Do Low Priced Buffets Mean Poor Quality?

We have had several commenters lately insist that if the meal does not cost over $20 -$25 per person, the food is of poor quality AND it has been stated 0r implied that if you eat there you will get sick. So I decided that I would set aside other articles that I have in the works, and write an article about buffets, quality, and risk.

If you use price as a determination of quality and a factor in risk of getting sick eating at a restaurant, then do not eat at most of the buffets that you will find reviewed on this site. About 95% of the buffets that I review on this site are priced at under $20. The range in prices of buffets on this site for the most part cost between $10.99 and $17.99 with most closer to the $10.99 price. There are a number of very good buffets that I have been to and written about that were even lower in price - as low as $4.99. Of course, I do go to and review buffets that cost more than this range in price - but it is rare and for us and many of our readers, we cannot afford to dine at restaurants with a meal price of over $20 on any regular basis. For us, these are reserved for special occasions or when traveling to try a buffet that looks promising and will be a something special to include in the vacation. No, if it is not in the lower price range of $11 to $18 (with the $18 almost as rare) we are not going regularly - and we (my wife and I) eat at buffets often more than once a week. That stated, I have very rarely gotten sick at any of these buffets. When I have, I have shared that with the readers here. I also have learned what will trigger indigestion, and for me that is overly spicy foods and I avoid those foods in my selections from a buffet.

I have had food poisoning several times in my life - and these instances were not from buffets that were lower priced. In fact, the two worse cases that I had were after eating at very expensive menu restaurants. And while I have felt ill after a couple of buffet meals over the years, my wife has been there dining with me and she has not gotten sick. So, it was something that I choose and she did not, something that did not agree with me, but did agree with her, or it was just my luck to get that one bad piece of whatever in the serving tray. None of these instances required that I seek medical attention and all were over within several to 24 hours. No, it is not by any means a pleasant experience, but I would not blame the quality of the food based upon the price.

Many of my readers tell me that they are looking for a good place - a buffet - to take a family to that they can afford. When I have reviewed or reported on buffets with high prices, comments and emails often come that the price is way beyond what they could go to. And I completely understand that. Many eat at fast food restaurants because that is what they can afford and do so every day. The chain buffets are often an extension of the idea of a fast food restaurant and provide families with meals at affordable prices. Without the low price buffet, a sit down meal at a restaurant for some would happen on only rare and special occasions. And they go and enjoy themselves, without any feeling of illness following. A family of four at $25 a person makes dining out an impossibility other than for only the rarest of occasions.

Some may equate price with quality. Some will pay three times for what something is worth because the name on the label is one that they have been told is a sign of quality and distinction. It is not really a surprise to me that people will say "I would never eat at a buffet because the food is not of good quality!" These are the same type of people who would say, "I would never eat at a restaurant that was not in Zaggets." These are also some of the same type of people who say. "I would never eat in a buffet because of the type of people that you find eating there." Oh yes, I have heard that one more than once.

Am I saying that the food purchased by buffets is always top quality - of course not. But the food purchased by reputable buffets is food that is perfectly fine, edible, and enjoyable. There are excellent restaurant buffets that are not chains that many enjoy that I have reviewed on this site that also have menu options - and those restaurants are well respected in their communities - and no price on the menu for a full meal is even near $20. Locals and visitors eat at these restaurants every day - come back often - and don't get sick.

Restaurants where I am located are, in general, very high priced. They are over-priced. Some are proud of it. They run ads in the newspaper - "Three Course Lunch $25.99!" Surveys have shown that restaurants here are the highest priced in the nation - some even higher than New York City - and the prices there are ridiculous. Serving portions are also small. Is the quality any better at these restaurants because they put a high price tag on their so-called "ambiance" and their location? No, these restaurants want a certain clientele and they price accordingly - and that clientele is likely not the same people who are going to be happy going to even the best buffet.

So I will continue to recommend buffets at all price ranges, tell you the good and the bad, and warn about anything that needs to be warned about. I will always look for value - and let you know when the price is high, if you are getting value for that price. Money today is hard earned and for many, every dollar spent must be spent on value. And even people with limited means, want to go out to eat. I will help them do that - along with everyone - else by helping you all find where to go for a good buffet meal.

Swedish Easter Smorgasbord at IKEA in March

Before Christmas I wrote about the special holiday smorgasbord that IKEA store restaurants were serving for two seatings on one night only. I mentioned at that time that there is also similar smorgasbord served at Easter. These two special all you care to eat meals are annual events at IKEA. They take place at all IKEA locations. I was not able to go to the Christmas meal but we are planning on going to the Easter event.

This year the Easter Smorgasbord will take place on March 23, 2012. There will be two seatings. The first seating is from 4:00 to 5:30 pm and the second seating is from 6:30 to 8:00 pm. Each, obviously an hour and a half. IKEA restaurant dining rooms are not large so there is a limited amount of seating available at each meal. You must purchase tickets in advance. IKEA is saying now, which they did not say at Christmas (I don't recall) that no tickets will be sold the day of the event. They are saying that now - no tickets will be sold on March 23. If you want to go you must decide in advance, and don't wait too long to purchase tickets. The price of this special all you can eat buffet is... $9.99. Children under 12 are just $2.49. The price is unbelievable.

What will be served is traditional to a Swedish Easter celebration dinner. The meal will include:

Assorted Herring
Hardboiled eggs with mayo and shrimp
Hardboiled eggs with herring roe or tångkorn
Shrimp with cocktail sauce
Marinated Salmon with Mustard Sauce
Smoked Salmon with Horseradish Sauce
Poached Salmon
Assorted Cheeses
Tossed green salad
Cucumber salad
Red Beet Salad
Breads: Crispbread, Crisprolls, Dinner rolls
Swedish Meatballs
Mashed Potatoes
Boiled potatoes w/dill, Lingonberries
Swedish Ham with Mustard
Gratäng Jansson
Assorted Swedish desserts and cookies
Fountain Beverages, Hot beverages

If you are Swedish or Scandinavian you know what some of these things are beyond the obvious items written in English. I have no idea, but it all sounds good. While I have never experienced one of IKEA's smorgasbord special events, I have eaten at IKEA restaurants many times and the food is fine. There are several things on this menu that are not usually offered and there are a number of items that are standardly served at the IKEA restaurants. You cannot beat the price. Just an order of the meatballs and an order of the smoked salmon together cost more than the price of the entire smorgasbord! This sounds like a good and unique experience for a great price.

We will be there this year and I will tell you all about it after the meal. If you are interested go as soon as possible to your nearest IKEA store and purchase your tickets.

Return to Wasabi Oriental Buffet, Williamsburg, Virginia

I first found Wasabi Oriental Buffet this past summer and wrote about it in October. In that article I was pleased with the meal that we had there and recommended it to you all as a great place to go in this area if you are looking for both a buffet and a Chinese meal. We were back in Virginia in early December and went back to Wasabi Oriental Buffet. I say, very happily, that it was just as good - and perhaps, better.

We were there on a winter weeknight. There were few people in the restaurant. In my first review, I noted a concern that some of the foods were just warm and not hot. That was not the case at all on this visit. All of the food was the correct temperature. If there was going to be an issue with food sitting or food not being kept hot, it would happen on a night like this. There was NO problem at all.

Since this was not my first visit to this buffet, I took items that I recalled I liked here, and was not as concerned as I would be on a first visit to take a broader sampling of the dishes offered. One thing that I wanted to try again was the Hawaiian BBQ. This is something that is featured in this restaurant's advertising. On this visit I took the chicken and the pork. Both were very good. They were not that sweet - and they had a nice flavor. I liked it enough to go back for more.

When I was here in August, I mention in my first article that there seemed to be the making of a made to order soup bar. At that time it did not seem to be operational. It was all set up this time in the back behind the Mongolian BBQ counter. No one was there when we went to get one of the soups out on the buffet in soup servers, but I am sure had I called someone over to make noodle soup for me, someone would have come right over to explain what they had and what they make. This was a very quiet night. I am sure on a busy night there would have been someone there - and in fact, the chef for the Mongolian BBQ who must be the soup chef as well, was behind the counter at various times during our visit - including when I went up for Mongolian BBQ.

The Mongolian BBQ is good here. There is the usual variety of meats and vegetables. The sauces are nicely seasoned and if you do not want hot and spicy, you have no problem here. I like being able to take my own selection of things I like and create a dish - and, I did go back up twice on this visit.

The sushi bar has a nice variety and on this visit there was more than just rolls. There was fish on rice. While some Asian buffets frown on taking the sushi and not eating the rice, there was no problem with that here. I love rice. I can't eat rice, and I like sushi. When there is no choice of just taking raw fish (sashimi?) - which is offered in some Asian buffets, I take the fish on beds of rice and do not eat the rice. I did this here - no problem.

Bottom line. It was good in August. It was good in December. I will be going back - and I travel through here at least twice a year. With our poor experience twice at what had been our must "go to" Chinese buffet in this area, we are very happy that we have found Wasabi. I like it and my picky eater wife likes it. If you are in Williamsburg, Virginia, try it!

Wasabi Oriental Buffet is located at 1203 Richmond Road, Williamsburg, Virginia. This is right near Colonial Williamsburg and William and Mary University. Their phone number is 757-645-3988. There is a website and there is a link to that website at the side of this page.

Another Visit to Peking Buffet, Williamsburg, VA

In October 2011, I wrote an article about Peking Buffet in Williamsburg, Virginia. This is a buffet that I have written highly of in the past and in fact, was our Best Asian Buffet one year, several years back. As I had said in the article in October, I had not been back to the area to go to this buffet for about two or so years. In December, we were in Virginia again, and we made a point to go back to Peking Buffet to see if our poor experience there this past August was just an anomaly or was it typical of how this buffet now is.

I am not going to go through the whole description and detail about the restaurant. Use the link in the first sentence to go to that article and read it, if you wish. What I will talk about is our experience on this last visit.

The best thing here remains the noodle soup station and the Pho. As I have written before, this is not a Pho to be compared to a true Vietnamese restaurant, but the noodles are right and the soup is close enough to be enjoyed by someone who likes this distinct noodle soup. But you cannot spend the night just eating soup - well, I guess one could, but that is not why I came in the past to Peking Buffet.

After the soup the rest of the meal was a problem for both of us. Let me state right off, because of the outcome of my last meal here, that my stomach did not become upset after eating at Peking Buffet this time. That is a good thing. I believe, it is because I chose my selections very wisely and avoided anything with spice and hot peppers. That was a problem because what that left were sweetened dishes and high carb dishes - and with the restrictions in diet that we are both on, this left little to nothing. Much of what is on the buffet is "hot and spicy". I thought that I could get around this by going to the Mongolian Barbecue to make up my own dish of selected raw vegetables, strips of beef, and I put on should have been a basic brown sauce which unlike other sauce selections should not have been spicy. I watched as chef grilled it and plated it. When I got to the table I took a forkful and immediately I tasted and felt the heat in my mouth - not the temperature but the heat of the spice that could only have come from the sauce. Frankly, and I hate to leave what I take over in any way, I did not finish the plate. I was not going to take any chances on this trip. I did go back and prepare a plate with no sauce at all. This one was not spicy and edible - though it had no taste at all. I added some soy sauce to give it a taste. I have been to many Mongolian Barbecues at buffets and I have never had this problem. I eat at many Asian buffets and never have a problem finding selections from the buffet that are not spicy, not sweetened, and are not pure starch. Here it was a problem. Now, if you like spicy Chinese food, if you eat heavily sweetened dishes, and you have no problem with dishes that are primarily rice or starch, then you will not have the problem that we had. BUT in the past at Peking Buffet - with the same diet restrictions, we never had a problem enjoying a plentiful meal here. Not any longer.

I did go back to the Sushi Train - again, see the October article. I thought that I would over come the awkwardness of taking little plates with one or two pieces of sushi on them by taking over a dinner plate and putting the contents of the little plates on that as I took them as they went by on the belt. Good idea, but there was no place to put the little dishes, so I was balancing several little plates, with my dinner plate and this just did not work. Again, the sushi as it went by was not properly labeled or not labeled at all. There was no way to know what was going by but guessing. If I saw something that looked interesting, but I missed taking it from the little door in front of me, I would try to follow along to get to it again, or come back to find it on the next loop, but every time, it was gone - and there was no big crowd here this night - in fact at one point I was the only one at the sushi train. I said this before and I will say it again - a sushi train has no place at a buffet. In the old days here, there was a serving counter, just like every other Asian buffet with a sushi chef behind filling serving trays with sushi. Some one here saw this Sushi Train (it is very popular in Japan where you sit in front of it at a counter and take what you want as it passes by) and decided it would be a great addition to Peking Buffet. That was a big mistake.

Since I was watching closely what I was taking on the buffet and avoiding a lot of things, I pretty much did not feel that I had all that I would like to eat. I even went back for more soup. I was a bit hungry when we left. A buffet needs to meet a broad range of diets. This one always had. What USED TO BE good here was the large number of basic Chinese restaurant dishes - chow mien, moo shu, a number of plain vegetarian Chinese dishes, and more. These all are gone.

We both agreed that Peking Buffet was not worth coming back to again. My wife had said to me later that she was surprised when I pulled into the parking lot, as she knew from the last visit that this was a buffet to cross off our list of places to go when we are in this area. I explained that I wanted to give it one more try - hoping. She was right - I should have gone back to one of the others - even her not so favorite Golden Corral, which is actually just across the the road. I said when I ended the last article that it would be wait and see until the next time. This was the next time and all they get from me is two strikes - and now they are out - for us. At least I didn't get sick. Again, if you like hot and spicy, you might like it.

The Peking Restaurant in Williamsburg, Virginia is located at 120 Waller Mill Road in the Big Kmart Shopping Center. (Kingsgate Green Shopping Center – Bypass Road (Rt.60)). There is a website and that is listed at this side of the page.

BUFFETS, INC. IN BANKRUPTCY AGAIN

On Wednesday, January 18, 2012, Buffets, Inc. the parent corporation of Old Country Buffet, Ryans, Hometown Buffet, Fire Mountain,Grannie's Buffet, and Tahoe Joe's voluntarily filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 in the Federal Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. This is the second bankruptcy filed by this corporation in four years - the first in 2008. They stated that their intention was a reorganization that they worked out with "senior lenders" who hold 83% of the corporation's debt.

On Thursday, January 19th, on the Old Country Buffet Facebook page the corporation posted the following statement:

"The decision to close a restaurant and leave one of our communities is always a tough one for us. We know there is an impact not only for our own associates, but also for the guests who have supported us. Unfortunately, the realities of today's economy mean that we have to make hard decisions, and we sincerely regret that we won't be able to continue to serve our loyal guests in some locations. Thank you for being part of our family."

The comments that followed were all focused on what does this mean - what locations are you closing. It was soon discovered through web search that Buffets, Inc. would close 81 of their 494 restaurants spread across all of the chains that they own. It was also discovered that the corporation would not disclose the list of restaurants that they would be closing in respect of the employees to be affected who they wanted to inform first. Sounds nice, doesn't it. Here is what happened.

On Friday, January 20, 2012, representatives of Buffets, Inc. walked through the doors of 81 restaurants and informed managers and employees that this would be their last day of employment. This was their idea of personal and advanced notice. Customers were shocked to visit these restaurants and find a closed sign on the door.

Many of you who read this site regularly will recall when the the same Buffets, Inc. bought the Ryan's chain several years ago and then walked in to many, many of those restaurants the same way and announced that the location was closed - no advanced notice to anyone. You read here the reaction of employees and location managers who told their stories in comments made to articles on this site about the closing - and articles were devoted just to them.

Of course, this is not the first, or second time that Buffets, Inc. has done this. When the first bankruptcy was declared by them in 2008, they closed 50 restaurants.

The CEO of the corporation, Mike Andrews, states that a store by store examination was made of "financial performance occupancy costs, market conditions and long-term strategy" and that stores that were closed were "under-performing". If you go by customer, employee, and manager reports this was not the case - and a number of the restaurants closed were busy and making money. They also announced that they "need to gain more favorable lease terms with the rest of the landlords, and Buffets said additional closings could be required if leases cannot be modified on acceptable terms" ( quotes from GlobeSt.com). So there is a good chance you may still travel to your nearest OCB and find it closed.

Restaurants were closed across the country. There still is no complete list from Buffets, Inc. that has been made public. There are reports on OCB's Facebook from customers of some of the stores that they have seen closed. Buffets sent emails to those on their email offers list in areas where stores were closed that included a coupon to take to the next closest OCB which was named in the email - some more than fifty miles away. Those with gift cards would have to find another OCB to use them at - and in some areas there just were not any to be found. Thanks to a reader - here is a list of those locations closed last week:

BROOKFIELD, WI - OCB, ANDERSON #1, SC - RYAN,TAYLOR, MI - OCB, COLUMBIA #2, SC - RYAN, RACINE, WI - OCB, GREENVILLE #2, SC - RYAN, FLINT #2, MI - OCB, MARTINEZ, GA - RYAN, LOMBARD, IL - OCB, WARNER-ROBINS, GA - RYAN, WESTFIELD, IN (T) - OCB, CALHOUN, GA - RYAN, WESTLAND, MI - OCB, NORTH CHARLESTON, SC - RYAN, NORRISTOWN, PA - OCB, CANTON, GA - RYAN, INDIANAPOLIS #2, IN - OCB, JOHNSON CITY, TN - RYAN, WEST SPRINGFIELD, MA - HTB, FAYETTEVILLE, NC - RYAN,
FLORISSANT, MO - HTB, SLIDELL, LA - RYAN, GOSHEN/ELKHART, IN - OCB, BEAUMONT, TX - RYAN, FAIRVIEW HEIGHTS, IL - HTB, WHITE SETTLEMENT, TX - RYAN, WEST DUNDEE, IL - OCB, BATON ROUGE #2, LA - RYAN, SOUTHGATE, MI - OCB, GASTONIA, NC - RYAN, SPRINGFIELD, PA - OCB, TULSA #2, OK - RYAN, ANN ARBOR, MI - OCB, CONWAY, AR - RYAN, COUNTRYSIDE, IL (T) - OCB, CLARKSVILLE, TN - RYAN, NAPERVILLE, IL - OCB, JACKSON, TN - RYAN, MOUNT CLEMENS, MI - OCB, NEW BRAUNSFELS, TX - RYAN,
BENSALEM, PA - OCB, SENECA, SC - RYAN, SPOKANE #2, WA - OCB, MURFREESBORO, TN - RYAN, VESTAL, NY - OCB, AUSTIN, TX - RYAN, KENOSHA, WI - OCB, CARTERSVILLE, GA - RYAN, MECHANICSBURG, PA - OCB, OAKRIDGE, TN - RYAN, O'FALLON, MO - HTB, CLEVELAND, TN - RYAN, GREENSBURG, PA - OCB, STOCKBRIDGE, GA - RYAN, BUTLER, PA - OCB, WILKESBORO, NC - FMTN, LONG BEACH, CA - HTB, GEORGETOWN, SC - RYAN, LOUISVILLE #3, KY - HTB, MARIETTA, OH - RYAN, WYNCOTE, PA - OCB, THOMASVILLE, GA - RYAN, BRADLEY, IL - OCB, HOT SPRINGS, AR - RYAN, NORTHLAKE, IL - OCB, SPRINGFIELD #2, MO - RYAN, MACON #2, GA - RYAN, SPOKANE #1, WA - OCB, OKLAHOMA CITY, OK - RYAN, MORRISTOWN, TN - RYAN, LANCASTER, CA - HTB, TILLMANS CORNER, AL - RYAN, CONCORD MILLS, NC - RYAN, UNION CITY, CA - HTB, AUBURN, IN - RYAN, SPANISH FORT, AL - RYAN, WEST HARTFORD, CT - HTB, ARLINGTON, TX - RYAN, WARWICK, RI - HTB, CANTON, OH - HTB, JOLIET #2, IL - OCB

My most sincere wishes and condolences to those employees and managers who now find themselves out of work. If you are reading this and wish to comment, please do so (please keep the language as civil as possible as this is a family site and I want to include what all of you have to say). In these difficult economic times this is a tragic. There are employees who have worked for this company for twenty years who are now out on the street without a job. I have to wonder what cut in salary Mr. Andrews has taken and what cuts of the corporate level management and employees. It is easy,Mr. Andrews, to sit in a large office building and play with the lives of people who depend on you for the livelihood of themselves and their families off in your distant locations. You are not the one who has to look at them as they walk out the door for the last time.

Sad times, and becoming just too commonplace.

Chen's Buffet City, Levittown, New York

A new Asian buffet has opened on Long Island, New York. It opened in mid-December with great anticipation. I watched for months the location be transformed from a large, empty storefront that years ago was once a chain drugstore to a new buffet restaurant. The location is actually directly across the way from the Old Country Buffet. Each time we passed we wondered when it would open. Just about when it looked like it was open, we called and were told "next week", and then that next week we called again, only to be told again "next week". It finally opened and it has had large crowds ever since. I have actually been there five times at this point - so many things were happening in December that I just did not have a chance to write this article - and we kept going back.

Chen's Buffet City is a combination of Chinese buffet and Japanese hibachi/sushi. If you look on their website, they call themselves a Japanese buffet, but they are not really. Other than the hibachi grill and the sushi bar, this is a Chinese buffet. Most of the dishes on the buffet are Chinese.

Since I have gone back so many times in just a short time, it is clear that I like this buffet. The food is good. There are a few problems that I will go into later but know up front that this is a good buffet. The dining room is large with a combination of booths and tables. The buffet servers are in the rear of the room with eight large double sided buffet servers. Half of the back wall is the hibachi grill and the other half is the sushi bar. There is a small lobby when you come in and the only nights that we did not wait for a table were weeknights. We have been there two weeknights, two Friday nights and New Year's Eve. Yes, we went New Year's Eve and they were serving their regular buffet at the regular price. The room that night was packed and we waited almost 45 minutes to get in. When you go in and there is a wait you are given a number that will be called when your table is ready. The numbers are not in sequence and there seems to be a code for the number in your party in the number - so do not be surprised if the numbers are not called in order of the number itself.

The price of the adult buffet at dinner is $11.49! Yes, for all that this buffet has to offer it has the least expensive dinner price of any Oriental buffet on Long Island. This price is the same no matter what night you go - weeknights or weekends. Soda, tea, or ice tea is $1.00 and it is unlimited. Lunch is $7,99 for adults. There are children's prices - dinner - under 2 free, 3-6 $4.99, 7-11 $6.49 - lunch - 3-6 $2.99, 7-11 $4.99. On our first visit after our first glass of Diet Coke (they are not using Coke products- I suspect they are an off brand) they ran out of Diet Coke- they came back to say so and that they will bring regular Coke- no, no we told them we can't drink that and need something without sugar - we settled on hot tea for my wife and iced tea for me- they were trying and since they had just opened they were not anticipating the crowds or the amount of Diet Coke that is consumed at Chinese buffets. This has not happened since.

There is a large salad bar with a variety of Asian prepared salads, lettuce and salad toppings. If you want salad you will not be disappointed. I don't find a need to have salad at an Asian buffet so I have skipped the salad bar. On the same cold server you will find mounds of peel and eat shrimp, cold mussels, and raw clams. There are also cold stone crabs. No matter what you see in the print advertisements or the home page of their website there are no crab legs. Let me repeat that so that you don't get disappointed when you go - THERE ARE NO CRAB LEGS. There is, next to the shrimp, what looks like crab meat strips - but I am very sure (though I did not sample this) that this is not real crab but the fish Krab substitute. I believe, that they intended to serve snow crab legs, but when they actually opened realized immediately that they could not offer that along with everything else that they have for the price that they are charging. This is not very much a loss unless you are a crab leg fanatic. There is plenty more here.

There are six soups - wonton, egg drop, hot and sour, miso, clam chowder, and chicken vegetable. I like to mix soups - I add a wonton to a mixture of hot and sour and egg drop - I enjoy this because it takes the spice off the hot and sour. The soup has been good every time.

It is hard to describe where to start and what they have because they have so much. There are the usual assortment of Chinese appetizers - small egg rolls, spring rolls, fried crab claws, fried cheese stuffed wontons, wings, chicken on a stick, shrimp balls, deep fried fish dumplings. chicken nuggets, fried plantain, fried squid, seasoned french fries, baked clams, steamed clams and more. There are steamed peach buns, steamed shu mai, steamed crystal dumplings which are sweet, and pan fried dumplings. The dumpling sauce is over by the pan fried dumplings which are another server with entrees. They do have spare ribs - these are the typical Chinese buffet style spare ribs overly covered in thick red sugar sauce.

While my wife will go to the buffet servers and take a selection of the many Chinese entrees, I go over to the hibachi grill. This is the same type of hibachi grill that you will find in a Japanese restaurant or buffet. They do have a wider variety of raw vegetables to add - making it appear like more of a selection found at a Mongolian barbecue grill - but this is not a Mongolian barbecue grill. The meat is what makes the difference. There are good sized steaks here to take, pieces of chicken meat, shrimp, and cross slices of beef ribs. There is also noodles - and these noodles are so long that it is almost impossible to take a portion and put it on your dish without several noodles that go on for feet still coming up from the serving tray. You can take whatever you like on a plate - add the meat on top - some just take meat - some just take vegetables and when it is your turn - and there has always been a line - you hand it to the chef and he puts the meat down on the grill separate from the vegetables and cooks it with the addition of oil, butter, soy sauce, teriyaki sauce, and garlic. Now - I told you that I have been to the restaurant five times. I have been up to the hibachi grill ten times - twice each visit. I have not had my hibachi cooked the same way twice. This is not a good thing. Even the same chef has not cooked it the same way twice. There are usually two chefs at the grill to handle the crowd. Sometimes I have been asked how I would like the steak cooked, sometimes not. Sometimes they add butter, sometimes not. Sometimes they put garlic, sometimes not. Sometimes they add two sauces and sometimes one. When we first went, there was a very skilled hibachi chef at the grill - and a crowd of Asian men behind the grill watching him. Obviously, he was the teacher - and that plate was the best that I have had there so far. He even squeezed an orange onto someone's shrimp. I have not seen that since. The last time we were there, the chef did not even cut up the steak as has always been done before and is usual for hibachi steak - he just cooked it and put it on the plate whole next to the vegetables. There is no consistency in cooking at the hibachi grill - and even though I like it a lot, there needs to be. If you don't want them to add something tell them right away - some understand English better than others, but make yourself known. If you want no fat used - tell them. I will tell you that I have been to a Japanese hibachi since going first to Chen's and I like the hibachi dishes that I have had at Chen's better.

The sushi bar is large but the assortment is small. There are mostly rolls and they are not quick to refill the trays when they are empty- though there are always two sushi chefs standing at the bar. They have put out shrimp, salmon, and tuna on top of rice, but these are taken quickly and then rarely will you see them again. I was a bit surprised on New Years Eve when I went up to the two sushi chefs - at the time there were salmon and tuna on rice out on the buffet - and I asked for just some pieces of tuna and salmon with no rice. I could have easily taken the salmon and tuna on rice that was out and not eaten the rice - as was suggested to me by a man who was passing and heard what happened, but I did not want to waste the rice. Both chefs looked at each other and then looked at me like I had asked them to fly - and said "no!". I asked again, in case there was a language issue - and I got a definite no again. So I took the rice and left it over. I really do not understand this, and it was the first strike this buffet received in my mind.

The selection of entrees is extensive and different ones have shown up replacing others from visit to visit. The first visit there was an excellent shrimp with scallions which has not been there since. There has been a shrimp with lobster sauce that was a thick brown sauce that was very good. Since that time the shrimp and lobster sauce has been the standard light sauce with large pieces of egg white. It is also mixed with krab pieces. The sauce is good and close to the full flavor as to what I have had a Chinese menu restaurants. There has been kung pow chicken on one occasion. There is always chicken and broccoli and beef with peppers. There is a large tray of teriyaki chicken. There is a large tray of egg foo young, but beware of the tray of brown sauce that is behind it because that is not egg foo young sauce - I was suspicious when it was a dark brown. It is beef gravy. (Not good on egg foo young!) There is a beef roast out for you to slice yourself. There is salmon and there is steamed whitefish which was good but it needed ginger sauce. Of course, you will find lo mein and fried rice. There is also steamed brown rice in addition to white rice. There is a large tray of corn on the cob. There is sweet and sour chicken. There is stone crab with ginger sauce. There is a dish with shrimp and corn. There is duck but no fixing to make Peking duck but the pieces of duck are meaty and good. Other dishes that we have seen include salt and pepper shrimp, stuffed mushrooms, spicy chicken, honey chicken, general tso chicken, sesame chicken, coconut shrimp, mussels with oyster sauce, mixed Chinese vegetable, bok choy, baked seafood, baked spinach, beef and cheese casserole, fried shrimp, sealegs with bacon, mushrooms in oyster sauce, garlic shrimp, sauteed green beans. and more. There is pizza, rolls, and garlic bread, too. This is another of those buffets that there is so much that you cannot possibly eat it all at one visit.

Dessert is also more than you will find at most Chinese buffets with a large assortment of fresh fruit, pudding, jello, hard ice cream cups that are found in two freezer cases, little cake squares, cream puffs, cookies, etc. The big dessert feature is a - CHOCOLATE FOUNTAIN! This is totally unsupervised and with all of the other comments that I have made about these in other articles I found a new problem here. First, the selections to dip are marshmallows, pineapple chunks, macaroons, sugar filled wafer cookies, bananas, and apple wedges. The fruit is out in a cold server on the table with the fountain. There are sticks in a cup to take to dip with. There are tongs to take from the serving trays. Now, here is the problem - and this exists at EVERY chocolate fountain You take what you want to dip and put it on a plate. Then you take the wood skewers and with your FINGERS put each item on a stick. The item that has been in your fingers now goes into the chocolate. You might have just as well dipped your fingers in. See the problem. Now, this takes nothing away from Chens - it is no different with other chocolate fountains. But I watched everyone doing this while at Chen's. There is no way to avoid this other than to have a server at the fountain wearing gloves and dipping for you - and that is going to be rare any place (other than Shady Maple where that is done). So please, don't overwhelm the comments section about the chocolate fountain - it has all been said already. If you enjoy chocolate fountains then this is a good one. I tried it here once just to taste the chocolate and it was good chocolate.

After reading this I am sure you are hungry. I am. I mentioned problems at the beginning and I have included a few. One last problem that is consistent time to time is that the food is not kept hot enough on the buffet. It is not cold, but warm. You need to take from the bottom of a tray to be sure you get hot food. I heard about a part of China where food is traditionally served luke-warm and I am starting to wonder if many of these buffet owners come from that province. As I have said before, food on a buffet needs to be kept HOT - not just warm. There is a microwave out in the middle of the buffet with a sign that says to the effect - "if the food is not hot enough for you heat it up". Really? Not an acceptable solution but perhaps the food is not intended to be hot. You will notice that this has NOT kept me from going back.

I very much enjoy this buffet and it is becoming a regular for me. It is a wonderful value and the food is good. I am hoping that with time the crowds will settle down and there will be less of a wait to get in. The OCB across the road must be crying because they have never been this busy.

Perhaps I should not recommend it, because it will mean a longer wait when I go -but I really have to recommend Chen's Buffet City to you. This is a definite try it if you are nearby.

Chen's Buffet is located at 3056 Hempstead Turnpike, Levittown, NY 11756. Their phone number is 516.520-0888. There is a website which is linked at the side of this page. They are open 7 days a week and their hours are:
Lunch Buffet: Monday to Saturday 11:00am-3:30pm
Dinner Buffet: Monday to Saturday 3:30pm-9:30pm
Sunday and Holidays: 11:00 am-9:30pm.

Another Christmas Dinner at Best Buffet, Huntington, New York

I was not sure that I was going to write this article or not, but apparently, Best Buffet, a Chinese buffet in Huntington, New York has a lot of fans who read this site, there have been a lot of comments about Best Buffet on a recent article that has nothing to do with this restaurant. Last year in 2010, we went to Best Buffet for a special Christmas dinner. I wrote an article then about how good it was - and I have been thinking through 2011 that come Christmas we would go back for that special holiday meal again. This dinner is actually served on four nights - Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve, and New Year's Day. As the holidays, approached I looked to see if it would be offered again, and on their website, I saw that it would be. Our plans for Christmas dinner were then set.

The price of this special dinner has gone up a dollar since last year. A tip of 12% is automatically added to your bill. Soda is unlimited and costs extra - we What is offered on the buffet has slightly changed as well as the Oriental Hot Pot section - Shabu-Shabu is no longer offered at the restaurant and, of course then, no longer included on the meal. This was no great loss, though if you are Asian it may be something that you would miss. For the uninitiated into this type of eating, a lot of raw things that you pick to be boiled for you - this was a bit daunting to try. I did not see it mentioned any longer on their website and I knew that it would not be there this year - which was fine with me.

As I said a year ago, this is a Chinese restaurant that caterers to Chinese people - which is great because they offer many dishes that you will not find in most Chinese restaurants and almost never find at a Chinese buffet. Many of the people dining here are Asian and they appear to be enjoying what they are eating - so I can only assume that it is being prepared authentically. Again, this is a good thing.

Many of the things that I wrote abut last year still hold true. I will focus on some of the things that I had that were different this year and also something that is a bit of a problem. I am going to start with the problem first - and I will preface this by saying that it was not so much of a problem that we did not enjoy the dinner and we were not happy - but, it is a concern. When I first reviewed Best Buffet several years ago when it reopened from its former incarnation - the wonderful, East Buffet, the food that was being served on the buffet tables and at the grill area was not hot - in fact, then it was cold. For that reason (and the high meal price of this restaurant) we did not go back. When we did go back a year ago with my fingers crossed that this had been corrected, I was happy to see that it was. This year was another story - and the food was not cold but just warm. This is not good. First, things that are fatty are terrible if they are not hot. Second, it is not safe to not keep food being served at the correct temperature. It was not that the restaurant was empty and that food was sitting. The restaurant was crowed with diners and food was being put out repeatedly - but not hot. It is a problem, and Best needs to correct this. If the Board of Health came in as a surprise and put a food thermometer into the serving trays, there would be violations of health code to answer. I am sure that I will go back again, and hopefully again, they will have corrected this. You know, if you don't put out your best on a special meal like this - well, it is just wrong. Now that I have gotten this out of the way, I will tell you about the meal - and really, we had a good time.

There were several soups on the main buffet server - Lobster Bisque was there again, as it had been last year. It was, though, better last year as it was thicker and there was good pieces of lobster in the soup - last year. This year there was no lobster to be seen in the soup but it had a good lobster taste. Despite the lack of chunks of lobster the soup was good. Later in the meal I saw that there was two other soup servers against a small side wall next to the carving area with two very Chinese soups. I tried the Duck Soup. I knew it was a Marx Brothers movie, but I never saw duck soup served anywhere before. The duck soup was a thin duck broth with pieces of duck in it. It is a simple soup, a little on the fatty side, but it has a solid duck taste. It was an experience.

Last year I said that there was a sign for lobster but on lobster was served other than steamed lobster claws mixed in with the crab legs. This year there was lobster in ginger sauce served at the carving station - and this is good because when this is served at buffets that you go up and take it yourself, there is always a line waiting for it to be refilled and the first three people on the line take all of it. Here, the man behind the counter filled a plate for you - and mostly good tail pieces. No big crowds and fairly distributed portions of lobster. It was very tasty. There was also half lobsters covered with slices of cheese and grilled under a broiler. These were cooked on demand - you asked for one and a grill chef prepared it and put it under the grill. When done, it was placed on your plate. This was good but tended to be dry. Again, as last year there were steamed lobster claws.

There was roast suckling pig again this year. It is cut up into small pieces and served on a hot tray - not hot enough though. It would have been better had it been really hot, but it was OK warm. Looking back at my review from last year, the pig also was just warm then.

There were several carvings - and all looked good! There was ham, turkey (a real turkey), Peking duck, Prime Rib, and Fillet Mignon. There was a chef preparing the Peking Duck in the traditional style or you could just ask for pieces of duck. The duck was crispy and good.

There is an extensive sushi bar that includes pieces of raw fish without rice, if you are like me and enjoy the fish but don't want the rice. There were also a variety of rolls. One of the nice things here is that they have low sodium soy sauce available - sure, lots of salt in oriental cooking anyway, but the low sodium soy sauce tastes exactly like the full salt kind and is a little better for you.

There is an extensive salad bar that not only has regular salad fixings and plenty of them but also has a whole side of Asian prepared salads. On one end were cold shrimp and raw clams and oysters on the half shell. The oysters were good. So was the shrimp. (I tend to skip the clams though I do eat them occasionally.)

There is a large dessert bar that includes a number of Asian desserts in addition to the little cream puffs and pastries. There is soft serve ice cream and sundae toppings.

What stands out about this holiday meal is that there is so much and so much that is different that you WANT to try, that you can't possibly try it all. I went past what I knew was my limit at this meal because I kept seeing more things to try- and most of you who read this site know that when I try things I take just a little - not a whole portion. But I was overfull with the many little portions that I tried - and I could have kept going if my stomach and my better sense were not telling me to stop. This is what I like about the holiday dinner at Best Buffet and this is what brought me back from last year - and likely next year as well.

According to their website, this meal seems to be going to be repeated (though they do not give menu details) for Chinese New Year on January 21, 22, and 23, 2012 (the year of the dragon). Make reservations if you are interested in going for Chinese New Year. (The Christmas buffets need no reservations.)

So, Best Buffet - if you are reading this - get the food hot and keep it that way - and keep offering this wonderful holiday feast for Christmas and New Year's.

I do recommend this special dinner. I cannot speak for the day to day regular meals, as it has been awhile since I have been to one here. I can tell you that weeknight prices are almost $20 a person and weekends are $27! They seem to have a lunch special going on now that the website says will end at the end of February where lunch is $8.99 (regularly $10.99). It is this lunch special that brought all of the positive comments that I mentioned at the beginning. Yes, it is a bargain at $8.99 to get close to what you get at night for twice that price - but for me and I am sure many who live on a budget, $8.99 is still a lot to spend for lunch- though I would not expect a buffet like this to charge any less - even at $10.99. I am sure that there are many who can afford it - and the time on a weekday to have a lavish lunch.

Ryan's Buffet

I have not been to a Ryan's Buffet since Buffets, Inc. took them over a few years ago. Buffets, Inc. is the parent corporation and owners of Old Country Buffet. Ryan's are not anywhere near my area and I only get to go to them when I am traveling - and traveling at a distance. While traveling in early December I had an opportunity to have dinner at a Ryan's in Virginia, and on the return trip, stopped there again one week later. I have written about this particular Ryan's in the past. This Ryan's is located in Fredericksburg, Virginia. During my two visits I was very much able to see how this restaurant and I am certain, the whole chain, has changed since the takeover.

There has been a lot of controversy around the takeover and I have written about that in detail on this site - and there have been a large number of comments posted to this site from employees, managers, former employees, former managers - all of Ryan's - who were very effected by the takeover including a number who lost their employment when Buffets, Inc. closed a large number of Ryan's locations. I am not going to go into all of that again, but it is important to understand that Ryan's under new ownership was not an invisible changeover.

First, the physical layout of this restaurant has not changed. It is exactly as it was when I was last here. All Ryan's have a large flame grill and that grill is still there with a chef. You would not really know that anything is different until you see what is being served on the buffet. The price was lower at Ryan's than OCB - $9.99 for dinner. Beverages were always extra at Ryan's and these were slightly more expensive than at OCB - $2.10. Coupons good at one chain are good at the other.

What is on the buffet is very much what you will find at an Old Country Buffet. As was suspected when the takeover occurred the object was to take what was the top buffet chain at the time and bring it down to what was the third of the buffet chains - OCB. Some of the food items that you would find at Ryan's in the past are still there but many items have been changed over to Old Country Buffet's menu and items that were the same at both - for example, fried chicken, now are prepared using OCB's recipes - which is a shame, because in the past, Ryan's fried chicken was so much better than OCB's.

We went first on a Thursday night and then on a Tuesday night. One of Ryan's dishes that is one of my wife's favorites is their chicken pot pie. (Keep in mind, if you read this site regularly, that this is my picky eater wife that I am talking about.) When we discussed stopping at Ryan's she wondered if they would still have the chicken pot pie - and on that Thursday night they did. It was the same as it always has been. It was once and still is very tasty and it was nice to see that this was something untouched by OCB influence. It is, as you would suspect, chicken, carrots, potatoes, etc. cooked in a white sauce under a pie crust. Ryan's chicken pot pie also contains pasta which makes this very tasty dish a carb-counters nightmare, but we won't, for the moment, be so concerned about that. Bottom line is that it is still good. When we went back the next week on Tuesday, there was no chicken pot pie, but there was chicken and dumplings - not the OCB chicken and dumplings, but REAL chicken and dumplings - nice pieces of chicken with thick, drop dough dumplings and vegetables in a light, but slightly thick sauce. My wife was disappointed that there was no chicken pot pie, but I thought that this was at least something good to replace it.

The chargrill was grilling steaks as they always have. The steak now, however, is not the same, and is now the same steak that is served at OCB and it was highly over-seasoned. What is missing from the grill are the various other grilled meats that Ryan's would have. There generally, in the past, would be smoked sausage on the grill. There was smoked sausage but it was on the buffet server and served in barbecue sauce on Thursday and then on Tuesday, it was served with peppers and onions with a semi-sweet sauce, the same as it is served at Old Country Buffet. Interesting side note, here it was called "rope sausage" that is perhaps a regional name for it. To my taste, it was better when it was cooked on the grill along side the steaks. I went up for a steak and asked for one rare. The woman who was cooking told me that she did not have anything rare, but would put a steak on for me and cook it that way. I thanked her and told her that I would be back later. I went around the buffet and took other things to eat and returned to our table, intending to go for the steak when we got up for our next plate. At the point that we were almost done, the woman from the grill came over to our table with a plate of steak. She asked if I had asked for a rare steak, I told her I had, and she smiled and handed me the plate. I have to note that this happened once before a number of years ago at this same Ryan's. This would never happen at Old Country Buffet. I only wish the steak was as good as the service. The steak was so full of seasoning and pepper that it burned my lips and I had to scrape the top and bottom off to be able to finish it. When we returned the next Tuesday, the steak was not as peppery, but still over-seasoned. The one thing that is important is that there is steak at Ryan's every night, unlike OCB where steak is only served on Friday and Saturday nights. Also, the steak is still served to order and not put out, after grilling, on a steam table under cover where it cooks to well done in a matter of minutes and that is how it is served.

The salad bar at Ryan's is still more extensive than OCB. They still put out the Caesar Salad so that you assemble it yourself and you add the dressing to it. This is so much better than the prepared Caesar Salad that OCB puts out and that varies from location to location. There is still pepperoni slices on the salad bar, tuna salad, and a variety of prepared salads, some of which are now the exact same prepared salads found at OCB.

The chicken noodle soup at Ryan's still has the thick, doughy noodles that has always made this chicken noodle soup so much better than that served at OCB. There were three soups served.

There is still a baked potato bar. There is still a taco bar but it offered much less than what it did in the past, and, actually, less than what is on the taco bar at OCB.

On the buffet on both nights was catfish, but not the catfish nuggets that are served at Old Country Buffet, but whole catfish, battered and fried with the fin and tail still on. The catfish was delicious but there are many tiny bones in catfish and for someone like me who does not eat whole catfish often, this is something to take great care with and is certainly not for children - at least not for children who are not being raised where this is common. Even after pulling the whole spine with bones out, there still were bones. Perhaps this is why the catfish at OCB is served as boned, fried nuggets of catfish - but I have tried those nuggets and they are not very good.

The dessert bar is still pretty much as it always has been. It is a "real" bakery bar, meaning that you can see the preparation of the cakes, etc. and they go right into the oven and come out warm. They had full sized layer cakes - not the little squares. They all looked very tempting. Gone were the gummy bears on the sundae bar, and the sundae bar was abbreviated from what it had been.

I came away from Ryan's on both visits thinking that if you could take some of the things at Old Country Buffet and do them right - do them as they should be done - that is what I found at Ryan's. There was the grill cooking steaks - as you like them. There was the good chicken noodle soup. There was the mix it yourself Caesar Salad. There were "real" layer cakes. If the steaks were the Old Ryan's steaks it would have been much better, but it was nice to see that while some of the old Ryan's menu and recipes are gone, there still are a lot of things remaining.

At your table, you are going to see the same table advertising cards as you see in OCB - but with the Ryan's name more prominent followed by OCB and the other related names of Buffets Inc. restaurants - but they are exactly the same. So the corporate office is making sure that you know of their presence. One would hope in such an acquisition that the best of both would be blended - at both locations - or that the acquired chain would remain as close to the same as possible, and not a "knock-off" of the other chain. No, here nothing of Ryan's was brought to OCB, but a lot of the not as good of OCB was brought to Ryan's.

I hope to be able to visit another Ryan's location (perhaps two) in the Spring. I will let you know if what I find is similar. Since my visit to Ryan's, I have been to OCB on a Tuesday and a Thursday - and the so-called features of those nights at OCB were there on those nights at Ryan's - some prepared better at Ryan's.

For now, if my assumption of what is happening here is happening at all of the Ryan's, then I would suggest you try one if you come across one - they are fewer and further between these days. If your experience at a Ryan's since the take-over is different, please leave a comment.

The BEST BUFFET of 2011

I have thought long and hard about the choice for the best buffet for 2011. I have been to several really good buffets for the first time this year. I always think when I walk into a new buffet, perhaps this will be the one to top them all. As those of you know who have been reading this site for several years, the choice of best buffet has gone year after year to Shady Maple Smorgasbord in East Earl, Pennsylvania. It has troubled me that this continues to be the choice - year after year. Was I being fair to the others that have been so good? I have even thought that perhaps I should just skip naming a Best Buffet for this year. Yet, it keeps coming back to me that when something is really good and consistent, and meets the criteria that this site has set for what really constitutes the best, was it fair not to name that buffet that remains untopable.

In making my decision I decided to go to Shady Maple Smorgasbord during the month of December, mid-week for lunch. I have been there for lunch in the past but not nearly as much as I have been there for dinner. I was pretty certain that it would remain as good at lunch as it has at dinner, but I was going to put it to the test once again.

Lunch, of course, is less expensive than dinner - $12.99, but keep in mind that this includes Pennsylvania sales tax plus and included 8% tip. This brings the price for the meal to about $11. Yes, this is similar in price to dinner at the chain buffets - and this is for lunch, but what you are getting for lunch goes way beyond what the chain buffets are giving you for dinner - and this includes the beverage that you will pay $2 more for at the chain buffets.

The food was abundant and very much included almost everything that is included on the overflowing Shady Maple dinner buffets. What was different were the grill stations and rather than steak, they were serving burgers, but the marinated chicken breasts, the full oriental saute grill, and two grills grilling fish, veal Parmesan, and more were all serving at lunch. The buffet servers had the same and similar offerings as they have at night. And perhaps it was the season, or the day of the week but there were also some very Pennsylvania Dutch dishes including chicken bot boi (chicken with vegetables and broad noodle dumplings), snitz and knep (apples and dumplings), and pig stomach (you would be surprised how good this is!). Nothing at this meal disappointed.

When I speak with local people in this area in Pennsylvania, without my mentioning Shady Maple at all or any buffets for that matter, when the topic of food comes up, they always tell me about Shady Maple Smorgasbord. I have been in stores and farmers markets, and have passed people talking about Shady Maple. I never hear talk like this about any other restaurant in this region - and there are many fine restaurants in Lancaster County. Everyone seems to know and love Shady Maple. And there is a reason - it really is the best.

So if your reaction to this is, "Oh, not again!", I am sorry. But proper due needs to be given where it is deserved. No other buffet comes even close including the large casino buffets that are the only ones that approach the abundance, but too often fail in the consistency. I know of no other buffet that is larger, offers as much to eat (at a very reasonable price), and maintains a consistent quality and value. Everything is here - great soups, an extensive salad bar, a wide assortment of meats and vegetables, a mix of plain and fancy, and an extensive dessert area where you really can get just about anything that you would like for dessert.

It is for all of this and more that the Art of the Buffet names, once again, Shady Maple Smorgasbord as Buffet of the Year - 2011.

Shady Maple Smorgasbord is located at 129 Toddy Drive in East Earl, PA. Take Route 23 East or Route 322 South to get to the restaurant. (Put the name in your GPS and it will know it.) The phone numbers are 1-800-238-7363 and 717-354-8222. They are closed on Sundays and certain holidays. There is a website and it is listed at the side of this page.

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.

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...

Hershey Farm Restaurant, Strasburg, Pennsylvania

I have not been to the Hershey Farm Restaurant, another buffet in Lancaster County, in over three years. I wrote then about why I had not been there on that occasion since 1995, and the reason is has been the same since then - the price - and the price now is even higher than it had been then. I am not going to repeat what I had written before - though a great deal has changed, but if you would like to read that article this is the link.

We were on a trip to Lancaster County and before we went I found a coupon for $3 off the price of the buffet at this restaurant. I thought that even though it would still be expensive, we would try this buffet again, as three years ago it was not bad. I was also intrigued by the description of the buffet that said that it included soft pretzels. I really like soft pretzels and because of diet restrictions I do not have them often. Somehow, the idea of those pretzels were drawing me to come back to Hershey Farm restaurant's Grand Smorgasbord - which is what they call their buffet. I also thought that I should just go and buy a pretzel and save a lot of money.

We went on a weeknight in early November. The days and hours of this restaurant vary by the season and starting in November they are closed Mondays. We went on a Tuesday. A large sign at the entrance of the driveway announces what the daily special is on the buffet - and it said Steak Gyro. OK - not exactly what I would have expected in this area, but we would see.

We went in and there is a lobby with a large reception desk. From there you are escorted to your table. This is both a buffet and menu restaurant. The price of the buffet is Monday to Friday, dinner is $22.99. On Saturdays it is $25.99. This buffet is open on Sundays and the price then is $22.99. There are children's prices and these apply every day. For ages 4 to 8, the price is $7.99; 9 to 12 year olds, the price is $9.99. The children's prices includes beverages. Adults pay an additional $1.99 for beverages with refills. I told you this is expensive. If only it was worth the money - if only it was worth half the money...

Right away entering the dining room we could see that there were major changes since we were there just three years ago. Gone are the buffet servers. In their place there are free standing counters, each with several built in chaffing dishes with large dome lids on hinges - which proved to be near impossible to open and close easily. At the side of the room was a grill and near the entrance was a dessert area. In the back was a small salad bar, a soup area, and in a corner was a table with peel and eat spiced cold shrimp.

We waited some time for a server to come over to us and take our order - there were no more than ten tables in the two dining rooms with people at them and in our room there were three servers handling four tables. Finally, a server came and took our beverage orders and invited us up to the buffet - or should I say, Grand Smorgasbord.

We went up for soup. There was chicken corn soup, beef vegetable, chili, and cream of potato. The chicken corn soup tasted correct, but was thin when it looked like it should have been thick. The beef vegetable was excessively salty and the vegetables were just small pieces and these were over cooked. There were chunks of beef, but it was so salty that it really did not matter.

We followed soup with the salad bar and this is a very small and basic salad bar. There was mixed greens, toppings, and a several dressings. There were few prepared salads. The lettuce was wilting and browning in the serving bowl. We also noticed - after taking salad that there were many little flies around the salad serving tubs - some were crawling with these flies. This put an end to eating any more salad - and this was a problem as my wife tends to take vegetables from the salad bar at buffets to eat instead of the prepared, hot vegetables served. I don't know if the flies followed us back to our table - which was some distance from the salad bar, but when we got back to the table there were more of these little flies buzzing around us. I started to realize why the open buffet servers were now replaced by covered serving dishes.

One of the "features" were "gourmet breads". We looked for these and found nothing more than commercial white bread, commercial raisin bread, and commercial honey wheat bread, and white dinner rolls - all cheap bread as found in a supermarket. There was an assortment of spreads for the breads. I had to wonder where the "gourmet breads" were. A woman at another table asked - those were them! Next to the bread was a waffle maker and you could make your own waffles. There were plastic cups of batter sitting next to the waffle maker. I wondered if these don't need to be kept on ice or refrigerated, rather than just sit out - especially with the flies.

The entrees that were out included Swedish meatballs, ham balls, Italian sausage and peppers, sliced ham, chicken pot pie (bot boi), pot roast, meatloaf, fried chicken, honey bbq chicken, baked fish, chicken nuggets, pork and sauerkraut, krab and pasta in cheese sauce. On the grill there was chicken parmigiano that could be served with pasta and also in alfredo sauce, steak gyro (just like the sign said), steak on a stick, grill chicken with a variety of sauces of your choice, and carved loin of pork. Side dishes included mashed potatoes, rice pilaf, buttered noodles, a baked potato bar, french fries, corn, broccoli, winter mix, filling, candied sweet potatoes, stewed tomatoes, macaroni and cheese, cheesy potatoes, and corn nuggets.

I took a sampling of sausage, a Swedish meatball, some of the chicken pot pie, and I found the pretzals on the dessert bar - salty, soft pretzel sticks and cinnamon pretzel sticks. I took one of the salty soft pretzel sticks, it was small. The sausage was good. The meatball was not as good as are served at Ikea Home Store's restaurant for $2.99. The chicken pot pie was disappointing with thin noodles and and and over thick sauce - it had been sitting too long without stirring and some of the noodles were turning brown and hard. The pretzel, however, was very good.

I also tried the chicken parmigiano. The grill chef took a chicken breast and split it in half, and then put it on the fry grill with a lot of grease and a iron weight on top. Eventually, he covered it with tomato sauce and put cheese on top, covered this with a metal dome on the grill to melt the cheese. This was the most unusual chicken parm that I have ever had - and not really good.

I later decided to try the "steak on a stick". I went to the grill and the same chef seemed surprised that I wanted this. He took four chunks of steak from a refrigerator and got out a stick and skewered them. I expected that he would cook this on the chargrill that was next to the fry grill, but no, it went on the fry grill, again with the iron weight on top. He told me that it would take six minutes to cook. Six minutes is a long time to cook steak - even if you like it well done and especially on a fry grill. I waited several minutes. He never asked how I would like it done. There were very few people left by now in the restaurant so there was no distraction, It was just him and me at the grill. He went to turn it over in about three minutes and I said that I would like it medium rare. "Oh," he said, "then you can have it now." The steak was on the edge of over done. It was also tasteless.

The mashed potatoes were overly salty. The stewed tomatoes were more like chunky tomato sauce,than stewed tomatoes. The buttered noodles were drowning in butter. The rice pilaf was just white rice with beans and not real rice pilaf. The sliced ham was more like chunks of ham. The pork and sauerkraut was overdone.

I looked at the fried chicken and it was so overcooked that I did not take any. The honey bbq chicken was also way overdone and sitting far too long. The meatloaf was fair but had too much tomato sauce on top.

This was not a meal of quality. The food was not really good. Nothing that we had was something that we would recommend to anyone. And the buffet trays were not tended properly. Things dried out, overcooked, and some was just unappetizing. And all this for $22.99! I have had far better meals at Old Country Buffet.

Desserts followed along with the rest. There were the pretzels, a few pies, a couple of pieces of cake, jello- both regular and diet, something called java bean pudding - it looked like coffee in a cup, diet chocolate pudding, little whoppie pies (small chocolate soft cookie sandwiches with cream in the middle), cookies, small chocolate cupcakes, something called candy corn dessert, a sundae bar, and slices of cheesecake that looked wet around the sides. There was also a chocolate fountain with tiny pretzels which were far too small to sanitarily go into a chocolate fountain, marshmallows, chunks of pineapple, and tiny animal crackers. Even though it was up on a high counter, I saw several small children trying to dip a treat with their fingers in the chocolate. I tried a small whoppie pie and that was disappointing. It was not worth the calories or carbs.

Service was fair. Dishes stacked up on the table more than once - and again, this server had two tables to take care of. He did offer refills on the beverages.

At about 7:45 pm with several tables still with people eating, the chef starting cleaning behind the grill counter. I have seen this done in other buffets - getting a start on closing, but he was actually closing down with nothing being left on the side if anyone wanted anything else. Now, this buffet like most in this area closes at 8:00 pm but at most of the others, this means that they stop seating at 8:00 pm, and actually keep the buffet going for about another hour. Here as 8:00 approached, the staff came out to start shutting down. At almost all other buffets that I have been to, when a serving section is about to be closed down or food is going to be taken away for the night to close, someone comes to the table and says, "We are about to take away the hot foods (or dessert area), would you like anything else from there before we do?" No one came and said a word that the buffet was being shut down, including the dessert area - while there were still people actively eating. The laugh to all of this was a woman did walk around from table to table and I expected her to say something about the foods being taken down, but instead, she wanted to let us know that she was about to close the gift shop and were we planning on coming into the gift shop after our meal - and if we were she would remain open! So they were eager for us to shop in the gift store, but not finish the dinner that we all were all already paying for. No. It was time to go and the restaurant staff were taking away the food whether people were still eating or not, and not saying anything about it.

Many years ago, we would come to this restaurant for a very nice lunch - before it ever had a buffet. For some reason, they have never been successful with their attempts at buffets. Three years ago was the high point. No longer.

I do not recommend this buffet. There are so many really good buffets to go to in this area. Forget about this one!

The Hershey Farm Restaurant is located on Route 896 just south of Route 30, past the Rockvale Outlet Center. Follow the signs for the Sight and Sound Theater. There is an 800 number - 800-827-8635. They have a website which is linked at the side of this page.

DUTCH-WAY FAMILY RESTAURANT - GAP, PA.

This is a buffet that is new to me. It has apparently been around for quite some time but because it is a bit outside of the usual Lancaster County area, and it does not advertise, I have not come across it before in my fifty years of visiting this county.

Unique to the Pennsylvania seems to be restaurants located within, and associated with supermarkets. We have talked about several of these on this site before - among them Shady Maple Smorgasbord and Yoders Restaurant. There are others - and Dutch-Way Family Restaurant is my newest find among this type of restaurant - and buffet. And what a find it has been.

There are three Dutch-Way Farm Market Supermarkets in this general area of Pennsylvania. All three have restaurants, but only two have buffet restaurants. I have recently visited and dined at the Dutch-Way Family Restaurant in the town of Gap, Pennsylvania. As I started out by saying, Gap is not in the general tourist attraction area of Lancaster County. It is at the southeastern side of the county and very much off the main roads. I learned of this restaurant by accident while I was searching for coupons to restaurants in Lancaster and a list of restaurants came up in my search that included this restaurant - no coupon, but the name of a buffet that I had never heard of before. As it happened, we were traveling to the area and decided that this was a must see.

Getting to the restaurant is a bit tricky - once you actually see the parking lot, as we could only find an entrance if coming from the south, and we were coming in from the main route (Route 30) toward the north. We wound up passing the parking lot and making a U-turn to get in from the direction that the angled lot entrance faced. Once parked in front of the parking lot there is a entrance to the supermarket and an entrance to the restaurant - both connect on a front hallway. If you enter at the supermarket you must walk through a snack bar to get to where the main restaurant is located.

This restaurant impressed from the moment we walked through the door. The room and the entrance way is nicely decorated and nothing that you might expect about a restaurant in a supermarket. Coming in I did not know what the price of this buffet would be or what we would find. Looking into the room we saw a two large dining rooms with the buffet located in the rear. When we walked up to the reception desk, I was asked if we were there for the buffet. I said yes, and we were brought to one side of the dining room. I am not sure why as others around us were not all having the buffet - there is a menu and you can also add parts of the buffet to you menu meal. Since we were having the buffet, we were not handed menus so I had no idea of the price of the meal or beverages. What the heck - take a chance.

The buffet is comprised of three large double sided buffet servers and three walls that have food servers as well. At the end is a large grill area. There is something offered from this grill included with the buffet every night. It turned out, as we discovered when we went up to the buffet that we were there on Italian Night. Monday is Italian Night. Wednesday is Southwestern Night. Thursday is Seafood Night. Friday is Steak Night. Saturday is Prime Rib Night. We asked about Tuesday and were told that it is an assortment that varies. We also learned from the sign that announced that it was Italian Night that the price of the buffet was $10.99! I am going to tell you right now that this is an incredible buffet for just $10.99! The price is not the same each night and I was not able to find out about any of the other prices except Seafood Night which I will tell you about later.

As usual we started with soup and there were four soups out. There was vegetable beef, chicken corn noodle, chili, and pasta fagioli (macaroni with beans). I tried the chicken corn and my wife took the vegetable beef. I am a chicken corn soup fan. I prefer it made thick. This one is thin - chicken broth, noodles, chicken and corn. The soup was very good. My wife loved the vegetable beef. The soup was nicely seasoned. The vegetables were nicely cooked without being too soft. Neither soup was greasy. They make a point to let you know that they are homemade.

The soup was a hit. We finished it and moved on to the salad bar. The salad bar is extensive. There are two types of lettuce - iceberg and romaine. There was raw spinach as well. There were a nice assortment of toppings. They had chunks of local Lebanon Bologna - more a salami than a bologna - to add to your salad. There were also chunks of ham and two types of cheese. There was a nice assortment of dressings in serving bottles and next to that there was a basket filled with Ken's Dressings packets including several fat free dressings. In addition to the salad fixings bar, there was another server with prepared salads. These were a broad assortment of local salads like pepper cabbage and chow chow, along with the usual deli salads. There was also a wonderful chicken salad. The vegetables on the salad bar were extremely fresh and there was none of the typical dripping from one serving tray to another. There was also the traditional PA Dutch cottage cheese and apple butter. We both enjoyed the salad very much.

The entrees were an interesting mixture of Pennsylvania Dutch cooking with Italian dishes - as this was Italian Night. The feature at the grill on Italian Night is a Pasta Saute Station. A chef is there waiting for you to pick your pasta, your sauce, and what you would like sauteed with that. There was sausage, bacon, chicken, a wide variety of vegetables, mushrooms, and more. On the buffet the Italian dishes included eggplant parmigiana, sausage and peppers "rustica", baked stuffed manicotti with mozzarella melted on top in tomato sauce, shrimp scampi on spaghetti, spinach stuffed rigatoni with mushroom Alfredo sauce, and chicken ravioli with three cheese sauce. There were garlic bread sticks at the grill. The "regular" entrees included fried chicken, roast turkey served in gravy, roast beef served in gravy, pork and sauerkraut, dutch loaf (meat loaf in a nice gravy), and ham balls in pineapple sauce. The rest of two servers were filled with side dishes - potato filling, mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, macaroni and cheese, glazed carrots, harvard beets, mixed vegetables, baked lima beans, and stewed tomatoes.

I had a tasting selection - a little of most things so that I can tell you how the food is. I liked it all. The turkey was turkey breast sliced thick and served in turkey gravy. It was good. The sausage and peppers were tasty but if you are Italian you will say that this sausage is "Italian-style" as it did not have the heavy traditional sausage seasons found in Italian sausage in Italian areas. The Dutch Loaf was a nicely lightly seasoned meat loaf in what must have been an onion gravy. This was the dish that I went back for more of. The fried chicken breasts that were out were HUGE. I dug deep into the serving tray to find a small piece. The mixed vegetables were nicely plain - not swimming in butter or seasoned in a way to not fully taste the broccoli, carrots, and zucchini that made up this mixture. The potato filling - stuffing made from potatoes - was light and not sweet so that you could taste the potato. The macaroni and cheese was not thick and gloppy but with a thin, mild cheese sauce that nicely covered the elbow macaroni. The pork and saurekraut was loaded with large chunks of pork. Break up the chunks on your plate into small pieces and you will enjoy this more. The stewed tomatoes were not overly sweet as some can be. The ham balls were also good. The pineapple sauce was sweet but not overly sweet.

I liked the Italian dishes as well. The chicken ravioli was better than the stuffed spinach rigatoni but both were good. The manicotti was as good as any that I have had when growing up. Even without the fennel sides the sausage was enjoyable, and the peppers were a mix of green, red, and yellow and were nicely cooked in the chunky tomato sauce.

There was a section on the side with breads. There were several specialty breads including raisin bread, slices of corn bread, pumpkin bread ('tis the season), cranberry bread, banana nut bread, and blueberry bread. There were also muffins - blueberry and cranberry. There were also white and whole wheat rolls. At the soup section there was an assortment of crackers. There was a lot of temptation. The corn bread was not sweet, but it wasn't not sweet - if you know what I mean. The raisin bread that was more like spiced raisin bread. It was dark and tasted like the "holidays", not at all like typical raisin bread - so good!

Desserts were as plentiful as everything else. There was a vast assortment of pies, some cakes, donuts, sticky buns, Danish pastry, and cookies. There was no sugar added apple pie and cherry pie. Of course, there was shoo fly pie. There was a large selection of puddings, fruits in syrup, containers of yogurt with granola to put in it. In this area prepared desserts are popular such as angel food cake at the bottom with pineapple on top covered in whipped cream in a tray, a tray of eclair "pudding", etc. There was also no sugar pumpkin cheesecake in a tray and no sugar tapioca. I love donuts. I over did my carb intake on this meal and had to reluctantly pass them by. Again, so much temptation. There was also a sundae bar with soft serve ice cream (that was good) and toppings. The sundae bar can be ordered separately as can the whole dessert bar.

This whole meal cost $10.99. The refillable soft drinks were $1.39. The quality was far beyond any chain buffet with a similar price- heck the quality was beyond many buffets that I have been to.

Service was very good. All plates were promptly taken away and refills of beverages were offered. Everyone was very pleasant too.

I was able to find out about the Seafood Night on Thursday nights. This meal is $17.99 - so you see that not all nights are $10.99. I suspect that many weeknights are. The Seafood Night includes Maryland Crab Cakes, coconut encrusted tilapia with pineapple butter, creamy mushroom/onion whiting, tomato basil catfish, mussels Provencal, steamed clams, New England Clam Chowder, snow crab bisque, peel and eat shrimp, Krab salad, coconut shrimp, breaded cod, breaded scallops, and southern hush puppies. At the grill there is grilled haddock with fruit salsa, and snow crab legs. This is well worth the $17.99. Selections may vary week to week.

I highly recommend this buffet. I am going back. It will be on a different night to see what other treats I will find. I cannot believe that this has been right under my taste buds and I never knew about it. I was almost reluctant to write this article because it was so good - and very much a local restaurant and not one frequented by tourists, that I did not want to spoil it. But heck, they need to make money just like everyone else. This was a great find. It was the best $10.99 buffet that I have ever had. Maybe it was the best at even a higher price too. Is it the best buffet I have been to - no, But with this one meal, it was way up there. If you are in this area, this is a must stop and eat!

The Dutch-Way Family Restaurant is located at the Dutch-Way Farm Market Supermarket at 365 Gap Newport Pike (Route 41), Gap, Pennsylvania 17527. The buffet is served from 4 pm to 8 pm Monday to Saturday. The restaurant is closed on Sundays. This is about two and a half miles south of Route 30. There is a web site and that is linked at the side of this page. The phone number is 610-593-6080.