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Comment by derefr | Hacker News Reader

One nice thing about buffets—all-you-can-eat or not—is that, if you want, you can eat small portions of a wide variety of things, rather than large portions of a small number of dishes.

The economics of a buffet are the only reason this is really possible; it’s not like you could place an order for e.g. “five breaded shrimp, three grams of braised pork, two wontons’ worth of wonton soup, ...” from a Chinese restaurant. You could only order each of these in larger amounts, because there are fixed costs to making a dish.

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The other nice thing is if you're on some unconventional diet (keto, vegan, kosher, etc), you can pick whatever fits your belief system that day.

This. I grew up as a Seventh-day Adventist, and buffets were a frequent dining choice for my family— only because it was possible to have a good lunch without any meat, and with as much dessert as one wanted.

I've never been a Seventh-day Adventist, but I've spent a significant amount of time around Seventh-day Adventists and attended their potlatches. For the sake of avoiding confusion for other readers I'll throw out that while vegetarianism and veganism seemed way more prevalent in that church than in the general population, neither is a universal practice within SDA. I have no idea what the numbers are, just that meat was an option at the potlatches I attended (as were many vegan and vegetarian dishes).

There’s definitely a range. I was a 4th generation SDA on both sides of the family - both of which were pretty strictly observant, though my parents were a little less so. Meat was absolutely off the table (haha). And I don’t know if we ever went to an SDA function where it was. Perhaps that has changed since we left 20 years ago.

Buffets were really a big part of Sabbath afternoons for many of my childhood years, and we knew many other SDAs for whom it was the same. The local SDA hospital still has a Hometown Buffet nearby that hasn’t been closed yet.

(We were non-strict enough to allow paying for something on Sabbath — though that would have crossed the line for many people we knew.)

I wouldn't be so sure about keto. Buffet restaurants rely on serving cheap ingredients, which essentially means carbohydrates.

Crab legs and beef with broccoli come to mind.

That sauce is loaded with sugar and corn starch.

Crab legs is still pretty good. You're generally right though.

Are crab legs at buffets realy crab? Surely passing off surimi as crab would be more cost-effective.

Pretty difficult to pass that off as crab, if they come still in the shell, like I've seen at every buffet I've been to.

Granted, I haven't been to a buffet in over a decade. They seem to have died out entirely near me.

Hmm, buffet restaurants in the UK must be a bit different to those in the US - here in the UK we only really have cheap Chinese and Indian themed buffets (exclusively with poor quality, sugar laden food), and you'd certainly never never find crab in them.

It's pretty easy to get a selection of vegetables and chicken breast. Stay away from things like meatloaf which might be padded with bread.

Everyone's first thought about keto is all meat, but vegetables are (or should be) a huge part of it. It's just a cool benefit that a night of brisket doesn't knock you off your diet.

If by “knock you off your diet” you mean “knock you out of ketosis”, then eating enough protein will do that.

I experimented with a keto diet for a neurological condition. I invested in some blood ketone measuring strips and was surprised how difficult it was to stay in ketosis. Anything more than a medium chicken breast in one meal does it for me. Other metabolisms may be different.

Buffets are terrible places to eat for a vegan or even vegetarian. Options are typically limited to simple salads, various types of potato (fried, baked) and occasionally pizza or pasta: i.e. cheap tasteless carbs.

Besides limited variety, the other problem is you need to choose very conservatively. Lots of options have animal-derived ingredients and the staff are either clueless or there exists commonly a significant language barrier.

Exception: Indian buffets. Almost always, veg items are kept separate from non-veg, and of that, what's vegan is usually easy enough to discern (or ask about), the two major ingredients to avoid being ghee and paneer.

Indian buffets are wonderful for vegetarians, they're a nightmare for vegans since American-Indian resturant cooking is loaded with every kind of dairy imaginable: yogurt, butter, ghee, and cream is in everything. Like you can't even have the naan at most places.

I will say it's an improvement on most restaurants simply because you can actually find naturally vegan options that aren't a sad salad but its tough otherwise since every place is different and uses wildly different recipes for a given dish.

The buffet we go to most often is Sweet Tomatoes. Not all vegetarian, but most dishes are. In fact, the only way to get much in the way of meat there is to go fishing in the chicken noodle soup tureen.

> it’s not like you could place an order for e.g. “five breaded shrimp, three grams of braised pork, two wontons’ worth of wonton soup, ...” from a Chinese restaurant. You could only order each of these in larger amounts, because there are fixed costs to making a dish.

This seems to work at dim sum places, maybe because most dim sum seem to be portioned into, and then steamed, in small bamboo baskets.

Dim sum restaurants can do this well because they can crank them out in volume. A stack of 4 piece dishes gets snapped up quickly as the cart makes its way through the floor. It's also why the larger dim sum palaces are usually so much better than smaller a-la-carte restaurants.

Agreed. A friend recently had his 40th at a nice Thai restaurant and had a buffet instead of individual orders. More expensive but there was something for everyone and I got to sample everything.

The local casino/racetrack also had a really nice all you can eat that I'd go to with friends and family just to have dinner. The variety was amazing with Asian, seafood, meats, Italian, Indian, etc. But it didn't turn a profit and closed within a few years. They had the crowds but the cost of food + the number of employees needed to serve it all was immense vs making a few grand a day from a few hundred people. Shame because I loved that buffet.

I used to enjoy the local Chinese all you can eat buffets but the quality became subpar. I visited one not far from me that I haven't been to in a good two decades and I was astonished to see the interior was exactly the same 90's chain restaurant decor down to the worn red plastic "glasses". It felt grimy and dirty and they were clearly not turning a good profit as their awning was tattered in places. It closed down last year.

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