I do first have a pre-buffet comment. I went to an older lady, black hair, working on the middle register and said proudly, "I'm here for my free birthday buffet!" and whipped her my ID. After being eyed up by her, and not in the way I hope to get eyed up by a girl at the bar, she check my date and said in quite a scolding voice..."happy birthday". Well thanks Crappy Customer Service lady. After this, I vowed to rip Shady off as much as I could. But, this blog isn't about Shady Maple, it's about the food. And so I begin with Plate One.
Plate One: "Oh my God everything looks so good right now"
Now, I name this plate accordingly. I know we've all gone to a buffet really hungry before. Like REALLY hungry. Like, "oooh look at that last piece of soggy fish sitting alone in the tray looks like Poseidon's gift to man" hungry. This was me on this particular occasion, and as you can see my attempt to be a 'segregator' in my plate organizational strategy became a "pile-on". In this plate, you've got pulled pork in the lower left quadrant, with mashed potatos northwest of that. Now, normally I would create a mashed potato dam to keep the gravy from running into other food, but I made sure I had something that I wouldn't mind getting gravy on it next to it. At the top was some ridiculously good cheese ravioli. But the REAL highlight, is what's to the right of the plate. BROASTED CHICKEN. What the hell is broasted chicken? Hell if I know. It's lik Fried Chicken, but lighter on the breading, but still delicious. I want to use the work 'broasted' more in daily conversation. Like "Man, you've just been broasted". If I had to define it, I'd say that it when you roast a bro. But in this case a chicken. Phenomenal.
Now, before I give you my other plate of food, I wanted to show you a picture of something a buffoob would get on their plate. The fact that this 'buffoob' is my girlfriend is another story, we are working this out personally. But check out the following plate and see if you can find the deficiencies.
Girlfriend Plate One: "I'm a Buffoob"
Wow, yes. Buffeteers, hide your eyes. I'm an optimist though, what are the positives? For one, the selections she made (broasted chicken, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese) are all top quality items, can't knock her for that. But plate optimization? Child please. The whole southeast corner of the plate is unused. The glaring misbuffet here is the gravy pouring. This is my chance to reinforce the importance of creating food dams when dealing with liquids that could run. You need to create a wall of mashed potato so the gravy doesn't spill over and ruin the mac and cheese. It's called mac and cheese. Not mac and gravy. Now let's get back to excellence.
Buffetmis Prime Plate #2: "Broast me some more, man"
I'm proud of this plate, I really am. As you can see, only the far regions of the plate are unused, the regions where spills are always capable of occuring. Also, I used action research to decide that broasted chicken was worth another go. Combined with mac and cheese, fries, breaded haddock and broccoli. (Hate on me all you want, broccoli is money in the bank) But we are looking at one rather well rounded plate. Not too much of one item, but enough to get a solid taste.
So what do we take from this? Where do we go from here? I felt as though I ate a lot more than the previous entry on breakfast buffet. Why? Well, because I didn't talk as much and focused more on eating. Not that my girlfriend is bad company, but those long silences where we stare lovingly in each other's eyes work especially well for maximum food consumption. In addition, my plates were more well rounded. When in the breakfast entry I went all meats in the first plate, in this one I took a more Traditionalist approach with each plate. My advice for you? keep a record of your buffet trips. How long were you there? How crowded was it? What food groups did you eat the most of? What were your BPM? (Bites per minute) Keeping a log will help you analyze how much you at and maximize your buffet potential.
Keep it classy, Buffeteers