The Return of the Buffet

So one of my favorite gourmet spots over the years has been the Great Plaza Buffet in Pacific Beach. Last October, much to my surprise, the restaurant abruptly closed for remodeling that would take them into January. Naturally the project lasted longer than it was supposed to and went into March. Due to the initial crowds, I didn't get a chance to try it until about May or June. It was fine but I wanted to try it again to really get a sense of the changes that were made. And yes, there were changes.

Let's start off very simple. The old restaurant was a dump for all intensive purposes, and then new management bought it over and invested a lot of money to clean it up. They also invested money into finally getting a working website (my virus scanner would alert me of Trojans whenever I'd try to visit the old website). But some programmer clearly jerked them out of their money, because look at this picture that's in the main slider of their site:

The American Beauty tagline is "look closer..."

Look closely at this picture. Something here doesn't make sense.

Do you see it yet? Apparently the Great Plaza Buffet is the only buffet in the United States that also offers an unlimited supply of mint Milano cookies and Goldfish crackers. SERIOUSLY GUYS??? I would LOVE to see how this website was built and how exactly this picture got placed on the main slider. Was it the owner? Was it a programmer? I mean, I'd love to see the butthole who thought out loud "HEY! Let's put a picture of a SUPER MARKET on our restaurant's website! YEAH!!!" When I update my Yelp review I'm going to include this picture.

Anyway. The food is the same for the most part. Let's get right into it:

Okay...something is wrong with this picture too, and it's not the redness of the meat

Yeah, one thing they got rid of was the mashed potatoes which makes about as much sense as a Progressive commercial that doesn't star Flo. How can you have steak but no mashed potatoes? And it's not like they're real, I'm sure they're powdered. So instead we get...French fries. Which were pretty good anyway but still.

The "Asian Sensation" plate

Another change: as far as I can tell they no longer have white rice. Con. But the Teriyaki chicken is now cut into smaller pieces and not served on a skewer. Pro.

The Transition Plate

Another possible change: The steak that they put out seems to be cooked medium rare at the highest. While many people may not like this, I enjoy red meat very much. Pro.

Fruity Tootie

Fruit. Nothing much has changed there.

Dessert

They have a few more dessert offerings but the main difference is the chocolate fountain. They give you marshmallows and skewers and you can dunk whatever you want in there. Naturally when I went to get my dessert they were conveniently out of skewers but whatever. Oh, and here's another waste of their money. They invest thousands in renovations and then when they finally get the menu together, this happens:

I bet Cholocate tastes really good

Seriously? Thousands of dollars invested and you're not even gonna proofread the front of your menu? 

So there are a couple lazy changes that I don't particularly like as noted above. The meals are about $2 more expensive and a drink is not included which is ridiculous. Last night the floors were also filthy. There was a frickin' piece of pineapple that was just sitting there for 20 minutes. Not good. Oh, and the menu also says that they still carry lamb ribs, though I haven't seen that item in the restaurant in years. 

Overall it's still good for what it is. I enjoyed my meal last night and would go back again. But I don't think it's as high up as it once was.