All you can eat joints

rascal

rascal

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Anyone find these good value. Best value I ever had was the moat house in Kensington 20 years ago. Huge choices for breakfasts including eggs 4 different ways.jams and spreads full English choices ,different sausages cheeses you name it, they had it. It was included in our stay, although it would have been factored in.
I don't eat here in all you can eat at a set price.
We have a Chinese smorgasbord type lunch dinner place. Years ago I used to go there with two very big guys that could eat huge amounts. You could almost see the owners faces drop when they saw us come in. I was like 90 kgs and these other two were around 140 kgs.
Love them or loath them??

Russ
 
For the most part, I don't like them. There are a few good Chinese all you can eat buffets that have things like crab legs, which are expensive. Always go for the expensive stuff first, and don't fill up on cheap stuff.

My ex-wifes family loved all you can eat places. But, they all ate way more than I can eat in one meal.

If getting a lot of food in your belly for cheap is your goal, all you can eat buffets are great. But, for me, they just aren't worth it.

CD
 
The last AYCE restaurant at which we ate (some time ago) was ฿ 120.00 per head. However, there were prominent notices on the walls stating that if you left anything on the plate, you would be charged ฿ 20.00 per piece (meat or seafood) extra. There were a number of waitresses/observers ensuring that food was not secreted away during the meal.
 
We once made a mistake in Miami and booked a cheap Carnival cruise with residents discount. My wife was an ex Maitre D with Celebrity. The food was disgusting shoot in the "formal " dinning rooms. So we went to the buffet dinning room. That put me off buffets for life apart from good quality hotel breakfast buffets.
 
That reminds me of the time we stopped at the "Old South BBQ Ranch" in Clewiston, FL. They had a special for "All You Can Eat" fried catfish. My oldest brother ordered that. The first plate had 3, 8" fish (all were headless ), each successive plate had smaller and smaller fish. It got to the point where he was afraid to continue for fear of how small they would go!

There used to be an "Old Scandia Smorgasbord" in Opa-Locka, FL, which had a huge round table filled with cold seafood which was "All You Can Eat".

There have been several brunch buffets I've been to that were all you can eat and Chinese buffets. I really have no interest in these anymore (Chinese buffet).

I'll never forget that table of cold seafood at the Riu hotel in Punta Cana, DR when I was working there on dive compressors. It reminded me of that smorgasbord at "Old Scandia".

There used to be a really cheap place called "Beefsteak Charlies" in Miami. They offered "all you can eat" peel and eat shrimp and "all you can drink" beer with dinner. That is the only time I remember getting sick from peel and eat shrimp.


Or was it the cheap beer? :whistling:
 
I don't like them at all. Cheap food and I don't think they're very good value, really. Golden Corral is very popular here, my parents love it, and it's something like $13 a head plus $2 for drinks, and the food is the lowest of low quality - all pre-fab crap that to me is inedible. For $30 for two, I can find a little Mom-And-Pop place where the food is cooked fresh and have money left over. It won't be fancy, but it'll be good.

I don't count the hotel breakfasts we get...well, let me qualify that. Those self-serve breakfasts at Hampton Inn, Holiday Inn, et al, the ones with a big tub of oatmeal, a container of hard-boiled eggs, and some dried out sausage links...those are nasty. If we stay at one of those places, we don't eat the breakfast, I insist on going somewhere proper.

But the breakfasts in a lot of the European/UK hotels where we stay are quite nice. The breakfast at the Hilton in Munich, the one is Haidhausen, is fantastic. A lot of food, beautifully arranged, service is great, quality is top-notch, we love it there.
 
We don't really do buffets anymore. If we're at a hotel, we'll do their breakfast buffet just so we don't have to go out, but we'll skip the eggs and overcooked proteins, and go for bagels or pastries, yogurt, and fresh fruit.

There used to be a place close to us that had the best buffet, steamship rounds of roast beef, whole hams, and a seafood buffet to die for, Snow crab legs, shrimp, sometimes stone or Jonas crab claws, various seafood/smoked fish dips. They would have balls of flavored butter in mounds by the house made bread station that looked like ice cream until you got up close and realized it was butter. They were by no means cheap even back then (they closed 12 years ago).
 
CraigC said:
each successive plate had smaller and smaller fish. It got to the point where he was afraid to continue for fear of how small they would go!
Click to expand...
:roflmao:

Not sure I could eat a lot of fried catfish. Fresh seafood is another matter. I could probably happily spend an afternoon with an all you can eat seafood buffet. I mean straight from the sea - freshly cooked lobster, crab, prawns etc plus oysters, mussels...
 
I worked in Perth W.A. for 3 weeks. The hotel rate (which the client was covering) included a buffet breakfast. I tried it once. The rest of the period I went for the alternative, A$16.00 set breakfast at a cafe down the road a piece.
 
Mostly I don't care for the all you can eat joints, but I have a couple exceptions.

The Brazilian steak houses with all you can eat skewers of meat are good - and they have a lovely salad bar at the center - of course you have to find a reputable one. This won't be cheap, but it was good. And of course this isn't really all you can eat for one price... they counted up what you took to eat, so probably really doesn't count. Although if you just wanted the salad bar, that was one price no matter how much you took. (The salad bar also had seafood on it.)

I have been to exactly ONE Japanese/Asian all you can eat place that was good (down in Florida when I visited my brother) -- they did limit the amount of sushi/sashimi you could get, but this is seriously understandable. Just about everything was good and fresh. This was one price.

But most all you can eat places - nope. Not worth it.
 
medtran49 said:
We don't really do buffets anymore. If we're at a hotel, we'll do their breakfast buffet just so we don't have to go out, but we'll skip the eggs and overcooked proteins, and go for bagels or pastries, yogurt, and fresh fruit.

There used to be a place close to us that had the best buffet, steamship rounds of roast beef, whole hams, and a seafood buffet to die for, Snow crab legs, shrimp, sometimes stone or Jonas crab claws, various seafood/smoked fish dips. They would have balls of flavored butter in mounds by the house made bread station that looked like ice cream until you got up close and realized it was butter. They were by no means cheap even back then (they closed 12 years ago).
Click to expand...

The problem with hotel breakfasts, that is if I just eat carbs, bagels and pastries, I will be walking into walls with sugar overload. I need the protein, whether overcooked and unliked. If I am at a small place that just has bagels. pastries, and instant oatmeal, I'll skip breakfast all together, even if that comes free with the reservation for the room. (I will nab the coffee.)
 
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