No Carb Eating Couple Booted From Buffet

[matcom]

Special Thanks To My Senior Food and Travel Reporter - (DS1)

<snip>

SALT LAKE CITY - A couple on the Atkins Diet have a beef with a local restaurant after being booted from the buffet for eating too much meat.

Isabelle Leota, 29, and her husband Sui Amaama, 26, both on the no-carb diet, were dining Tuesday at a Chuck-A-Rama in the Salt Lake City suburb of Taylorsville when the manager cut them off because they'd eaten too much roast beef.

"It's so embarrassing actually," said Leota. "We went in to have dinner, we were under the impression Chuck-A-Rama was an all you can eat establishment."

Not so, said Jack Johanson, the restaurant chain's district manager.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040424/ap_on_fe_st/booted_from_buffet&e=1&ncid=816
"We've never claimed to be an all-you-can-eat establishment," said Johanson. "Our understanding is a buffet is just a style of eating."

[brainshrub]

1. This is proof!

People are all idiots.

[ScreamingMeemie]

2. It certainly takes all kinds. My father loves buffets ( I don't) and it

seriously irks him when he sees someone sit down with a plate loaded with one kind of meat... I can see it now, Restaurant Rage. :hi:

[SemperEadem]

3. why, that's not meat I smell... it's a frivolous lawsuit simmering

every single eating establishment I've ever been in says it has the right to refuse service to anyone. Twelves slices of beef is excessive if they want to be able to serve their other customers.

Wonder how soon they'll be on Faux?

[koopie57]

5. Is that meat on your breath?

I'm calling the manager!

[Deja Q]

4. If that is their understanding, they should post it loud and clear

I say the Atkins kindey-wasters should sue.

They could use the money for dialysis when the kidneys konk out thanks to excessive ketosis...

How is a buffet "just a style of eating"? One trip only?! Cafeteria plan?!

This is the only buffet place I know of that isn't all-you-can-eat.

[SemperEadem]

6. it's a buffet, not a trough

[liberalhistorian]

9. I agree about Atkins, I was on it

for a couple months last fall until I got sick and kept getting bladder infections (which I'm prone to, anyway), and I felt sicker and sicker. My doc made me get off of it RIGHT THEN AND THERE and made me SWEAR never ever to get on it again, even for a little while. It was already starting to fuck up my kidneys, since I have minor kidney damage from continued bladder infections.

Stupid me, I went on Atkins without talking to my doc first, who would have told me flat out that it would hurt my kidneys and that I should stay the hell away from it.

[Dookus]

12. find ONE study

that shows a low-carb diet damages otherwise healthy kidneys.

[Elidor]

7. You eat too much!

You go now. You no pay. No come back!

[liberalhistorian]

8. What about all the pigs I see at my local

buffets who stock up on fifty different desserts and load their plates with tons of mashed potatoes, or keep going back over and over again? I never see anyone making them leave! It's a BUFFET, which means, 99.99% of the time, that it's all-you-can-eat, at least that's the way all the buffets I've EVER been to have worked.

If they didn't want too much of a particular food to be eaten, then they should have posted a sign saying as much. Jesus, now we have to worry about the fucking restaurant police? How about I just not patronize places that pull that shit, why should I give them my money?

[Fleshdancer]

10. how can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat???!!

buffets scare me.

[ForrestGump]

11. Stupid

If it's all-you-can-eat, then it's ALL you can eat. If you can eat half a cow, good for you.

If it's NOT all-you-can-eat, then that should be made clear...it sounds like the management wasn't put off by people making return visits to the buffet, so how're the patrons to know where the line is? I'd certainly assume that a buffet (these days, in the US) is all-you-can-eat -- or its more genteel cousin, 'all-you-care-to-eat' -- unless a sign or whatever tells me otherwise.

Even the manager admits that there's no written policy regarding what customers can and canot eat, and you know how Americans are about having a written set of rules (the Constitution, before Ashcroft got to it). Their reserving the right to refuse service to buffet-abusers is more than vague. In fact, I hate to even imagine the kind of perversions that buffet abusers might, at this very moment, be perpetrating at feeding troughs across this great nation. I'd skip the ambrosia, if I were you.

Regardless of the value and wisdom of the Atkins diet, dubious at best, I think that these people made a pretty reasonable assumption. Their choice of victuals doesn't thrill me, but I'd defend to the death their right to load plates, until they prise the corn dog from my cold, dead fingers.

[SOteric]

14. See, and I have an entirely different perspective on it

Possibly based on my experiences with the restaurant industry.

Buffet is just a style of eating. When you order a catered event, you can specific that the meal you've requested be served buffet style, where guests fill their own plates; or they can be served seated chosing from 3 or 4 different styles of service with varying levels of formality. When you go into the average Americanised Chinese restaurant frex, groups are typically served 'family style' where big bowls of various foods are placed in the middle of the table and guests help themselves. It's not all you can eat either, but the guests may help themselves until the bowls are empty.

When a restaurant undertakes to serve buffet style, they typically will order their product and schedule their prep teams based on a typical business model. So, - I serve between 1,000 and 1,500 guests on a weekend, the average guest will consume about 8 to 10 oz of protein, 6 oz of starchs and 4 or 5 oz of vegetables. These three dishes are most popular right now based on culinary trends and the season. Restaurants are supplied typically twice a week, just after and just before a weekend, fish and produce arrives pretty much daily. They order their product based on their anticipated business, their storage capacity and their guest models. Too much food and they lose money. It goes bad and they have to pitch it. Too little food and they lose guest satisfaction and that costs them money, too.

So, this dish takes 14 hours to cook, and that's not unusual.

The restaurant isn't going to get more product in likely for a couple of days and one doesn't just run up the street for a baron of beef.

They'd have to pay a prep cook overtime or schedule a second shift. Or they'll have to disappoint the majority of their guests simply for the sake of pleasing two people who are in the process of jacking their food cost into the VanAllen belt and are likely (realistically) to fall off the Atkins diet or vacate it in a couple of months anyway when they've reached their desired weight.

I'm all for guest accommodation, but I think it's fucking absurd to assume that any restaurant is offering an All-You-Can-Eat arrangement if they aren't displaying great big obnoxious banners proclaiming as much.

And it's even more absurd to assume that the restaurant should be willing and able to just pull a fully roasted baron of beef out of their ass for a couple of patrons who are dieting.

Since we weren't there, I'll allow as how perhaps some more tactful way of broaching the subject could have been made to the guests in question, but in their shoes, I'd have done the same thing as did the restaurant.

And as to the dieters of the world: I support you, more power to you, I have a great many health-related eating restrictions myself so I know what a herculean effort it can be while dining out. It's always a good idea to find a floor manager or an attendent, - some sort of professional service staff and tell them of your intentions if you're going to deviate for a particular reason from the standard eating patterns.

If you're engaged in seated dining they can convey your list of allergies/diet restrictions/religious proscriptions to the kitchen, - who will likely go out of their way to satisfy your requests.

If you're at a buffet you provide the management opportunity to guide you toward a variety of items that will suit your needs without leaving the remaining guests bereft of opportunity.

[DAGDA56]

13. Chuck-a-rama??

too close to Upchuck-a-rama to be appetizing, I would think. But, then, I don't live in Utah.

[Moderator]

15. Duplicate topic

Continue here -

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=117x3214