![]() Most buffets in Las Vegas would go out of business if they stood alone. There are always people looking to stash extra food in their bags and coats, people looking to cash in on street cred by boasting how much food they could consume in one sitting, and promoters swooping in and hustling the sales angles. Profiting off a buffet is as tenuous as balancing on the edge of a butter knife. As fast as those restaurants were franchising in the 1980s, many decelerated from quick expansions and competition in the 1990s. Saturation can prove unhealthy, for buffet buffs as well as for businesses. The buffet is still with us, though its popularity has certainly declined. And that’s just on the first trip through the line! If it’s breakfast time, you could have bacon, sausage, pancakes with maple syrup, eggs, and hash browns. There’s something magical about walking up to a row of brightly lit fresh fruits and vegetables with the option to pick and choose a few sliced strawberries, four chunks of pineapple, two watermelon slices, plus red and green grapes. In the 1980s, Sizzler, Ponderosa, Pizza Hut, and many hotel restaurants became almost synonymous with buffets. And it proliferated accordingly into a veritable American institution. It was the perfect American combination of value and excess. The buffet, by comparison, was an unlimited amount of a large variety of dishes. Ordering off the menu only got you one dish, after all, with a limited amount, too, so even if you loved it, you only got what the restaurant deemed to be one portion. But it began to feel like you were missing out if you didn’t choose the buffet. ![]() Once there, they were given a choice between the buffet or a dish off the menu. Seduced by commercials and tales of excess from friends and neighbors, Americans flocked to restaurants and their buffets. Television commercials influenced the 1980s buffet surge, too. The guests at these ubiquitous buffets tended to be larger families, traveling businessmen, and people on cruise ships or all-inclusive retreats. Every other restaurant seemed to serve their own version of the buffet, featuring salads, fruits, hot food, and, Jello-O - often in more than one color. The Buckaroo Buffet via UNLVįrom its Vegas iteration, the American buffet expanded throughout the 50 states, finally achieving the height of its popularity during the 1980s, when excess was as rampant as music videos on MTV. McDonald’s gambit was that people would get a Viking’s feast for an arguably user-friendly price where they would gorge themselves, exhale, wash their hands (hopefully), then careen toward that blackjack table. The goal was classic Vegas: keep people inside the casino longer, where, tempted by the tables and slot machines, they’d spend more money. Herb McDonald created the Buckaroo Buffet, where people could choose from a selection of salads (low food cost), seafood (high food cost), and cold cuts (relatively low food cost). The American buffet grew its wings – literally – in Las Vegas, circa the 1940s. The smorgasbord, which literally means “butter-goose table,” was an excuse to ease into the main meal by standing among family, friends, or peers, celebrating the initiation of dinner. The American iteration of this culinary institution owes some props to the Swedes, for the concept of the smörgåsbord or “smorgasbord” – a side table where one could opt for a pre-dinner drink or snack – that came to the States in 1939 during New York’s World Fair. These are images of the wealthy sharing, in essence, what we have come to know as the buffet. History provides us with images of gods and nobles, royalty and the rich, even esteemed biblical figures, bathed in bread and meats, grapes and wine, gold and silver, sharing momentous occasions, sharing communal dining, and sharing rewards reaped from the wealth of abundance. Since the 19 th century, the word buffet in English has referred to a meal served from a sideboard.Īnd it’s not just its name that comes from elsewhere, either. It comes from the 12 th century bufet, meaning bench or stool. When all is said and done, what is more American than the almighty buffet?ĭespite its ability to represent our ethos so perfectly, the word buffet originated in France. There’s no better example of our love of excess than the buffet, that cultural touchstone of culinary decadence that is so archetypally American. From our portion sizes to our wines to our politics, we Americans like things big. Excess and America have always played in the same sandbox.
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