This is how to win at all-you-can-eat |
There is a right way and a wrong way to do all-you-can-eat. And judging by my feeds, many people are doing it the wrong way. I say this because Olive Garden is once again running its Never-Ending Pasta Bowl promotion, which means that my FYP is filled with people trying to see how many bowls of pasta they can put down.
Frankly, I’ve yet to be impressed: There’s a lot of bad strategy happening. I can say this with confidence because I grew up spending most Sundays after church going to the Chinese buffet, where I ate at least one plate per section without ever leaving excess on my plates. |
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My general theory of all-you-can-eat is that you must approach it progressively. This is both in terms of the type of food and the quantity of said food. That means starting with crunchy, raw, or fresh foods before getting foods that’ll sit heavily on your palate and stomach — go for sashimi, for example, if you’re the type to eat buffet sushi, before anything fried — and just one or two pieces of each thing, since you can always get more.
The exception here is if your buffet or AYCE experience includes premium proteins, in which case, if you’re trying to beat the house, you should start there and go big. Generally, in all AYCE situations, I avoid carbs. They’ll fill you up too quickly, and compared to, say, honey walnut shrimp, they barely cost the restaurant anything; it’s a bust! Of course, Never-Ending Pasta kind of requires its own rules. If your goal is to get as much pasta out of Olive Garden as possible, here are my thoughts: Demerits, in my opinion, to anyone who so much as touches a breadstick. Controversial opinion: They are not even that good!
For that matter: I know it’s iceberg, but why even bother filling your stomach’s limited capacity with salad if the pasta is the point? Remember that they’re trying to get you with these apps, and you want to pull one over on them. Honestly, soup? Besides the point, too. I saw a person who ordered the chicken gnocchi soup to start. The game was over before it even began.
Let’s consider the pasta options, too. Angel hair: I, unlike many, actually really like angel hair. But skip it as a first bowl, on account of it being too dense and clumping too much up with sauce, especially since the first bowl is the biggest. Alfredo sauce to start is another rookie move, as are any of the cream-based sauces, even though they admittedly sound the most delicious. I think the reason there are so many of them available is precisely because they’ll fill you up fast. The only answer is to start with marinara, either regular or five-cheese; the latter, while richer, is fine because obviously you’re also still here to enjoy this. With one bowl down, only then should you consider a cream sauce, given that all subsequent servings will be smaller.
To throw a little wrench in the plans (i.e. separate you from your ultimate goal of eating a lot of pasta), Olive Garden also offers protein toppings, including crispy shrimp. To me, this is like the prime rib at the Vegas hotel buffet. Opt for these and you probably won’t go as far, but you might at least get the sense of really having gotten your money’s worth. |
All-you-can-eat restaurants are having an unexpected revival |
In a city where sourdough loaves have hit $60 and a barbecue plate with a single beef rib runs $90, there’s a reason that reservations for New York City’s new Good Time Country Buffet are going so quickly: For just $26.99 per person, diners get all-you-can-eat fried chicken, collard greens, mac and cheese, and other Southern staples. The team behind the restaurant is known for its relative bang-for-your-buck (in New York, especially); its other restaurant, Kisa, one of our 2024 Best New Restaurants, offers $36 set meals with refillable banchan.
But Good Time isn’t alone in this return to somewhat affordable indulgence in recent months. While not formatted as a buffet, the Balkan restaurant Alma in Portland, Oregon, reopened this summer with a new focus on two-hour all-you-can-eat feasts for $55 per person. In both regards, the move feels simultaneously like “In this economy???” and also like “In this economy!” Providing diners with something affordable amid so many rising costs was a motivating factor for Good Time, Eater NY reported. And as chef Vedran Jordan of Alma told the Portland Business Journal recently, the restaurant’s new perception as offering a “great deal” has helped bring more diners in — sales on Thursdays have tripled since the restaurant switched its format.
While the storied Vegas buffets dwindle, a new kind of luxe all-you-can-eat format has, however improbably, ascended, Ella Quittner wrote for the New York Times this summer. She pointed to restaurants like the bicoastal Niku X, where $158 gets you 100 minutes of unlimited seafood and premium cuts of meat; or NYC’s SourAji, where the $100 omakase is followed by all-you-can-eat servings of tuna and wagyu. (With the latter, there’s a catch: Diners must order from the AYCE portion all at once, and they’re charged for every roll they don’t eat.) Similarly, a new restaurant serving AYCE wagyu for $99-per-person just got reviewed by the Philadelphia Inquirer, though the format led critic Craig LaBan to conclude that it was proof of too much of a good thing. For many diners, that’s probably besides the point: As Quittner concludes in her piece, much of the appeal of AYCE right now, aside from value, is the sense of spectacle.
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