Batching It at the Buffet

The bedroom was quiet. All that could be heard was the occasional car as it drove by Neil’s apartment. He opened his eyes and thought, “It’s sunny. Good.” He skipped his shower, opting for the Saturday special of greasy hair and crumpled clothes fresh from the dirty laundry pile. Neil had two thoughts, food and underwear. He thought and planned, “Kmart is on the way to Grand Buffet. Grand Buffet!” He decided to save the underwear shopping for after the meal.
He pulled into the parking lot and then entered the restaurant and witnessed man’s attempt at recreating heaven on Earth. There were buffet islands everywhere plus a Mongolian grill. “This place looks like the King House. I bet it tastes the same,” he wryly thought. He was seated at a table and sat with his back towards the buffet. He ordered water without sitting and immediately approached the food. He grabbed a plate and begin to serve himself. He filled his plate by taking little portions of six or seven entrees. “When did General Tso’s become a soup,” he wondered as he scooped the floating chicken from its plentiful, dark broth.
  He sat and watched a mother with her kids for a few minutes, then began to eat. “This General Tso’s is watery with a hint of sweetness. The pepper chicken is lacking pepper. Bacon wrapped crab? Not authentic but if it has bacon, I do not care. Lo mein is average as are the green beans, the peanut chicken is sweet, crunchy, and full of peanut taste, but comparatively, it’s average,” he thought as each entrée passed over his tongue.
“…stick your fork in the middle of the noodles and twirl,” a mother said to her daughter.
Neil returned for more, choosing all the fried foods plus a serving of hot and sour soup. “This looks like afterbirth,” he thought as he poured it into a bowl. He perused the Mongolian selections but decided it wasn’t worth the time. “As expected,” he said to himself. He returned to his seat, the nearness of buying new underwear now strangely exciting him. 
Neil chewed and ran the masticated food over his tongue, rinsing his mouth with water after each entrée. Nothing spoke to him, the mother encouraged her child to eat, his tongue hung onto the rinse water with boredom. Neil went for the soup and gave it a stir. It was unappetizingly thick. Someone had gone overboard with the corn starch. He couldn’t force himself to take a bite.
“The food was mostly tasteless and bland. If a dish was lucky, it had a flavor. If a dish was unlucky, it passed over the tongue with less weight than water. This food isn’t bad, it just isn’t good. It suffers from the number of offerings. There seems to be an inverse relationship between the number of entrees offered and how much flavor each dish possesses. The Grand Buffet is large, thus there food is boring,” he wrote in his tiny notebook.
Total cost, $8.50 for a lunch buffet.

If You Go

WHAT: Grand Buffet
WHERE:1624 32 Ave S. Fargo
WHEN: 11am-9:30pm
INFO: (701) 237-2222