How American Is the All-You-Can-Eat Buffet?

the all you can eat buffet a petri dish of sneeze guards germ covered tongs and day old always War Meats the perfect playground for pathogens and bodily discharges alike but if you take a step back from this hypochondriacs nightmare something else emerges something far too alluring for mirell Manila to scare away the buffet comes to represent the very essence of America one part variety one part abundance and one part endless opportunity today on weird history food we're loading up our plates with the history of the buffet but before we get started be sure to subscribe to the weird history Food Channel and let us know in the comments below what other types of restaurants you would like to hear about okay grab yourself a Clean Plate and let's load up 9.95 all you can eat we'll see who wins this freaking hand I won't we despite being an undeniably American tradition the all you can eat buet spent its infancy abroad way back in medieval times feasts often featured long tables with a variety of food and drink to choose from this provided Royal hosts with an opportunity to show off their wealth they were whipping out their finest commemorative Star Trek plates for these events while this style of serving food was common all across Europe it's the swedes who came to have first formalized the practice and and give it a name in the 16th century visiting guests to Swedish feasts would first be greeted with the bronin board a sort of appetizer table whose name translates to table of spirits which kind of sounds like a card table covered in Jello-O shots in actuality this table would often contain finger foods like cheeses breads smoked fish and cured meats but the star of the show was always the Branan a spiced vodka that got the appetite going and the guests popping and locking uh probably after a century of binging out on these bronze fi's boards the sweds had another great idea what if rather than reserving this table for pre-dinner gorging they expanded it into an entire meal and thus in the early 18th century the first ever smorgus boards were born unlike the American All You Can Eat experiences to come smorgus boards were usually reserved for feeding guests who had traveled long distances and would be pretty dang hungry there weren't interstates back then you couldn't just pull off the road and inhale a sausage biscuit in a Bob Evans parking lot the sweds enjoyed smorgas boards for a couple of centuries in their Northern Solitude unnoticed and Untouched by the rest of the world meanwhile the 18th century French aristocracy loved making their eyes bigger than their stomachs with a refined version of the medieval Feast table they would showcase their expensive plate wear on long but dazzled tables filled with the day's most extravagant Delicacies all of which were meant to be eaten while standing after all you don't sit while you jog and eating this much food is no less of a workout similarly it is thus from the middle French word for a side table buffet that the Modern English Buffet Finds Its Origins at the same time over in America all you can eat dining options began popping up as early as 1837 however these options relied on servers bringing individual orders over to the table one at a time which is terribly inefficient when you're trying to eat as much Golden Coral spaghetti as possible before the song on the radio ends but in 1912 all of that was set to change that year it was Sweden's turn to host the Winter Olympics as Spectators from around the globe came to watch the games Stockholm's restaurants fed their hungry masses the only way they knew how with smorgas boards which became a defining experience for those who attended that Year's games though smorgas board hype was whispered around the globe it wouldn't find its way to America for another 27 years with that Year's World's Fair in New York and Lady Liberty has raised her torch with a mighty belch ever since it didn't take long for someone to take the smorgus board idea and turn it into an American classic and that bold Visionary was herb McDonald the publicist for El Rancho Vegas the first ever casino resort to open on what would eventually be known as the Las Vegas Strip One Night in 1946 herb was hungry and he got himself some cold cuts and cheeses from the casino's restaurant and laid out a personal smorgas board to Herb's surprise guests began asking if they could join him in his Chow Down and Herb was struck then with a billion dooll realization by laying out tables of food on the casino floor guests could grab a bite whenever they got hungry and then get straight back to gambling no more leaving for sit down restaurants or heading back to the rooms to snack guests could stay right inside the casino where they could keep putting money into the casino's Pockets soon after El Rancho took Herb's idea and open up the Buckaroo Buffet a 24-hour all you can eat dinner that reportedly had every possible variety of hot and cold Entre to appease the howling coyote in your innards ironically Vegas buffets have inflicted more than a few stomach wolves themselves in the year since the entire Buckaroo Buffet experience only cost a buck while the buffet itself technically lost lost money it kept people right where El Rancho wanted them on the casino floor never more than 5 ft away from a slot machine or a blackjack dealer as more Casino Resorts opened up on the Strip it didn't take them long to start adopting herbs idea as well soon virtually every Casino had its buffet and the trend outgrew Las Vegas quicker than a pair of skinny jeans to become a national [Music] phenomenon as buffets proliferated around Vegas it was only a matter of time before the all you can eat model Spilled Out into the rest of America you can only put so much on those little plates even so the first buffets to pop up elsewhere in the country didn't serve the All-American DIN and experience found in Las Vegas instead they focused on Chinese food way back in the 1800s over a quarter of a million Chinese immigrants came to America seeking jobs in mines on farms and on the railroads however as more and more immigrants arrived some began to feel threatened by a vast influx of workers willing to work for lower wages and anti-chinese sentiment grew to a boiling point with the 1882 passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act severe restrictions were put in place concerning the number of Chinese immigrants allowed into the country in any given year at first absolutely no Chinese immigrants were allowed into the US But as time wore on lawmakers began to make exceptions to the rule depending on which industry a person was looking to seek employment in and in 1915 restaurant work was was added to that list of exceptions it didn't take long for Chinese restaurants to start turning up all across America in fact the number of American Chinese restaurants quadrupled between 1910 and 1930 and many immigrants used this so-called lowain loophole to bring their extended families across the Pacific the Chinese Exclusion Act wasn't fully repealed until 1943 by that time Chinese restaurants were just about everywhere and after the Advent of the buffet in 1946 they they began to incorporate America's newest and boldest restaurant style into their businesses like Changs restaurant Changs was a Los Angeles Sunset Strip establishment started by restaurant tour Peter Chang as early as 1949 Changs had adopted the buffet model serving over 20 different Entre for the low price of $2.85 in what was then referred to as a Chinese smorgas board over the years that followed Chinese smorgas boards began popping up all across the country and by 1960 they were just about everywhere because who doesn't like a big old mountain of fried [Music] dumplings greeting and serving guests good evening fighting enough to eat today boy I'll say well that's great would you care for hmer beef a little both I think all [Music] right as Chinese buffets became commonplace the groundwork was being laid for some of today's most minent National Buffet chains for instance the first shony opened up in 1947 just one year after the creation of the Buckaroo Buffet but this initial shony didn't have any sort of buffet at all which should be against the law that smug little bear has nothing else for us instead it was a West Virginia drive-in restaurant that had recently been renamed under the big boy brand it lived out the next 3 years under the big boy name until it reverted back to shony around 1955 the year Marty McFly kissed his mom after expanding to over 30 locations over the next few decades shony then shed their big boy affiliation altogether and shony increased their number of sitdown locations and eventually introduced buffets to the restaurants Sizzler followed in a similar trajectory their first ever location opened in Culver City California in 1958 and it was advertised specifically as a steakouse a Family Steakhouse it wasn't until the late 1970s that Sizzler introduced their first ever salad bars which would eventually grow into full-on all you can eat experiences golden Carell one of the bm's of all you can eat Hedonism first opened its doors in 1973 it too began Life as a steakhouse eventually adding salad bars to the mix before transforming into a binge until you drop Gorge Hut Sizzlers knew all you can eat buffet Court where do we start individual islands of especially prepared foods let's start at the salad bar which end pasta to good good idea by the 1980s all three of these chains were expanding their all you can eat options and the nation entered what is now known as the Golden Age of the American Buffet truly a thing of beauty 1983 likewise saw the creation of the now defunct Buffet Inc who would eventually Rebrand under the V Nova Brands umbrella unlike the non- buffet origins of its competitors Buffet Inc knew just what kind of restaurants they were making from the very start they would eventually be responsible for Old Country Buffet HomeTown Buffet Ryan's Buffet and Furs some of which began as privately owned traditional restaurants that Buffet Inc scooped up like a lump of salad bar potatoes and converted into buffet style establishments all the while fast food brands try to get in on the massively popular Trend it's kind of what they do McDonald's Wendy's KFC and Pizza Hut all attempted variations on the all you can eat buffet the long gone McDonald's buffet was res reserved for breakfast while the late Wendy's buffet or super bar as they like to call it included both Italian and Mexican options while those two Buffet experiences are so long gone they're barely more than Legend both Pizza Hut and KFC buffets still exist in some locations to this day and you must not rest until you find them today Las Vegas Nevada the patient zero of the American Buffet is home to over 40 different all you can e options while all of them cost a far cry more than herb McDonald's original $1 slamfest they range in price from the cheap and basic to the pricey and extravagant some of the more expensive options such as those found at B and wi cost customers $70 or more per seat and you don't even get to keep the chair but these higher-end buffets come with hundreds of higher-end items like lobster tail oyster Sushi and bottomless champagne and with inflation running more wild than Hulk Mania many seem to view these pricee buffets as the only way to afford High ticket items while visiting Las Vegas likewise Vegas buffet is today are reportedly experiencing weights upwards of 2 hours during peak times that's enough time to watch The Master of Disguise twice while waiting for your table and nobody needs that vacation memory but this increased interest in Buffet dining does not end in Sin City though several Buffet chains including Old Country Buffet and Sizzler had to file for bankrupcy during the lockdown period of the covid-19 pandemic buffets the nation over have made a big comeback since things started opening back up in 2021 reportedly Buffet traffic is up 125% over the last 2 years outpacing both fast casual chains and full service restaurants alike and exceeding pre-pandemic Levels by catering primarily to low and middle- income customers looking for a deal which statistically speaking is most people still for those wanting the Ultimate Buffet experience look no further than Lancaster County's Shady Maple smorgas board Shady Maple boasts a 200t buffet of the finest Foods the Pennsylvania Dutch have to offer along with enough floor space to serve 7,000 people on any given day golden Carell could never unless you pushed a bunch of them together that totals to about a million and a half stuffed to the brim customers every single year making it not only America's largest Buffet but a leading contributor to post pral somnolence otherwise known as a food coma so what do you think what's your go-to Buffet plate item let us know in the comments below and while you're at it check out some of these other weird history food videos

Channel: Weird History Food

Views: 317,422

Keywords: history of the all-you-can-eat buffet, where the all you can eat buffet originated, a history of the restaurant buffet, all you can eat buffet history, did the buffet originate in the US?, weird history food, weird history food restaurants, buffet, smorgasbord, all you can eat, buffet restaurants, restaurant history, food history, smorgasbord vs buffet, las vegas buffets, sizzler buffet, hometown buffet, golden corral buffet, how do buffets make money?, cheddar, mashed, the hustle

Id: nbm6PUzgH78

Length: 13min 45sec (825 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 30 2023