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John Cletheroe's
USA and Canada Holiday Hints |
The buffet restaurants, especially popular with senior citizens, offer a huge range of items. Customers serve themselves at long food bars which in most cases can be visited as many times as desired for one fixed price. Some items such as cuts of meat may be limited. A visit to one of these restaurants is highly recommended, if only for the experience. They tend to offer excellent value for money, but you need to be really hungry!
Many of the steak restaurant chains and chains such as Shoney's feature self yourself food bars; you can usually opt to go for steak, steak and salad bar or salad bar alone. I believe that the various seafood restaurant chains tend to be similar.
Pizza restaurants chain such as Pizza Hut tend to offer self yourself salad bars at most of their locations.
The fast food chains Arby's and Wendy's used to offer serve yourself salad bars at most of their locations but sadly these seem to have been phased out in recent years. In some cases the price will vary depending whether you choose "one visit" or "multiple visit".
Many of the casinos in Las Vegas and similar gambling resorts offer very inexpensive and very plentiful food in their restaurants as a means of attracting custom.
In response to my comments above about the North's Chuck Wagon chain, Paul McGhee kindly sent me this information (Oct-98):
I read your article about buffets that you have encountered and you mentioned North's Chuck Wagons.
You are correct, the Chuck Wagons no longer exist. Several of them have been converted into J.J. North's Grand Buffets which operates in Oregon, Washington, Northern California, Utah and Idaho. These restaurants are still operated by the North Family. They have been greatly expanded and improved over the old Chuck Wagon. They offer an expanded salad bar, hot food bar and a dessert bar. They are still moderately priced and do appeal to the senior crowd.
Thank you for reviewing this. I did not want a great regional buffet restaurant to be left out and passed over by the larger national chains that seem to be dominating the market these days.In Apr-04 I received this information about Royal Fork from Paul Gleason:
Royal Fork Buffet is still operating. They have an extensive chain of buffet-style restaurants throughout the upper and northwest US (Iowa, North and South Dakota, Idaho, Alaska, among others) and several locations in various provinces in Canada.
They are privately-owned and do not have a website.
They have two locations in Anchorage, Alaska, where I live. My company is buying one the buildings housing a Royal Fork operation here, and has found what I've just relayed to you.And in August 2004 I received an email message from Liz Barrett, the marketing Manager for the Royal Fork restaurants in Alaska:
Royal Fork is in its 38th year of business getting its first start from an old McDonald's restaurant. At one point there were almost 50 locations across the US and Canada from Washington State to Indiana. Slowly but surely many of our restaurants were sold to other corporations for quite a profit and there are now approximately eleven stores left with plans to open more in the future.Liz confirmed that as yet the chain does not have a web site, but kindly included the following list of Royal Fork locations, accurate as at August 2004:
Alaska:
800 Northway Dr. (near Northway Mall)
Anchorage 99508
(907)276-0089
9220 Old Seward Hwy (near Dimond Center)
Anchorage 99515
(907)522-5600
North Dakota:
4325 13th Ave S. (across from West Acres)
Fargo 58103
(701)282-9539
2800 Columbia Rd (inside Columbia Mall)
Grand Forks 58201
(701)746-0869
1420 24th Ave SW (near Dakota Square Mall)
Minot
(701)838-6581
South Dakota:
4610 W. Empire Place (near Empire Mall)
Sioux Falls
(605)361-1094
Washington State:
Corner of 4th and State (near Marysville Mall)
Marysville
(360)653-1435
2300 Freeway Dr.
Mount Vernon, WA
(360)424-4044
(See note below)
146 Easy Way
Wenatchee
(509) 663-9820
(See note below)
Alberta, Canada:
15061 Stony Plain Road (across from Jasper Gates Square)
Edmonton
(708)484-7025
Manitoba, Canada:
1615 Regent Ave. W (near Kildonian Crossing)
Winnipeg, Manitoba
(204)668-1960
Royal Fork's head office is located in Boise, Idaho, phone number (208)322-5600.
Liz tells me that the Mount Vernon and Wenatchee locations (both in Washington State) are part of a franchised chain, still connected to Royal Fork, but not part of the corporation. They have different menus to the other locations, but otherwise very much the same style as the parent company.
Royal Fork is not an "All You Can Eat Buffet". We cater to many different people and diets. We are a fairly inexpensive family dining restaurant. Desserts, beverages, salads, etc - everything is included in your meal. We believe that the extras shouldn't cost extra. You are allowed to dish up your own meal and if you like what you have you are welcome to come back for some more. There is rarely a moment when we have to ask someone to leave, but it does happen. Some of our menu items are expensive so we have to ration them out to some degree. We do not patrol every table looking for guests whom are abusing our service, however some people just stick out when they have half of a roast on their plate.
I would appreciate it if you could mention that we are not an "All You Can Eat Buffet" on your site. It would help out immensely when our guests are mistaken by this common error.
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Most recently modified 3-Sep-04