Chinese Buffet Anonymous

One of our blogger buddies wrote about his experience and observations on the restaurant phenomena known as the Chinese buffet. Not quite fast food, but not quite formal dining (okay, it’s nowhere near formal dining), it has exploded in popularity for those of us who crave the choice of variety. His observations were, as always, keen and profound. The comments on his writing demonstrated that a sizable portion of our blogging audience turn those noses up at this monument to gastric excess.

So I confess: my name is Todd and I am addicted to Chinese buffets. I know these wanton forays into sudden caloric excess aren’t necessarily good for me, but that’s the reason why I limit my visits to once a month. I also try other limitations within my monthly visit. I will stay one hour and no more, even if I am still hungry. One hour is just enough time for me to satisfy my appetite, so admittedly I am very seldom wanting for more at the end of my time.

I also strive to limit my trips from the table. If there are three warming tables, then I try to only do one plateful per table. Okay, admittedly, in the past I have returned to my table with my platefuls stacked two or three inches high. I realize that some may find boneless spare ribs on top of the General Tso’s chicken unappetizing, but I remind them that they are not eating from my plate. I am the only one eating from my plate and I don’t have to answer to anyone.

I also learned a trick from one of the Eat This, Not That volumes. The author advises to wait ten minutes to give your brain time to receive the message that the stomach is full. If you are still hungry after that time, then by all means, help yourself to more.

In any case, I go to the buffet not so much for the vast variety of Chinese food, but to satisfy my craving for peel-n-eat shrimp. I spend the first ten minutes of my hour long visit shelling these succulent bottom feeders. Then I lovingly coat each one with cocktail sauce before it is chewed up in my mouth and pounded into liquid form by the digestive juices in my stomach.

Sorry if my description of seafood consumption is a bit graphic, but how do think the poor shrimp feel?

Unfortunately, not everything at a Chinese buffet is necessarily Chinese in origin. My fellow bloggers have noted with some degree of alarm the presence of sushi at these buffets, but that was just the beginning of an invasion of foods foreign to the stir fry wok kingdom. Pepperoni pizza? French fries? Beef roast? Salmon? None are strictly Chinese in origin, but I’ve seen all of these on buffets here in the east. Go figure!

In this context, the inclusion of sushi does not seem that radical anymore. As to which came first, the Chinese buffet or morbid obesity, I can only speak for myself. The medical world most likely placed me in the morbid obese category 20 years ago before this restaurant genre came into vogue. True, we did have the steak house buffets of yore, and I miss their variety of food terribly. Someone mentioned the Sizzler chain which, sadly, is nothing more than a memory for those of us on the east coast. There is one in the entire state of New York, a handful of outlets in Florida, but otherwise there are no Sizzler restaurant between here and…Nebraska! Arizona has six Sizzlers within its borders. Lucky!

Okay, so buffets are cheap, and people feel that they have to tank up to get their money’s worth. Blame this on the consumer self-righteous belief that they deserve the full value of whatever they choose to spend their hard earned money. This is no different than when we buy clothes, cars, or real estate. We all want the biggest bang for our bucks, so why should buffets be any different.  

With that said, I should note that restraint on the individual’s part can be utilized. Discipline is always possible, but not always practiced.

I hasten to add in my defense of the lowly buffet that this is one of my favorite words of the English language. Perhaps my definition veers a bit too closely to Rosalind Russell’s declaration of a banquet in Auntie Mame (“Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!"), but the sentiment is similar. My contribution to this canon: Life is a buffet and we should return as many times as we can to experience all that life can give us.

Did I really just expand a one hour food orgy into a larger metaphor for living? As a matter of fact, I just did!

(Thank you for reading! Dim sum anyone?)