Sizzler and Hometown Buffet

Tonight Jesse, Aaron and I went on a date. To Pizza Ranch. For my California friends and family, Pizza Ranch is a pizza buffet. It's like Soup Plantation, but instead of soups, it's just a bunch of pizza and also some additional fried foods. I had a bread stick, a pepperoni slice, a combo slice, a BBQ chicken slice, a few greasy chips, a couple different kinds of fries, and Jesse and I shared some dessert slices. Don't worry, I put some lettuce on my plate a couple times too. That sounds like I ate too much. I didn't. They were small slices and I wasn't even really full when we were leaving. I probably could've had more but I think I hit my carb and grease limit so I called it quits.

I really love buffets. I'm not very good at them, or I'm VERY good at them, it depends on your perspective. I love food and I love not having to wait for it and I love not having to commit to one choice for a meal, so buffets are sometimes perfect.

When we were growing up, if we went to a restaurant it was one of these four: Sizzler, Hometown Buffet, Denny's, or IHOP, but I always wanted to go to Sizzler or Hometown.

Sizzler had a great salad bar with a whole side of it that had other not-salad things like a build your own taco section and spaghetti and there was soft serve. What else could an eight year old want? One pitfall was that the whip cream and the sour cream were really close together, and they weren't easily distinguishable. There were a few gross tacos and some really nasty jello with sour cream on it. Jello is pretty gross on it's own already, so I'm not really sure it was the sour cream's fault if it tasted gross, but it didn't help. Sizzler also gave you cheesy toast. I just want you to know that as I'm recalling the Sizzler, it's magical and special and delicious in my head. I know that it's a chain restaurant with okay food and a salad bar, but eight year old me believes it's so much more.

Hometown Buffet was also pretty good. My memory of it isn't quite as magical, but still a little magical. There was a build your own taco bar, but it wasn't quite as good as Sizzler's. It had rotating main course meals, which was good and bad. It lacked the constancy of Sizzler's, but if we went on a night with pasta or even more Mexican food than just the taco bar, it was the best. All that aside, the reason we went to Hometown Buffet is the dessert section. They had so many desserts. Cake, brownies, some kind of bar, and soft serve with like ten different toppings. There was no shame in getting all the desserts, and again eight year old me thought this was the best thing that could happen.

You know, this seems like an abrupt ending. But, I already wrote 4-5 paragraphs about some buffets and there really isn't much more you can say about that.