>>21966451
Really unintelligent people of low class and bad taste would see "value" in that kind of eatery.

I'd personally never do something like that. Not before, during, or after Covid. Not sure why that's involved at all.

>>21966451
Why all the Golden Corral hate? Golden Corral is honestly better than a fucking movie.

I have a friend named Bruce. Bruce looks to be some kind of honest-to-God pirate at first
glance, and I mean Captain Jack Sparrow's crew pirate, and the ornery, mean old fucking pirate
you'd never, ever want to mess with because he'd bite your God-damned nose off and eat it. He's
also wildly into K-pop, choreographs his own dance routines to it, and in the last year or two
has started just basically eating like a Korean, which apparently means shitloads of vegetables
and cabbage. Anyway, Bruce goes to Golden Corral like 2x a week, which I thought was kind of strange
due to his new health kick, so finally I asked him about it.

"Dude," he said. "Golden Corral has a shitload of vegetables, and their cabbage is great. But
you're missing the point. You don't go to Golden Corral just for the food. It's fucking dinner theater."

And you know what? He's right. For $12 you can sit and watch some of the most hilarious, downright
hellishly gluttonous behavior you will see outside the Plane of Fat in the Demonic Abyss. I went with
him one time and laughed so hard at some of the shit on display that now I go with him about once a
month, get a big plate of steak and another big plate of salad, stake out a spot where you can see
most of the buffets (and oh for fucking sure the CHOCOLATE WONDERFALL) and just observe the kind of
unbelievably self-indulgent (and self-destructive) shit that would make a European or Southeast Asian's
person head explode off their shoulders in horror and make someone with a "sick sad world" sense of
humor laugh their ass off.

Someone, say, like me.

>>21966474
For example, the very first time I went with Bruce I was witness to "the recon." This is a real thing,
and what I am about to describe is not an isolated incident, no sirree. Humongously fat people will
literally go scout the buffet. Now, I think we all do this to some extent at a buffet, in the "Hmm,
what do they have to eat here?" glance-while-walking-to-the-table sense, but this is done with military
precision, people. I've watched with my own eyes three people, all of whom were 300 lbs+, meet briefly
and talk, then split up and go to the buffets, carefully eyeballing each selection, lips moving, fingers
pointing, as if cataloging the unearthly delights that await them, then fucking meeting back up in the
same place to discuss what they saw and plan an attack. I'm serious. They were like 10 feet away.

"Guys it looks like the fried chicken tonight is coming out pretty fast, pretty sure that stuff's going
to be good, but the rotisserie is just kind of hanging out. Pulled pork was kind of crusty but I think
if we dug down a bit there's good stuff there. There was a bit of a crust on the edge of the brown gravy
and someone dropped some fucking broccoli in it but the white gravy's looking fine. Outside of that, hot
bar A looks good. And of course the bourbon chicken looks good as always."

"Fantastic. Well, the guy cooking the steaks told me they are busting open a new box in about 20 minutes,
so we should probably lay off that until then. I noticed there was a lot of bacon in the green beans right
now so that should probably be one of our first stops. The mac and cheese tonight also looks fucking
delicious, it's got a nice crust unlike that bullshit last week when it was practically yellow water, so we
need to move on that. It looks like they recently changed out the taco stuff, especially the nacho cheese,
it looks brand new, so, take that for what it's worth."

>>21966475
"Well I've got bad news guys, from what I could see it looks like tonight's a no chocolate cake night,
they only have that fucking one that has those fake cherries on top, and we all know how that fucks things up."

>groans all around<

"But it's not that big a deal because they just put out rice krispies with chocolate coating and the girl
said they've got tons of them. They've also got those sugar cookies and some fudge brownies that look all
right, and all the other pie shit they usually have."

"OK, so green beans, fried chicken, the mac and cheese, the white gravy, those are tonight's superstars.
Let's go."

I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. I expected a fucking Wonder Twin powers-esque ring bump at this point, but instead
they just all fled to a plate dispenser and began loading the fuck out of their plates. It really reminds
me of nothing so much as when people like, discuss what's going on with their favorite sports teams.
Except with food.

>>21966476
This is also when I first experienced the phenomenon of the "multiplate."

Now, your average person will take a plate to the buffet, fill it with food, and go back to their table and
eat. But, you see, that person understands that when they are done eating, if they want more, there will be
more food available at that time. But the multiplater wants to hedge its bets. What if, between that first
and second trip to the buffet, the restaurant suddenly ran completely the fuck out of food? Like, not even
mints by the cash register or gum in the quarter machines? WHAT THEN? Your deliciousness per second
(DPS... sorry) will go down!

It doesn't bear thinking about. Now it's unlikely, gentlemen, but not impossible, so as we are smart
consumers, we're going to guard against the possibility. So let's each go get three complete plates of food
and come back to the table.

Now I'm not talking a meal plate and a salad plate, as I mentioned before I myself do that every time I
go to watch this... whatever the fuck it is, Theater of the Grotesque, I guess. But just imagine for a
moment going up to the buffet and getting a plate loaded down with actual fucking rib-sticking food. 3-4
chicken wings and legs, a big-ass helping of mac and cheese, some mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans,
two corns on the cob, and a yeast roll or two, then taking it back to your table. Time to eat, right?
WRONG. DIPSHIT. WHAT IF THEY RUN OUT OF FOOD WHILE YOU ARE EATING YOU GOD-DAMNED NINNY? WHAT ABOUT YOUR DPS?

So you just set this completely full plate down and go get another one, and again you just completely fill
the fuck out of it with food. A couple of steaks, a pile of pulled pork, a rice mountain topped with sugary
chicken (MOUNT BOURBON), and a couple of smoked sausages with nacho cheese on them, then you take that
back to your table.

>>21966477
You now have enough food at your table, JUST ON YOUR PLATES, to feed an entire platoon of ten year-olds who
have been playing all day. Time to sit down and pig the fuck out. WRONG. DIPSHIT. WHAT IF THEY RUN OUT OF
FOOD NOW? YOU'VE ONLY GOT LITERALLY TEN OR FIFTEEN THOUSAND CALORIES ON YOUR PLATE, YOU'RE PRACTICALLY
GOING TO STARVE TO DEATH. IF YOU DON'T KEEP YOUR DPS UP WE'LL HAVE TO KICK YOU OUT OF THE GUILD DUDE.

So again you set your second completely full plate down and go back AGAIN. I dunno what the fuck you get this
time, since you already have basically everything they serve, but on one multiplate I watched a dude walk(?)
to the salad bar and create the following salad:

1 giant ladle of blue cheese dressing directly onto the plate
Multiple giant scoops of shredded cheese on top of this
Multiple giant scoops of those weird ham cube-bits on top of this
Multiple giant scoops of bacon bits on top of this
Multiple giant scoops of boiled egg crumbles on top of this
An enormous pile of croutons
A giant scoop of mushrooms (I think this "made it healthy" because mushrooms are like a fish or something and
fish is negative calorie superfood?)
2 giant ladles of blue cheese dressing on top

>>21966479
Just think about that for a fucking minute. OK, frankly, it sounds pretty delicious, but holy shit how horrid
does something like that have to be for you? Imagine trying to shit that out a few hours down the line. But
now you have your third plate, and so now you can at least quiet the yammering fear that you won't get to eat
everything in the entire God-damned place before it closes down for the night, and at last you can finally
start to eat.

Again, this is not fantasy. I've watched this multiple times. I've seen a woman so fat she had to use a walker
to move sit by herself at a 4-person table and completely cover the surface of it with plates of food before
she started eating, and she cleaned every last one of them. It has the same uneasy, somehow alien fascination
of seeing a car wreck, or a really fucked-up porn where the chick is wearing spider prosthetics and hissing all
the fucking time. You're like, am I really supposed to be entertained by this? I kind of feel bad, and sort of
weird, but... I mean, just fucking look at it. It's brutal, unchained nihilism unfettered from any concept of
moderation or shame or self-preservation and frankly it's kind of fascinating watching someone deliberately say
"Fuck any sort of a comfortable life, WHERE IS THE THOUSAND ISLAND CONTAINER?"

>>21966481
So what I'm trying to say is, Golden Corral really is cheap dinner theater, and believe it or not you can
actually eat there without consuming ten thousand+ calories if you just eat a steak strip or two and some salad
or potatoes or something.

Oh, and did I mention the Chocolate Wonderfall? Well, frankly, if you dare to use that fucking thing I salute you,
because it wouldn't surprise me to find a live octopus in it. This is already too long for a dumb post about
obsessive fatties at Golden Corral, but if I get a chance later I might type up some of the shit I've seen
people do with that thing.

BTW as a disclaimer I'm a 220-lb dude (6'2" though so I don't look too monstrous) who has spent his whole life
losing and then gaining weight. I know it's extremely tough to do, and it's REALLY tough to keep doing and maintain
it, but there's a big difference between "I'm overweight, try my best, run 4 times a week, and occasionally
overindulge in an entire tub of scoop n' eat cheesecake filling" and sticking your face to the fucking ears into
the Chocolate Wonderfall and sucking like Cygnus X-1 till security gets there with the the bullropes.

I hope someone liked reading that as much as I liked writing it.

>>21966451
the one near me is unfortunately not very clean so I haven't been since shortly after covid. buffets are a dying business model in my area with the rising price of everything but the value cannot be beat even at expensive ones like boston lobster feast where it's ~$70 per adult. if I had the income of a CLPN or silicon valley ai bro at a FAANG company I'd eat at a buffet every day. you don't have to sit there wondering what to order off the menu you just go up and fill up your plate. offloading that mental effort is priceless.

>>21968634
oops I meant CRNA not CLPN. I don't know the appropriate doctoring names I just meant one that makes $400,000+