A friend of me suggested this buffet place couple years ago and soon it became one of my favorite place to go. The price was cheap (around 21 dollars) and there was so many varieties salad to choose from. Lately I've been pretty disappointed with the place. Well.. it's been a year that I feel the food is not quite there. Not only that the price has been jacked up to as high as 28 dollars ,which of course it slowly climbed up from 21 to 25 to 28 dollars, the salad started to slowly disappear as well. You see more of the 'fruit' instead of salad. Two nights ago we were there,They had jello, banana, melon and oranges on their 'used to be different kinds of salad trays'. They have replaced their chilly soup with corn chowder which tastes mostly like corn with a bunch of potato. The chicken soup has been grossed for a long time for me so I haven't touched it for a while. I do love their mac and cheese there. The mexican rice is way too salty. The broccoli is way over-steamed and Oh god..the cabbage..that poor poor cabbage. I am not sure what it was supposed to be.It just sat there and looked so dry and burnt a bit. Was it supposed to be a dry grilled cabbage?but it looked like it's been boiled and dried out because no one bothered to pick it up. They had a Mongolian stir fry stand for probably couple months before it got replaced to a fresh scrambled egg for breakfast stand. That might be the last time we'd be going there because with 28 dollars, it just feels like it's too much for a buffet that not much good food to choose from anymore.
Old Country buffet is okay. It's not awful, but I agree with you that I wouldn't pay $28.00 to eat there. For that amount, I can go to the Golden Corral or a Hibachi, which is a Chinese buffet in my area. I can get crab legs at the latter, and it's included in the price. Shameful they're (Old Country Buffet) charging more for something they haven't improved upon.
When my children were little and I was a full-time single father, I took them to Old Country Buffet (OCB) every Sunday after Church. (My son pronounced it Buff-ette - and still does, for nostalgia's sake). We loved it. I was there recently and boy, has it gone downhill. Golden Corral is much better these days. But, I see on commercials that OCB has a new CEO and has recommitted to quality and value. I will wait a month and then give it another try. I remember a few years ago, IHOP had become a dingy shadow of itself, still stuck in the '70s - and then was pleasantly surprised to go in with friends and discover it had completely revamped itself. Now I love it again. Not all makeovers succeed, but OCB was once good enough that I am going to give it another chance.
