Today we went to Essex on Coney on M. During the week, as she was walking home from express bus, wife saw that on Mondays and Thursdays, Essex has all you can eat, plus soup, plus drink, for $19.99 per person. For three people, with tax and, for some reason, gratuity, it came out to $75, which is still a good deal.For soup, there was a choice of split pea soup, taken by wife, chicken noodle, taken by Shlomik, matzha ball, meh, and turkey gumbo, taken by moi. The turkey gumbo was awesome and will be my permanent choice for any future visits.
For drink, there was free water and a choice of Coke, Diet Coke and Sprite. In retrospect, I should have asked for a pitcher of juice or tea. We settled for Coke.
The buffet consisted of salad, sweet and sour chicken, beef with noodles, beef with broccoli, French fries, very nice eggrolls, fried rice, rice with mashrooms and some very strange menu choices. By strange, I mean kishka and cholent. What I would like to know is who, in their right mind, would go to a $20 buffet and get cholent and kishka, on Thursday, in a restaurant. Dude, wait a day and a half, or at least get it from the takeout next door. The weird thing, as you can see on the picture, is that both trays were almost empty. We tried everything on this side of the buffet and Shlomik acquiesced to have a couple french fries.
For dessert, we had some layered cake and cheese cake. Not sure if it was part of the deal, though we weren't charged for it. If it wasn't, don't leave stuff lying around where I could get to it, because I will eat it.
All in all, it was a pleasant experience and, while I wouldn't do it every week, once a month is definitely a possibility.
Long live buffets!
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I live near a take out store and on Thursday night it is flocked by Jews in need of cholent. Ditto for Friday afternoon.
That's also eww. If you're already buying, get something normal. Ashkenaz cholent is disgusting.
ReplyDeleteHow hard is it to make your own chulent? Why the need to buy someone else's. Plus it was probably cooked on Tuesday so by the time it comes to Shabbos you would be eating overcooked food that is almost a week old.
ReplyDeletemlevin is right. how lazy do you have to be not make your own chollent? (yeah, i know cleaning the pot after shabbat is a pain.) i'm not a fan of take out, but i know some people like it. but why by things like chollent, gefilte fish, etc. that are so easy (and so much cheaper) to make at home
ReplyDeleteWho knows. And the ashkenaz cholent most take outs have is disgusting and has barely any meat.
ReplyDeleteGefirte fish is also eww.
that's cool, sounds like you had a good time there. Maybe you can make it a Rosh Chodesh ritual. And yea, there's something about Chullent that people always want it no matter what day it is.
ReplyDeleteLion Of Zion: you can use plastic bag inserts in the crock pot so that you don't have to clean it afterwards.