To celebrate the New Age of Trumpery, I took my daughter Sarah and her family out to eat tonight at the Golden Corral buffet in Orem. It's a franchise, of course, but there are some valid and original points I hope to make about the cuisine and company there.
It cost $43.53 to feed one senior citizen, two adults, and one eight year old. The three year old and the one year old got fed on the cuff. We had water to drink, because fountain drinks cost extra. Besides, Sarah doesn't want the kids to have too much sugar before bedtime.
I have a long and checkered history with buffets. When I was younger and constantly on the make to save an extra buck or two I would surreptitiously fill my coat pockets with rolls, fruit, hard boiled eggs, and salami, to tide me over for my evening meal. This left my clothes rather pungent during the hot summer months. As I grew older I grew no wiser and kept eating like a teenager whenever I paid for a buffet -- which often led to disaster an hour or so later. So tonight I ate rather sparingly.
Sarah and Jonny snarfed down jumbo shrimp and roast turkey, with plenty of sides. Young couples and their sterling digestion . . . it makes me sick!
Grand son Lance kept making a grab for his sister Brooke's food, on the theory that anything anyone else has must taste better than what he has and so belongs to him by right. His droit du seigneur held true until he got a taste of a piece of pineapple dipped in the chocolate fountain. His pained expression would have moved a heart made out of marzipan. After that he was pretty much content to go get his own food.
As the evening progressed our table top disappeared under a pile of dishes, crumpled napkins, and discarded shrimp tails. Goaded by the zestful appetites of the young folk, I ate more than was good for me, and am still hearing rumbles from my innards like the distant thunder of an approaching electrical storm.
It bothers me to see all the food that goes to waste at a buffet; so many plates of food that are just barely tasted and then set aside. If the leftovers could be given to a pig farmer or doled out to the needy I would feel better -- but there's no way a modern buffet restaurant can manage such things. Happily, Jonny and Sarah pretty much cleaned their plates, as did I. After his third helping of jumbo shrimp Jonny said that Golden Corral was a much better buffet than Chuck-a-Rama. I had to agree with him that the food seemed prepared with more care and less industrial homogenization.
As is the wont of a one year old, Brooke enjoyed everything that was placed in front of her -- until she didn't. Then she didn't want to be held and she didn't want to be put down and she didn't want to eat anything more and she whimpered for whatever anyone else was eating, and in general gave warning that a titanic tantrum was building, which would be unleashed on an unsuspecting and innocent world if she were not taken home soon and allowed to run around the living room couch while laughing insanely.
I give the place Two Burps. Mostly because this kind of a buffet restaurant is an anachronism nowadays. It's only good for feasting, and who does that anymore? Except when a Trump gets elected President . . .
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