My fingertips skimmed the vastly colored plates, diametrically shaped to provide the same abundant dining experience to all those looking to overindulge.
I usually chose the red plate first, red being the color of love.
While driving through Tennessee during fall break, I noticed that virtually all buffets were either closed entirely or contained no cars in the parking lots.
Sadly, I could not swing my Honda Civic onto heaven’s pavement. Still, it did catapult me into the mental journey of why the human population decides to ruin everything perfect and good in this world.
I cannot express enough that our society needs to bring back buffets.
While passionately exclaiming my dilemma and societal call to action regarding the desolate Golden Corral we had just passed, my mother simply stated, “Asbury cafeteria is a buffet,” to which I replied, “I’m not talking about that.”
The Asbury cafeteria is different. I am in an environment where people know who I am, so I can’t deface my reputation by being a maniac on the buffet floor. I will walk away with more shame than imaginable, and I have not exceeded more than two plates at the dining hall, nor will I.
I need to be around total strangers when I eat at a buffet to leave with the assurance that everyone in the restaurant will live out their lives in ignorance about who went up to get 17 croissants and cleared the whole dish of chicken tenders in 25 minutes.
In high school, I once went up twelve times to get food. Now I’m just weak and insecure, realizing that that Sunday afternoon during my teenage years was my peak.
I also rarely have the time allotted in my day to commit to multiple buffet trips. I need at least two hours to get a worthy visit out of a buffet, and the same cholesterol damage cannot nearly be done in 45 minutes between classes.
I still remember in fourth grade sitting at our local New Jersey Golden Corral with my grandpa. I was texting this Justin Bieber-esc boy (love of my life, at the time), and right there, in the tattered blue booth right across from the dessert station, he told me he liked me back.
That has not happened since buffets have been terminated, and I am entirely blaming it on the societal rejection of buffets. I am desperately waiting to step foot in a Golden Corral again so I could possibly have a man say he is interested in me, and I entirely believe that it will not come to fruition until I do so.
It makes me physically angry that there is no urgent outrage or coalition formed to produce a relaunching of buffet chains.
Riddle me this. A crusty six oz. sirloin costs upwards of $20, but for less than that $20, the human population can pick from a wide array of appetizer foods, entre options, and endless desserts? And we just sigh into the wind with a lackadaisical toss of the shoulders and disremember buffets? I am so sick of people.
Obviously, I understand that the pandemic sealed the buffet’s final fate, but we go to stores for heaven’s sake. People feel up the Macintosh apple section, maybe cough on the fruits, and put them back. People don’t put back food at buffets unless they’re psychopaths.
If people are scared to go to Old Country Buffet because of COVID-19, don’t go to Walmart, Shoprite, or Kroger, because I hate to be the one to tell you, but the virus is still transferable outside of the B-U-F-F-E-T-S.
So, with this article, I am inviting a societal call to action. We must face our fears and incorporate buffets back into our lives. Because not only am I hungry for a variety of food, but I am hungry for justice.
