Text 11626, 111 rader
Skriven 2007-02-09 11:50:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av SEAN DENNIS
Ärende: Zum's Grand Buffet 36
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 ML>It's also hard to figure how YOU decide what's edible and what isn't.
 SD> Hmm, that's what my wife says about me.  I can eat my hamburgers plain

I strongly prefer burgers plain. I want to taste meat, not
lettuce, tomato, relish, secret sauce, sesame seeds, ketchup,
A-1 sauce, or mustard.

 SD> only (maybe with cheese).  I dislike mayo, pickles, tomatoes (unless
 SD> pureed - it's weird, can't eat apples unless they're pureed too)...my 

I'm not fond of mayo but will have it in some dishes. Pickles are
okay, just not on burgers. Tomatoes likewise.

 SD> mom blames it on my father.  I think I'm just weird. :)

No comment.

Today I had a hamburger with garlic, salt, and pepper,
on a bun; I could have done without the bun. That was
dinner at 10:30, after rehearsal. For lunch I took my
friend Ella Lou and her son-in-law's father Kenneth
to the Dixie Kitchen, where she had one of these new-
fangled dishes that one shouldn't order at a place
called the Dixie Kitchen - grilled chicken over bowtie
pasta alfredo. Kenneth had pork chops, turnip greens,
and black-eyed peas; I had chicken-fried steak with
cream gravy, red beans and rice, and fried okra.
We all split a blackberry cobbler for dessert, and I
had an additional scoop of blue vanilla ice cream,
just because it was blue.

Yesterday we went out for lunch as well. Ella Lou wanted to
go to the Chinese buffet, but I didn't feel like negotiating
an enormous selection of mediocre food to stuff myself silly
on a few decent items (having tasted the whole range first),
so I convinced her to join me at Ryan's Steakhouse, a few
blocks down from where she lives.

We discovered, though, that the place had turned into Ryan's
Family Steakhouse and thence into Ryan's Family Restaurant.
When we went in, the manager, who was nice enough we didn't
want to walk out on him, informed us that the format was now
all buffet, all the time. Oh, well, live and learn.

It's not even faintly a steakhouse now: essentially, there
wasn't any beef to be found aside from some nasty-looking
salisbury steak floating in an ocean of brown goo. There was
also taco meat, but on tasting it I discovered it to be
mostly TVP or some similar synthetic substance.

Things I ate:

fried chicken - brined so juicy. Quite crispy outside, but
the crust was also quite salty and otherwise underseasoned

"rotisserie" chicken - very mediocre baked

pulled pork - not bad - all leg meat, kind of steamed rather
than BBQed, with some hickory-smoked salt. There was a nice big
hunk of fatty skin in the dish, but I didn't take it

collards - a little bitter, which I discovered after taking a
large serving; there was also some ham and some country sausage
in it, but not nearly enough

fried okra - out of the fried okra factory and identical to
what I've gotten at half a dozen places here (northwest Arkansas)

stewed okra with tomatoes - ok

corn on the cob - amazingly, pretty sweet and tender though not
the tastiest corn in the world

Things I tasted:

creamed catfish - okay

chicken and dumplings - boiled chicken, doughy noodles; not bad
flavor though somewhat underseasoned

spaghetti with chicken parmigiana - the taste took me back almost
fifty years to elementary school cafeteria

Desserts I tried:

strawberry cream or cheesecake stuff - bad

lemon cream or cheesecake stuff - not as bad

vanilla wafer pudding - very bland

blue jello - sort of acrid tasting fake berry flavor,
went well with

whipped topping sweetened with Splenda - which was pretty bland

bread pudding - okay, not as good as at the Hometown Buffet

carrot cake - okay

rum cake - no rum! Tasted like cake with no flavoring agent
at all

Price: 6.49 with 50c off for senior citizens. Drinks (we both
got lemonade from a jug) are 1.69 extra. Between 1 and 3, senior
citizens get their meal for 5.59 but with free soft drinks. When
we left at 1 there was a long line of old folks waiting for the
cash register computer to change hours.
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