A Day at the Buffet

Western New York residents have for their dining enjoyment, a wide array of restaurants. Menu selections can range from mom and pop favorites, ethnic or all-American, to five star Epicurean creations. Simple breakfast offerings might include the basic eggs, hash browns and toast while a unique, evening dining experience could be centered around a 48 ounce Prime rib, grilled to perfection and smothered with buttery tasting, sauteed sweet onions. Lunch time might mean a bowl of homemade soup and a grilled cheese sandwich from any one of the numerous counter style restaurants that populate the region. But, for those of us who don't like to be confined to restrictive menu offerings - no substitutions please or, there is a fifty cent price increase for Sourdough toast - there are places we can go, where limits and restrictions are tossed out the door! Restaurants that offer all you can eat, buffet style dining, are the gems for those of us who, on any given day, choose to ignore health and diet, and go for the gusto.

The perfect storm for an all you can eat junkie, has to happen on the weekend. That is when you can partake in breakfast, lunch and dinner, all in the classic all you can eat fashion. Monday through Friday can be entertaining, but if you are serious about loading up on calories and carbs, then you have to save your best efforts for Saturday. Along with Sunday, those are the days when you can get dedicated breakfast choices beginning at 8 in the morning, then lunch and dinner selections later in the day. It would be effortless, to turn a weekend day into an attempt to consume as many calories as possible in a ten to twelve hour stretch. The only challenge in completing such a day of gastronomic suicide, would be the effort you would have to make to stay awake for the entire eatathon period! But with a modicum of advance planning, you could overcome that hurdle easily. The greatest danger of succumbing to sleep, would be the period of time between finishing your lunch buffet and beginning your assault on your dinner buffet. You could go home, set an alarm clock, and then drift off into a carbohydrate induced coma until the alarm clock alerts you that it is time to renew your all you can eat dinner efforts to complete your day of gluttony. However, if you fear that by going home, you may lose interest in your quest to complete an entire day of all you can eat revelry, the solution would be to take a battery powered alarm clock and pillow and blanket with you when you first leave your house in the morning. That way, after completing the lunch time portion of your day of eating discovery, you could just drive to your final dining option for the day, park in a far corner of the lot, set your alarm clock, and take a nap in the car. Set the alarm clock on the loud setting though, because you would not want to miss its wake up call!

Most all you can eat buffet places have this devious ploy of trying to make you avoid consuming too many of the offerings that don't give them a five hundred percent profit margin. They accomplish this by putting out a vast array of rolls, pastries, breads and elaborate soup and salad bars. Serious all you can eater's, know to stay away from those clever distractions. You can always identify a novice all you can eater, by the way they stand and admire all the doughy treats before placing a couple selections on their plate. A buffet neophyte will also feel the need to partake in a bowl of soup and a dish of salad before getting into the meat and potatoes of the meal, just because they are there. Serious, veteran all you can eater's, know to steer clear of the fragrant bread and soup/salad bar stations that distract the attention of those not yet properly schooled in the art of "getting your monies worth" at all you can eat offerings. Another ploy of buffet operators, to deter serious eaters from putting a crimp in their profits, is to be rather lax when it comes time to refill the steamer trays that contain the dishes that the pros come to feast on. All buffet veterans, have at some point in their lives, been confronted with an empty tray that used to contain ribs or sliced beef or ham, chicken wings or fried fish. Not if, but when you encounter that kind of shortage, I guess you are just supposed to move on, and select something else. I say I guess, because I am not one to move on to something else. I am one who gets the attention of one of the servers, and points out that a particular tray is now empty and could they please replace it with a full one. I may be a consumption volume embarrassment to my co-all you can eaters, but I am polite when it comes to dealing with those who ultimately resupply my desired selections.　

In the Buffalo and Western New York area, there are so many Chinese restaurants, it would be difficult not to find one by just driving around. Not all Chinese restaurants however, offer an all you can eat buffet selection so you have to avoid the simple "dine in" or "take out" places if you are looking to satisfy your desire for multiple dining options. I'll save my view on the Chinese buffet situation, for another article. Other, all you can eat buffet restaurants however, are not so common. In conducting a Yellow Pages dot com search for buffet restaurants in Buffalo New York, twenty one results showed up as being potential targets for any erstwhile all you can eater. Yellow Pages dot com however, considers suburban villages and towns to fall within the geographic confines of Buffalo. Restaurants in Olean, Lakewood, Dunkirk and Springville, all showed up as candidate sites for someone in Buffalo looking for an all you can eat buffet. The only true, all you can eat establishment that offers not only lunch and dinner, but 8 AM breakfasts on the weekend as well, appears to be the Old Country Buffet, with two locations in the area. By visiting www.oldcountrybuffet.com, you will be able to see their menu offerings, hours of operation and location. What, when and where - all I need to know about all you can eat potential.

Aside from the infrequent, boorish and impolite hoarder that you may encounter at any weekend, all you can eat buffet, the rest of the dining experience will be a joy to remember for a long, long time. You will remember the day of feasting vividly, as your body tells you that you are now hauling around five or six more pounds than you were the previous Friday! A moment on the lips, is a lifetime on the hips. Bah, humbug I say! The more extreme the swallow, the more satisfying the wallow! That is the motto of all serious buffet aficionados. While I don't condone this type of extreme caloric intake every day, I see nothing wrong with enjoying an overboard meal every once in a while. I have never attempted the all day, all you can eat experience, but it does sound like fun. Scrambled eggs and ham in the morning, fried chicken and whatever else for lunch, and then, country fried steak, pork chops, more fried chicken for dinner; oh baby - bring it on! Calorie counting be damned - full plates ahead!