Restaurant and Food Blog New York May Archive

Have You Been Thrown Out of Old Country Buffet for Eating Too Much?

By Wilbur Corncob at 05/28/07 14:45

After reading Brian's post about Old Country Buffet, I immediately checked out their website and got myself completely confused.

Now, I realize that Brian encourages you to be reasonable. However, my view of a buffet style restaurant is something unreasonable and that is "all you can eat". And, I don't mean as the joke goes... after you are served a 1/2 bit site chunk of beef you are told "Well, that's all you can eat".

I mean a buffet is where you can got and really pig out. Where you can eat all the food you can stuff in your body (whether it is good for you or not). You know where you can undo the total of all the dieting you've done in your life, in one sitting. Where the all in all you can eat is a decision made by you!

That is a buffet! Now is Old Country Buffet a Buffet? In reading their website, I get confused. Their words are in Italic, and I've emphasized a few things in bold.

What's the best way to buffet? Any way you want. With nearly 100 tempting items, try what you want when you want. Our buffet is a great place to try new things. [In my mind that means as much as you want]

Now in their FAQ:

I am on a restricted diet that only allows me to eat very small portions. Can you offer a discount? [cheapskates]

A. This question arises occasionally, including from guests that have recently had surgery. It is important to understand that our pricing is based on a reasonably sized "meal," not a specific "quantity of food" or an "unlimited" amount. Individual guests have widely differing perspectives on what they feel is an appropriate meal size. We serve more than 150 million guests per year and each one has unique menu expectations and health requirements. For simplicity sake, we adopted a uniform pricing approach when the company was formed over 20 years ago and this has become a hallmark of our business.

This raises questions in my mind that if you are chowing down your way, anyway, what you want, when you want it, is there some magical limit you hit (since things might not be "unlimited") where the manager comes and tells you it's time to go home; before you've had it you way, completely.

I really don't know the answer and was hoping maybe some of you have had experience and whether the buffet is closed for you after the restaurants tells you you've had enough?

Please let me know.

Oh yeah, if you are from Nogales, Arizona please don't answer because we know from their website you are somehow (though we don't know how) treated differently.

Every Restaurant is All You Can Eat, But Be Reasonable

I had a favorite buffet haunt in my younger life, and went back recently. It was nice enough, but I felt this perpetual compulsion to gorge myself. Why wouldn't I make myself sick, it's all the same price, right?

I hit up Old Country Buffet last month and watched a guy puke himself inside-out at the exit. That's terrifying, what's that all about? He didn't seem sick at all, but like a long-dead goldfish, he gorged himself unto failure and the busboys had to mop up that nasty puddle of human bile.

The smart eater knows better. Pull your head out of your gullet and get back to reality. Every restaurant is "all you can eat", all you have to do is buy your meal and eat it. There's no need to make an ass of yourself, or a sick ass at that. Just recognize reasonable bounds of human limitation, atop that the fact we're all human and our bowels can hold a finite limit, no matter how chubby at that.