this wheeled repeated around the room next to your face while you are eating.)
Oh yes, I need to mention the noise. Every so often it sounded as if people were bowling - in a bowling alley. I started to wonder if there were bowling lanes in the storefront next door - but no, there were not. It was a loud rumbling crash. We asked the young lady who was walking around the room - sometimes picking up dirty dishes. She said that most people think that it is thunder, but it is actually the oven exhaust fan when it intermittently turns on and runs. Oh boy!
So overall - value is ok (if Cici's $5 buffet did not exist I would say that this price is great. Atmosphere is very nice. Cleanliness at the buffet server area is marginal. Service in the dining room is marginal. The pizza is good.
If you are a parent who has the salad bar while the kids attack the pizza selections, forget it. The salad is a major dissappointment in selection. The kids will be happy. You will not.
If you always wanted a hot dog buffet you will love this - lots of hot dog toppings and steam cooked hot dogs with buns. The hot dog was good.
Don't care about anything else but pizza - not even how clean the plates are - then you will love this buffet.
It is very possible that a Friends and Family Pizza Buffet will come near you at some time in the future. This corporation is hot to sell franchises and they are doing it in several ways. There are plans for non-buffet pizza franchises as well as pizza buffets. Some day I may get to try the original location near Philadelphia - no I am not running to get there. It may very well may be that the short comings of the Mechanicsburg location - and these are all really in the area of keeping the dishes and the serving trays clean (which is very important so that people don't get sick) - are better in Bristol. Management and mature managerial supervision of any buffet is ultimately important. Properly supervised this buffet would be A-Class. At the moment - at least on the night that I was there - it was not.
I ate myself full. I managed to get a clean plate each time and I avoided anything that did not quite look up to par. I was satisfied and I was fine afterward (all important!).
If you have tried the Bristol location let us know how it was in a comment. If you are not near Philadelphia or Harrisburg, PA you will not yet find one of these restaurants. This one that I went to is located at 6499 Carlisle Pike, Mechanicsberg, Pa. The phone number is 717-697-4283. There is a website for the chain which is listed at the side of this page. The restaurant is open from Monday to Saturday from 11 am to 9 pm. It is closed on Sundays and most holidays.
2669 Durham Road
Bristol, Pa. 19007
(Just northeast of Philadelphia, PA)
REMAINS OPEN. THIS REVIEW IS BASED UPON THE RESTAURANT THAT IS CLOSED BUT THE MAIN FEATURES OF THE RESTAURANT TO THE CURRENT LOCATION ARE THE SAME.
__________________________
There are a number of small pizza buffet chains across the United States that are trying to do what Cici's is doing. While doing a search for buffet restaurants in Central Pennsylvania (out of the Pennsylvania Amish area and away from Lancaster County) I came across a recent pizza buffet chain that is corporate based in Pennsylvania. Now, note that this chain came up on somewhere near page 45 of the search engine. I was about to give up my looking page by page to see what I would find when Pizza Buffet caught my eye.
Friends and Family Pizza Buffet started its first restauant about three years ago in Bristol, Pennsylvania which is near Philadelphia. About a year ago they opened their second franchised restaurant in Mechanicsburg, PA. Reading their website I was delighted at what I was seeing. The chain is looking to expand across the North East U.S. - an area that Cici's has not yet set its sights on. The description of the restaurant was great. The decor is Roman with columns and an Italian flair. The descriptions of the pizzas, pastas, and desserts were tantalizing. I was going to be about thirty miles from the Mechanicsburg location - south of the state capital of Harrisburg. I had to go to Friends and Family Pizza Buffet.
I should learn that not everything always lives up to its description and my high hopes.
We found the buffet restaurant with some difficulty. Unless you can see the small sign on the shopping center sign that says "Pizza Buffet" you will never know that this restaurant exists. It is located in a side (not the front) storefront on an L-shaped row of stores. You do not see it from the busy four lane road and if you are traveling on the either side of the road it is difficult to turn around if you miss it. We managed to find it on the second pass and drove up to the side of the building and parked.
The restaurant has a small sign above that says its name. Apparently the large sign in the photo on the website is the other location. We entered and paid at the cash register that is situated much like the set up at Cici's - in fact the counter set up is similar to Cici's but smaller. The dining room is smaller than Cici's but the decor does live up to the description - it is pleasantly decorated with Roman colums at the walls and photographs of Italy. It is very pleasant and carpeted. There are real restaurant tables on a carpeted floor. The room is much quieter than Cici's and does not have the atmospher of a fast food restaurant that is Cici's. Notice that I keep comparing to Cici's - well, if this is a Cici's copy which it is trying to be that will be my basis for comparison. We went on a summer Friday night - not a hot night - at 6:30 pm so we were certainly there at dinner time. Any Cici's would have been packed. This restaurant was almost empty. It remained near empty until we left an hour and a half later. The clientele was mostly families with a table or two of teens. Can no one find this buffet that has been open for a year - or does everyone know somehting that keeps them away?
You take your own silverware and grab a plate. No trays. You seat yourself at any table and then proceed to get your meal. The price for adults is $5.99 all of the time and unlimited soda is $1.69 each. The price is fair - but more expensive than Cici's. The first thing that we noticed was the silverware was clean but cloudy - as if it did not quite go through the full cleaning cycle. Usually the silverware has a shine - no matter what restaurant you are in.The second thing noticed was that the plates were not all clean. Many were, but a number were dirty - some just on the back but someone's plates surface came out sitting on that dirty plate back. I don't mean discolored but dirty. A number of things that were very evident lead us to feel that cleanliness at this buffet is marginal. And this cleanliness problem is with the dishes and at the buffet counter. Many of the covers that covered serving trays were not clean and throughout the evening no one stopped to clean or replace them. And as I said - it was not busy.
The layout of the serving counter is opposite to the counter at Cici's. The pizza starts at the right and the salad area is at the left end of the counter. My wife headed down to the salad area - I can't really call it a salad bar because there was not enough salad items to make a bar. The lettuce was shredded like you would have for hero (hoagie, sub) sandwiches. To add was chopped carrots, shopped olives, and a few dressings. Most of the area was taken up with toppings for hot dogs, which to our surprise were on the next space on the counter next to the pasta tray. According to the website description we were to find a selection of several different pasta shapes and a choice of tomato sauce and Alfredo sauce. There was no Alfredo sauce - unless the melted orange cheese was their idea of alfredo sauce. I think it was actually there to pour over the hot dogs. Well, there was no choice of pasta shapes either - just one shape of pasta which was a twist of two strands of pasta each about three inches long. When we first went to take the pasta we were scooping the bottom of the tray of pasta and the same of the red tomato sauce. It took a while before anyone noticed that these were empty and went to get more.
The website said that there would be soup - there were two soup servers. One had Chili which in many areas is considered a soup. The other had what looked like baked beans in it - it did not resemble soup. So I would say that again, these were to go with the hot dogs.
There was also a tray in this area that was covered in another of the not so clean covers. I opened and looked in to see what looked like the remains of dried out and darkish in color macaroni and cheese. I recalled the website saying that there was mac and cheese for the kids. Well, I would not have given this t o anyone's kids. And it remained just like that the entire time that we were there.
All right already, it is not a pasta, soup, or salad buffet - it is a pizza buffet so what was the pizza like? The pizza was pretty good. The pizza actually might even be better than Cici's. There was more of a variety of regular pizzas out and little duplication. They also make it very obvious with signs all over the counter and the table that if you do not see what you like just ask and they will make it for you in minutes - just like Cici's but Cici's does not come out and say that you may do this. Each pizza was also labeled with a sign identifying it. If you would like a pizza of your own creation there is a list of toppings and you may add any three to cheese. They say that it will be ready in five minutes but do not time them. We asked for a rather unusual combination and it took about ten minutes for it to come out. When it did is is announced by its toppings and it is placed on the pizza counter for you to come back to take. The pizza that was made for us was almost what we asked for - close enough, but not exact. In addition to the standards and create it yourself - and by standards I mean regular cheese pizza, pepperoni pizza, sausage pizza, mushroom pizza, whole wheat crust pizza, white pizza, etc. - there are "Gourmet Pizzas". These include barbecue chicken pizza, hot wing pizza, ham and chees hoagie pizza, blt pizza, spicy barbecue pizza, Hawaiian pizza, chicken Alfredo pizza, meat lovers pizza, mac and cheese pizza, veggie pizza, cheese steak pizza, taco pizza, and Grandma's pizza which is a robust cheese pizza with pepper flakes. Not all of these are out all of the time, and this night only the bbq chicken and hot wing pizza were out from this list. The counter and overhead lights keep the pizza sufficiently hot and each is sliced into uneven slices. Each is set out on a small pizza tray and not the wire screens that Cici's uses. None of the pizzas that were out for any time dried out or got hard. What we tried were tasty and new pizza's came out sporadically - perhaps more would have come out if there were more customers eating.
Where Friends and Family Pizza Buffet shines is the dessert pizzas! There are 15 different hot and cold dessert pizzas and what we tried were great. I had blueberry cheese pizza - cream cheese and blueberry topping mixed in with a sugar icing glaze. We both tried the apple crumb pizza and this was much better than the apple pizza served at Cici's. We both tried the small rolled cinnamon buns which were good and my wife tried vanilla pudding pizza which was the cold pizza that was out. There is even a peanut butter and jelly pizza and a peanut butter and chocolate pizza. These were not out on this night.
The website says that there is scooped hard ice cream but there was no ice cream freezer anywhere to be seen, no signs or mention of ice cream, and no offer of ice cream. Perhaps you could ask for it but if you have to ask and there is no indication anywhere that it even exists then I consider that as there is no ice cream. Again, what you read is not always what you get.
Service was marginal. The stacks of dirty dishes were taken off of our table twice by the young lady who walked around the near empty dining room. Happily, there was no large cleaning cart wheeled around the room which is a negative at Cici's. (That cart at Cici's is put to use cleaning away dirty dishes and cleaning tables but it is disgusting to have this wheeled repeated around the room next to your face while you are eating.)
Oh yes, I need to mention the noise. Every so often it sounded as if people were bowling - in a bowling alley. I started to wonder if there were bowling lanes in the storefront next door - but no, there were not. It was a loud rumbling crash. We asked the young lady who was walking around the room - sometimes picking up dirty dishes. She said that most people think that it is thunder, but it is actually the oven exhaust fan when it intermittently turns on and runs. Oh boy!
So overall - value is ok (if Cici's $5 buffet did not exist I would say that this price is great. Atmosphere is very nice. Cleanliness at the buffet server area is marginal. Service in the dining room is marginal. The pizza is good.
If you are a parent who has the salad bar while the kids attack the pizza selections, forget it. The salad is a major dissappointment in selection. The kids will be happy. You will not.
If you always wanted a hot dog buffet you will love this - lots of hot dog toppings and steam cooked hot dogs with buns. The hot dog was good.
Don't care about anything else but pizza - not even how clean the plates are - then you will love this buffet.
It is very possible that a Friends and Family Pizza Buffet will come near you at some time in the future. This corporation is hot to sell franchises and they are doing it in several ways. There are plans for non-buffet pizza franchises as well as pizza buffets. Some day I may get to try the original location near Philadelphia - no I am not running to get there. It may very well may be that the short comings of the Mechanicsburg location - and these are all really in the area of keeping the dishes and the serving trays clean (which is very important so that people don't get sick) - are better in Bristol. Management and mature managerial supervision of any buffet is ultimately important. Properly supervised this buffet would be A-Class. At the moment - at least on the night that I was there - it was not.
I ate myself full. I managed to get a clean plate each time and I avoided anything that did not quite look up to par. I was satisfied and I was fine afterward (all important!).
If you have tried the Bristol location let us know how it was in a comment. If you are not near Philadelphia or Harrisburg, PA you will not yet find one of these restaurants. This one that I went to is located at 6499 Carlisle Pike, Mechanicsberg, Pa. The phone number is 717-697-4283. There is a website for the chain which is listed at the side of this page. The restaurant is open from Monday to Saturday from 11 am to 9 pm. It is closed on Sundays and most holidays.
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