Buffet Blues
About America’s fascination with the all-you-can-eat buffet, Ellen DeGeneres said it best: “We don’t need all-you-can eat! We’re not bears! We don’t hibernate for the winter. When we wake up the next day, we eat the same amount of stuff.” That’s essentially true, unless you’re a yo-yo dieter like me, who eats a healthy salad and a Slim-Fast bar on Tuesday, then finds himself back in the buffet line on Wednesday, loading up his 15th plate of crab rangoon.
The real lure of most all-you-can-eat buffets is that they’re cheap. So shockingly cheap, in fact, that even a critical diner like me is willing to overlook a lot — and I do mean a lot — in the quality department. So what if most of the food looks barely edible? It’s all you can eat for four bucks! Less than a movie ticket or 3 gallons of gas.
There are a few exceptions to the rule that a cheap buffet equals icky food, notably the well-laden $5.95 breakfast buffet at Calypso’s at the Isle of Capri casino. But most buffets are a bigger gamble than that. Take, for example, the alluringly inexpensive $4.95 lunch buffet at the Twin Dragon, located in an old International House of Pancakes building at 3260 Broadway. This restaurant has done everything short of hiring topless dancers to lure patrons. In addition to a menu of traditional Cantonese, Szechwan and Hunan dishes, last year the owners added a lengthy list of Vietnamese offerings. Then they did a major feng shui number on the joint, adding a makeshift shrine with a plastic Buddha that sits, somewhat disconcertingly, on the floor near the cash register.
Now there’s also a big steam table set up at lunch, loaded with the ubiquitous buffet staples: egg rolls, crab rangoon, General Tso’s chicken. But the egg drop soup was a disturbing neon-orange; no one was eating it. Ditto for the congealed mess passing itself off as Kung Pao chicken.
I ended up berating myself for accepting such a joyless “bargain” when I could have spent a mere $12.50 more and gotten a lunch I truly loved at the American Restaurant (200 East 25th Street), such as chef Celina Tio‘s Zinfandel-braised beef brisket with cheddar-cheese grits, sautéed spinach and crème brûlée for dessert.
For big spenders willing to ante up $21 (plus tax and gratuity), the American also does a $21 pre-fixe lunch, which includes any three courses. (Add an extra three bucks if the lobster shepherd’s pie is one of them.) “We sell a lot more of those lunches than you might think,” Tio says.
A $21 lunch, huh? Since I’ll probably eat every bite, I’d better hibernate on that idea.
