The Culmination of an Arms Race in Maximizing Caloric Intake

October 1, 2020 1:51 PM

Fast Food Buffets Are a Thing of the Past. Some Doubt They Ever Even Existed.
posted by box (52 comments total)

The Pizza Hut buffet is inextricably tied to memories of my Grandma in her last decade.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:14 PM on October 1, 2020 [6 favorites]

We think of Homer Simpson getting dragged out of the Frying Dutchman, “a beast more stomach than man.”

We sure do!
posted by lalochezia at 2:16 PM on October 1, 2020 [5 favorites]

The oldest chains tended to have looser franchise agreements that gave more leeway to local operators who might add their own menu items. I remember a Dairy Queen in Indiana with a breakfast buffet, complete with biscuits & gravy. So I'm not sure the KFC buffets were standardized like Wendy's or Pizza Hut.
posted by in278s at 2:20 PM on October 1, 2020

The article brings up the very short lived Arch Deluxe. I worked on that campaign. I think it was one of the biggest flops in McDonald’s history. We lost the account afterwards.
posted by misterpatrick at 2:21 PM on October 1, 2020 [23 favorites]

Around '91 or '92 there was a legend in Tucson of an all-you-can-eat McDonalds (or maybe it was a Burger King) way out the north end of town. A couple of my friends decided to investigate. There were stories of untold quantities of burgers and shakes being consumed, and later that evening, much distress of the gut.
posted by phliar at 2:21 PM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

That was really fun to read!

I used to chaperone vanloads of kids on college campus tours, job shadowing days, etc, and without fail, any kind of buffet was their most-loved lunch pick. They would have DESTROYED a McDonald's or Wendy's or OMG Popeye's buffet...
posted by Caxton1476 at 2:26 PM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

I've been to KFC buffets - in the areas I've lived in (Virginia, Wisconsin, Michigan, also California but I never saw a KFC buffet there), they were mostly in smaller towns rather than larger population centers. So, there's non-buffet KFCs in Grand Rapids, but there's one to the northeast in Greenville. I don't know if that's the whole explanation for it or not.
posted by LionIndex at 2:28 PM on October 1, 2020

I can't remember if it was in Camden or Bucksport or where you had to be along Rt-1 in Maine - but in high school, when you faced a specific team - you went to a very special McDonald's. And that McDonald's had an all you could eat pizza buffet.

I repeat for emphasis: That McDonald's had an all you could eat pizza buffet.

It always incurred the questions of "McDonald's serves pizza?" and "McDonald's has a buffet?" But yes... this was a thing... But it took an away game and a two hour bus ride home to get to go to this.

In retrospect, it was as gross and as scary as you can imagine.

What were we thinking?
posted by Nanukthedog at 2:33 PM on October 1, 2020 [4 favorites]

A carful of high school seniors showing up after swim team practice could completely annihilate a Wendy's SuperBar.

Ask me how I know this.
posted by mookoz at 2:35 PM on October 1, 2020 [12 favorites]

Godfather's had a pizza buffet. I know because I worked there during the time in the late eighties when I was truly desperate for work, and the one--and I do mean the one good thing about working there--was that, for our meal break, we had the choice of a) making ourselves a personal pizza, or b) eating the leftovers from the buffet, which could approach a large pizza in aggregate. It wasn't fresh like a personal pizza, but sometimes that was my only real food of the day.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:50 PM on October 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

I vaguely remember the Wendy's SuperBar thing, but it was like a salad bar and potato bar with a couple of soups?

Nothing else here triggers any sort of memory.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 2:54 PM on October 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

My favourite food-buffet fact is that before kale started getting marketed as this high-value superfood (2013 or so?) the number one consumer of kale in the world was Pizza Hut.

They used it to decorate their salad bars and buffets. It wasn’t even served as food, it was how they decorated their second-string sides.
posted by mhoye at 2:55 PM on October 1, 2020 [26 favorites]

Eden Robins messages me “It was in Decatur, IL,” as though she’s describing the site where aliens abducted her.

This story is great, for itself, but also as a triumph of narrative framing. Such great writing!
posted by Miko at 2:59 PM on October 1, 2020 [4 favorites]

Oh the glorious days of being seven and eating pasta with nacho cheese sauce from the Wendy's buffet for lunch.
posted by augustimagination at 3:04 PM on October 1, 2020 [6 favorites]

I think the last restaurant I entered before COVID was a fried chicken buffet. I miss it.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:12 PM on October 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

Wendy's Superbar was a big part of my life as a teen who didn't eat meat and went on frequent road trips with the marching band. I miss it even today. But of all the buffets we're not getting back, we're not getting that one back the most.
posted by Countess Elena at 3:24 PM on October 1, 2020 [6 favorites]

And luckily YouTube is here to help us preserve fast food buffet history. Though it's pretty hypocritical to open a Superbar after the "slow down cowpoke" commercial poking fun at Roy Rogers' fixins bar (I'm not imagining THAT, am I???)
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:25 PM on October 1, 2020

It wasn’t even served as food, it was how they decorated their second-string sides.

This is the only acceptable use for kale.
posted by armeowda at 3:25 PM on October 1, 2020 [8 favorites]

We took teens to Pizza Hut buffets pretty often. I understand how the concept of a fast food buffet is really disgusting, though. I do miss the Wendy's salad bars. When I found one in Tokyo I fell in love, because it always seemed hard to get enough non-pickled vegetables in Japan. Well, except for that sweet potato cart.
posted by kozad at 3:29 PM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

When we were very young, my mom took us to a Wendy’s and we got the SuperBar buffet, because we were children who wanted flour tortillas stuffed with tiny ham cubes

Anyway, my brother decides he wants to exert a bit of autonomy and go get some pudding all by himself

When he comes back, he tries it out and says it tastes funny, so my mom tries it and discovers that in his preliterate wisdom, he has dished himself up a bowl of blue cheese dressing
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:30 PM on October 1, 2020 [23 favorites]

I have been swearing up-and-down for decades now that KFC used to have an "all you can eat" buffet in the Brisbane CBD, just off Elizabeth Street in a little arcade where Wintergarden now is. But everyone I've spoken with about it - long-term Brisbanites - are like "huh?"

IT WAS THERE GOD-DAMN IT
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:46 PM on October 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

Bourdain dug the Popeye's buffet in Lafayette.

The myth of the Popeye's buffet in New Orleans is real. I am certain I've been there!
posted by Pacheco at 3:48 PM on October 1, 2020 [3 favorites]

If they never existed then fortunately the time I have spent at Frankie Tomato's and Mandarin no longer apply.

I remember the Pizza Hut and Wendy's SuperBar, Ponderosa salad bar...so many AYCE buffets. My parents were obsessed with them and trained us not to fill up on the cheap fixings but to go for the pricey ones. Here in the Toronto area there was also Mother's Pizza, which had not only a salad bar but if you bought the special you got to keep the glass, which was an added bonus (my mother still has some even though the chain has been dead for at least 25 years.)

The buffet of my heart will always be the salad bar for students in residents at Mt. Allison University in Sackville, NB. Source of many of a freshman 15, the ranch dressing was enough to make you break out. Combined with fried bologna, technically a breakfast food but at Sunday brunch you could get both, there was nothing like a pile of hot peppers over iceberb lettuce topped with bacon bits and fried noodles. (Exotic cookery!)

However, the ur-buffet, and why I don't look forward to their return, has to be the Cruise Buffet. Since most meals (7 or 8 out of 9 potential daily meals???) are buffet-style and people are gorging, it's the one that will stay with me forever...watching a middle aged woman push my 7 year old out of the way to get to the pasta first. Pasta! Not even crab legs or sushi!!!
posted by warriorqueen at 3:51 PM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

I grew up on pizza buffets and have continued with them for most of my life--Pizza Inn, Pizza Hut, J. Gregry's, Mr. Gatti's, Godfather's, Cici's. I decided early on that I didn't need to maximize my value, happily--tt was just a a question of being hungry enough for it to be at least similar in value to just ordering a pizza in the first place. I took the ability to get a variety of crusts and toppings (plus breadsticks and dessert) as worth at least a bit of a difference.

A year or two ago, I stopped eating lunches, which eliminated most pizza buffets from consideration, sadly for me. COVID finished it off completely of course. We'll see if things ever get back to where I can happily graze on pizza again.

Around '91 or '92 there was a legend in Tucson of an all-you-can-eat McDonalds (or maybe it was a Burger King) way out the north end of town. A couple of my friends decided to investigate.

This is tickling some memories into life. That was about the time I moved to Tucson, and I feel like we may have taken advantage of it once or twice.
posted by Four Ds at 3:58 PM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

Back in the day Roy Rogers had the Fixin's Bar, where you could get stuff to top your burger, or whatever the heck else you ordered. I remember my Dad would always use it to just make a quick, ad-hoc salad with his fried chicken.
posted by SansPoint at 4:13 PM on October 1, 2020

My kids love Frankie Tomatto's. I always feel bad when we go because we could just go to a proper restaurant and actually eat good food but we only go there when the kids get to choose. I've known they've closed for good for a while now but I haven't had the heart to tell my kids yet.

My brother and his family love buffets too and whenever they come over during a holiday they want to go to Dragon Pearl. The food is better than Mandarin but there are any number of good Chinese restaurants we could go to that are just as close. I will miss their sweet fried wonton things though.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:54 PM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I worked in a restaurant in my teens and twenties, and we used kale as a garnish when the produce guy was out of endive. A few years ago when I first heard of it being actually eaten, it was like hearing that people had started eating confetti or Christmas bows.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:55 PM on October 1, 2020 [9 favorites]

I remember my Dad would always use [the Fixin's Bar] to just make a quick, ad-hoc salad with his fried chicken.

For your amusement, go read Kotaku: How Chinese Ingenuity Destroyed Salad Bars at Pizza Hut
posted by mookoz at 4:59 PM on October 1, 2020 [6 favorites]

and then there was the year in college where I lived across the street from a CiCi's Pizza and kept getting coupons for discounts, so it would be like ten bucks for my now-wife and me to both get pizza buffet and drinks

it wasn't especially good, but it was cheap
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:07 PM on October 1, 2020

I have fond memories of my first encounters with Alfredo sauce at the Wendy's buffet! Drove through the town that I grew up in a few weeks back, and the actual Wendy's had been demolished-shocking!
posted by JennyJupiter at 5:12 PM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

My parents had a 'thing' of never getting McDonald's food for the family, but pizza was fine, so when a local McDonald's had an all-you-can-eat pizza night once a week they took us there a few times. This was probably 1992 or so, in Western Canada.
posted by WaylandSmith at 5:13 PM on October 1, 2020

It wasn’t even served as food, it was how they decorated their second-string sides.

I have a long-standing ambition which is only 98% joking of being a garnish farmer.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:38 PM on October 1, 2020 [6 favorites]

Is the "nobody knows if this is real and even the parent companies have no record" schtick kind of weird or is it just me?
posted by nebulawindphone at 5:58 PM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

Bourdain dug the Popeye's buffet in Lafayette.

My hometown! At the corner of Pinhook & South College Aves., still there, still serving lunch buffet.
posted by LooseFilter at 6:19 PM on October 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

Pizza Hut buffet... Uggh. I believe the time coworkers convinced me to go (not that long ago, weirdly enough, in Warren, Michigan) I got food poisoning. From a pizza buffet. At a Pizza Hut. Where everything is so preserved it should have nothing that could make me sick.

Although I guess we do still occasionally go† to American Pie, but as a pizza buffet... it's not awful. It is no better, nor really no worse, than it claims to be. And they have a middling salad bar as part of the buffet, so that's not awful.

† In the before times, of course. My employer, thankfully, is taking COVID-19 seriously and most of us will be WFH for... a while.
posted by c0nsumer at 6:43 PM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

There was a KFC buffet in my VA town up until a couple years ago when the restaurant remodeled. My boss and I used to go love going there for lunch following a morning at certain client sites. It was only those occasions, outside of Christmas eve, I would ever go to KFC, and I would eat SO MUCH CHICKEN, and peach cobbler, and chicken, and apple cinnamon bread... stuff. And chicken.

The lobby was closed for a month or so for the remodel and we went there shortly after they reopened. I can only imagine the looks of utter despair and confusion on our faces when we walked in and there... there was no buffet. There was no buffet. Even though the buffet was clearly, obviously gone, we still stood in line and asked at the register what happened to the buffet? Where was the buffet? Like we were hoping beyond hope that the nice ladies behind the counter who knew us would laugh and squeal how they were just fucking with us, and wheel out carts piled with fried chicken, back to where it used to be.

Sadly, though, the lady softened her eyes, made a gentle frown and said quietly, "It's gone," like a hospital worker telling a waiting family member that a loved one had passed away.

As we left, chickenless, defeated, my boss said out-loud to me but really to the entire world, "I guess we're never eating here again."
posted by glonous keming at 6:54 PM on October 1, 2020 [14 favorites]

There's a Pizza Hut that still does lunchtime buffets a few miles from home here. And a Randy's and a Pizza Inn on the other side of town that does buffets -- Pizza Inn's is an all-day, a significant portion of the dining area has been cleared out to make room for heated service tables. And I should note that Pizza Inn offers multiple kinds of dessert pizzas. It's difficult to call them 'good' by conventional standards of food, but they hit the spot in a Little Debbies sort of way, I guess. And there's a fourth: A Cici's just opened somewhere in town last month. I won't be hitting any of these before the pandemic is over (iirc, Randy's has suspended their buffet lunches for the duration anyway), but I'm impressed at our buffet of buffets; the city is not really all that large.

And -- at least, as of last year -- there are still KFC buffets in West Virginia. I've never visited one but they continue to advertise themselves on the major highways, so maybe I will on a roadtrip some day.
posted by ardgedee at 7:18 PM on October 1, 2020

There used to be a buffet at the Popeyes at the outlet mall in Zachary, too. I, um, I can attest that 22-year-old me could eat a shameful amount of spicy dark with biscuits.
posted by wintermind at 7:19 PM on October 1, 2020 [2 favorites]

In 2016 I went to a Big Boy in Detroit that had a buffet and it was one of the saddest meals of my life.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:36 PM on October 1, 2020

I don't know that I've ever experienced a fast food buffet, and feel no great sense of loss.

The only buffet I give a shit about is Indian buffet. Oh dang how I miss the Indian buffet.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:59 PM on October 1, 2020 [10 favorites]

A few of the McDonald's where I grew up in Northern Virginia had buffet breakfasts, I went a few times, but it was disappointing, no mcmuffins, bacon egg and cheese biscuits, or normal hashbrowns. They had biscuits, and scrambled eggs and bacon and sausage, and breakfasty potatoes, it was basically like going to a completely unrelated restaurant that also not very good but okay for the price food.

I've had all I can eat Popeyes many, many times, but never in buffet form. Four-piece dinner with a biscuit and a side, I can't believe many people are trying to get more chicken after eating all that.
posted by skewed at 10:19 PM on October 1, 2020 [1 favorite]

At at least two locations in my region, Pizza Hut still "had"* a lunch buffet as of last summer. We used to go about twice a year when the kiddo had the craving. *(Of course, there haven't been any for 6-months and I am willing to bet they won't be coming back after Covid-19)

They seemed to be popular with; moms and kids, trades workers and office/team lunch crowds.
posted by rozcakj at 6:53 AM on October 2, 2020

Rax was our salad bar of choice in the 90s. They had baked potatoes and the liquid nacho cheese that went on top. Godfather's buffet was the first place I got to try dessert pizza since we would have never ordered a whole one. The KFC in Blaine, MN had a buffet as of last year as well.
posted by soelo at 8:29 AM on October 2, 2020

Roy Rogers' fixins bar (I'm not imagining THAT, am I???)

No you are not. I used to easily double my burgers' size at the Fixin's Bar.

However, Pizza Hut is not Fast Food (or it least it wasn't, I haven't been inside one for many years, perhaps things have changed). But I remember eating at their buffet.

I've never heard of any buffets at McDonalds or KFC, as detailed above. I've also never heard of McDonalds pizza. Since I agree with my little brother and his frends, who all started referring to any McDonalds as a Death Station when they were in High School, I'd guess their pizza was even worse than your standard doughy too-thick and cheesy American pizza.
posted by Rash at 10:12 AM on October 2, 2020

I used to hit that Pizza Hut buffet in the era when I had a night shift job. I'd go to bed about 7:30 AM, and wake up about 11- 1 PM, ravenously hungry. Nothing but a serious carb bombing could get me back to sleep through the afternoon, and the Hut delivered.
posted by thelonius at 10:15 AM on October 2, 2020

If they never existed then fortunately the time I have spent at Frankie Tomato's and Mandarin no longer apply.

The article is making a distinction between a sit-down buffet restaurant and a fast-food buffet. Compared to Mandarin or Sizzler or even the college dining hall, fast-food restaurants going the buffet/AYCE route are a rarity.

After 2020, I can see table-service AYCE still being a thing. Mandarian is moving in that direction, and that's how it works at most AYCE sushi places. But a buffet where random people can just paw at and breathe on everyone else's food? No thank you. Never again.
posted by thecjm at 11:07 AM on October 2, 2020

The author mentions in passing that fast food form generic chains food tasted better when we were young. It's an interesting point. I just assumed that was because I was less-jaded when I was younger (as a kid our family didn't dine chain fast food very often, so something like a Big-Mac tasted like ambrosia of the gods, in that context).

I'm vaguely realizing now that the actual ingredients and preparation were of higher quality in previous decades for many fast food chains. Late-20th century fast food relied much less on pre-frozen constructions.

(oh yeah a reference to Ponderosa, not the fanciest steaks, but swell kitschy ambiance.)
posted by ovvl at 3:37 PM on October 2, 2020

After 2020, I can see table-service AYCE still being a thing.

I’ve read that that’s how the restaurants in Walt Disney World that are normally buffets are now working.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:46 PM on October 2, 2020

This must be an American thing. In Canada I don’t recall ever seeing a fast food buffet; sure, Wendy’s had a salad bar in the elder days, and places like Mandarin existed, but McDonalds? KFC? I have trouble picturing buffets in such.

There was a vegetarian buffet-style place in Montreal called Le Commensal, which opened in 1977 and grew to be the largest chain of vegetarian restaurants in the country. It collapsed about six or seven years ago, with the last couple of places rebranding. The premise was dead simple: there was a general price by weight — you took a plate, browsed the fifty or sixty hot options on display, and loaded up what you wanted. Head for the cash where you put your plate on the scale; the weight of the plate itself is deducted, and you paid. And the food was largely amazing.

In 1995 they opened their first branch in Toronto. I was working a block away and was entirely vegetarian at the time, and I knew Le Commensal well from my days in Montreal. To promote the new place, they had distributed plenty of coupons, which got you five dollars off any meal which was ten dollars or more. The meals could get a little pricey if you had a big appetite, and I was terribly underpaid at the time. I got extremely good at eyeballing what ten dollars worth of their food looked like, and I could judge quite accurately by heft. Many’s the lunch that I heard the cashier say, “That will be $10.14,” before I smilingly pulled out a coupon.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:09 AM on October 3, 2020

The only one I've been to of these (am younger than the typical mefi demographic) is the Pizza Hut buffet. It wasn't bad, I mostly enjoyed it for the nostalgia.
posted by FirstMateKate at 8:00 AM on October 3, 2020

My wife loves the Mandarin, and I enjoyed going there with her...I hope they're able to make it through the pandemic, but if they're doing table service it's just not going to be the same because it's hard to tell your server "a base of rice, then some french fries, top that with a combination of the sliced beef and chicken curry dishes, then throw a couple of ribs and chicken drumsticks on top." I'm sure everyone who went there has their own version of this.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:42 AM on October 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

I'm glad they're gone, I could probably eat a horrific amount of uncapped McDonalds.

This is not a place of honor.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:28 PM on October 3, 2020 [2 favorites]