Welcome to the Offal Buffet!

There have been a proliferation of buffets lately, all-you-can-eat situations that encourage both the thrifty and the gluttonous.

As a representative of both camps, I feel qualified to speak on the subject.

I remember my first buffet line like it was a meal ago – Shakey’s Pizza. Remember Shakey’s? The player piano? The guy who sometimes showed up with a banjo? I’m pretty sure it was a nation-wide chain. The very idea of a chow line of different pizzas, an incredibly pedestrian iceberg lettuce salad and tubs and tubs of what was surely canned pudding – I was floored. Absolutely floored. Of course, I was maybe six at the time and easily floor-able. All that, for the low price of just something-ninety-nine?! Would I like a another plate?

Yes, please!

The new all-you-can-eat joint around here is Cici’s, a carbohydrate hootenanny of pizza, elbow macaroni, cinnamon rolls and the obligatory iceberg lettuce salad.

All for $2.99 a head.

Hard to believe, isn’t it?

And yet prices just keep dropping! Why, just the other day, over at the strip mall, another all-you-can-eat buffet opened up.

Or perhaps I just imagined it.

What if – and bear with me now – what if you openly acknowledged that the baked goods, pre-oven firing, might’ve had a couple of bugs in the flour? What if you freely admitted that the meats could, perhaps, be referred to as “a selection domestically and/or ferally raised and radial-flattened”?

That is, what if it offered only the freshest of woodland creature vs. automotive calamities? What if your advertising campaign played upon the regional food availabilities?

You can’t get the armadillo in Wisconsin, and the loon in South Carolina is bound to be stringy.

Think of the profit margin! Think of the overhead!

Think of only 99 cents per person!

Granted it wouldn’t look like much, but hey!

What do you want for 99 cents a person?