Buffet Review — Atlantic Buffet (Marietta, Ga.)

What's more American than eating a plate of burritos, sushi, pizza, chicken tenders and ice cream at the same time, anyway?

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@JimboX

I believe it was Tocqueville who once said America’s inherent greatness could be found within its churches.

Well, if that fruity Froth were alive today and exploring modern America, surely he’d change his answer to the all-you-can-eat buffet. I mean, is there anything that demonstrates the sheer exceptionalism of the American experience more than being able to eat a virtually endless amount of food while being surrounded by an assortment of really, really fat people of all races and ethnicities?

I’m utterly obsessed with buffets as both a caloric and sociological institution, and thankfully, living in the metro Atlanta area means I’m privy to about a billion of them, ranging from national franchise emporiums of gluttony to bottomless breakfast bars owned by former WCW World Heavyweight ‘rasslin champeens.

Each and every one of them has a certain character and charm all its own, but really, the smorgasbord of foodstuffs is only half the consumer experience. The other side of the equation is the ambiance of the experience, that totally bizarre (and patently American) sensation of eating until you’re about to puke while surrounded by perfect strangers who are also eating until they’re about to puke. Really, going to a buffet in the Deep South is about as close to visiting the Martian bar from Total Recall as any of us are gonna’ get. Sure, we all come for the buckets of fried cheese sticks, butterfly shrimp and brown gravy, but it’s being able to binge and purge while surrounded by people who look like extras from a Frank Henenlotter movie that truly makes the American buffet-going experience such a wonderful rite.

Well, The Atlantic Buffet Sushi and Grill in Marietta represents pretty much everything I love about the local buffet scene and then some.

You’ve got the multiculturalism (drug-addicted white women who weigh 78 pounds breaking bread with 4’8 tall Mexican men, while 300-pound black women from the Caribbean cackle loudly over macaroni and cheese while lanky Cambodian immigrants give them the stank-eye.) Then there’s the deliciously grimy backdrop (it’s situated in a strip mall parking lot that’s half vacant properties and half wandering street urchins named Marley begging you for a loosey.) And, of course, you can’t forget the robust menu (which, as you will soon see, runs the gamut from egg rolls to pizza to enchiladas to ice cream, just like the place was Juwanna Mann’s refrigerator in Friday the 13th Part V.)

But words won’t do us too much good here. Rather, let’s let the photographic evidence speak for its goddamn self, why don’t we?

Before we get into the menu at Atlantic Buffet, I suppose it's only fitting that we'd first examine its aesthetics. The building itself takes up a pretty hefty amount of strip mall space,  maybe about 20,000-30,000 square feet altogether. For a metro-Atlanta buffet in a pretty scummy part of town, it was actually astonishingly clean ... especially considering I stopped by on a weekday afternoon, when you'd expect the crew to be half-assing it like motherfuckers.

As I was saying, the restaurant was way cleaner than anticipated. You couldn't eat off the floors or anything like that, but it was nonetheless nice to walk into the buffet knowing I probably wouldn't get salmonella from simply touching one of their forks. Still, it did have a pretty weird smell to it ...

...which I would attribute to the water fountain located smackdab in the middle of the lobby. You know how fountains at the shopping mall kinda' smell like a mixture of Purex and copper? Well, that is precisely what this one smelled like, too. Granted, you'd have to be pretty close to it to whiff said offending odor, but you have to consider these guys nothing short of ballsy to put an adornment that close to the condiment section.

As far as the architecture, it had a weird seafood restaurant vibe to it, with just a few hints here and there of an Asian influence (i.e., that giant fucking Chinese star behind the cash register.) But then again, with all those jugs of vinegar and paprika laying around everywhere, it also had just a mild country buffet atmosphere going on, too, which — considering the shifting demographics of the metro Atlanta region — can't help but seem just a smidge symbolic.

The furniture is exactly what you would think it would be. Heavily used, slightly tattered, with chipped wooden tables and pleather chairs no doubt caving in from many a buffet eater's suddenly engorged asshole. Still, the floors were a lot cleaner than I'd expect, and however scrubbed off the tables last did a pretty good job ... there were no signs of vomit or discarded wasabi sauce anywhere in my dining area.

Don't even ask what was in the giant hand sanitizer bottle on the left. I didn't check, and I didn't want to check, but I can promise you it wasn't hand sanitizer. Along those same lines, I can only imagine the plebs who walk in and just assume the BBQ and honey mustard pumps are for ketchup and regular mustard and wind up jamming their mozzarella sticks in the "wrong" condiment. I bet they really feel bad about themselves afterwards, huh?

Interestingly enough, only the bottom rack of the pizza containment unit contained pizza (if I remember correctly, it was sausage ... so random, I know.) The things on top were garlic rolls, underneath those were those spinach things you get at Greek restaurants and below that was a different kind of garlic bread ... this one, a little less cooked than the ones on top. Needless to say; these things weren't exactly my favorite selections at the buffet.

Even around 3 p.m. the good stuff was starting to get picked clean. I can't remember what kind of fish they were serving, but apparently it was pretty popular with the locals, since that shit just couldn't stay in stock. As a general rule I don't eat oysters even from ritzy restaurants, so naturally, I didn't even bother with the half-shelled offerings here. Oh, and if you're wondering what's on the plate? It's either a chicken dumpling or a prop from that old David Cronenberg movie eXistenZ. I'll let you decide for yourself which is which.

See, I wasn't bullshitting you about that stuff going fast. These patrons were literally leaving nothing but water behind, which sorta begs the question ... why isn't anyone touching their mac and cheese, exactly?

On the left we have some sort of seafood crabcake/salmon clusterfuck and on the right ... uh, a pot roast, I want to say? I'm not really a big fan of either dishes, so I opted to skip the taste test here ... but not before taking some photographic evidence of the culinary crime scene.

Nothing says "modern America" like burritos at an Asian buffet in a neighborhood that's 80 percent black. What's even more surprising, though? Those things were actually surprisingly decent ... and way more flavorful than anything you'd get at Del Taco, for damn sure.

Now we're getting to the good stuff. Greasy asparagus, Mongolian beef, sesame chicken ... all legitimately yummy Chinese or Japanese or whatever fucking country it's supposed to come from. No jokes here — this fare is simply too delicious to make fun of, so let's keep chugging along, why don't we?

The red stuff is a thick, gooey, chili sauce. The yellow stuff that looks suspiciously like a bucket of piss? Well, that's actually something even grosser ... liquefied butter. I literally gained ten pounds and heart disease just smelling this stuff right here.

From left: cheese quesadillas, greasy zucchini and sauteed mushrooms. I'm not sure which country has that kind of cuisine, but hot fuck, do I want to visit it someday.

All these are raw ingredients reserved for the hibachi chefs. Alas, they're also out in the open and easily accessible to any and all wandering buffet customers ... perhaps you can see where there might be some lawsuit-inducing confusion here. Strangely enough, this seems to be a common practice in Asian buffets throughout Atlanta and its hinterlands; in fact, I don't think I've ever been to a thematic buffet that didn't have the raw ingredient buckets placed absurdly close to the normal buffet fodder.

Speaking of raw food, here's the sushi bar. Long story short, all of this stuff is fucking tremendous and if you have taste buds, you'll probably love it. Hey ... it might be worth the stomach cancer.

This is what I like to call the nominal dessert section. I mean, who the fuck considers gelatin and grapes and cut up bananas with grape shit smeared on them desserts? Thankfully, the good shit was right around the corner ...

... that's an entire fridge of single-wrapped brownies and red velvet cake, kids. I'm not going to tell you precisely how many of those things I had, but I can promise you this: it was more than 17.

But that wasn't the extent of their sweet stuff, though. They also had a cavalcade of cookies (which really isn't that uncommon), but this was the first time I've ever been to a buffet that not only served rice crispy treats, but several different variations. Of course, they didn't have the General Mills Monster Cereals Gangbang Special, but then again, it wasn't Halloweentime when I ate there, either.

As for the ice cream, it was your usual assortment. You had vanilla, rocky road, chocolate and cookies and creme. The stuff was really hard, though, and the scoop was way too small to spoon anything out efficiently without getting your hands in the congealed dairy treat. And no, I have no clue what kind of brands they were, so don't even bother asking.

Whatever it was, though, the ice cream was pretty solid. After cramming down God knows how many milligrams of sodium and downing about three cups of instant coffee during the affair (that's a good trick for frequent buffet patrons — not only does the java curb your appetite a little, it also prevents you from filling up your belly with other liquids, thus allowing you to scientifically cram more food in there) I was in dire need of something cold and sugary. You think I'm joking, but according to my FitBit my heart was hitting about 129 beats per minute just trying to process the maddening surfeit of food I just ate, and even in the middle of freaking winter I was sweating like a whore in church. So, yeah, asides and shit; I really liked the cookies and creme ice cream and you probably will, too.

Let's take a closer look at my own individual dishes, why don't we? The sushi bar is the best place to start, naturally, and as you can no doubt see for yourself, these guys have a TON of variety. The fried thingies with the boom-boom sauce on it was my favorite, but the little wanton packet filled with shredded fish wasn't bad either; that, and I goddamn loved their red pepper paste ... that stuff is just plain exquisite.

And here's a closer look at those aforementioned pork dumplings and Greek spinach buns. They may not look very appetizing in photograph form, but I really enjoyed both offerings, considering they presented two totally diametric gustatory experiences; one was greasy and chewy, the other was flaky and buttery. That's a hell of a combination, really — maybe not "buddy cop movie" duo good, but quite good nonetheless.

Outside of the burrito and cheese-stuffed shrooms, I have no idea what the hell any of this stuff is supposed to be. I think there's some shrimp and chicken fingers in there, though. That orange and yellow thing in the middle, though, could be anything ... and I do mean anything.

Grilled (read: oily as fuck) asparagus buried under more shrimp, Mongolian beef and sesame chicken. If your stomach doesn't start rumbling just looking at this, congratulations on being a.) a vegetarian, b.) a pussy or c.) come to think of it, there's not really much of a difference between a.) and b.), actually.

And we wrap up our whirlwind tour of the buffet's cuisine with the usual subjects; coconut shrimp, crab rangoon and an egg roll. Not that you really need me to tell you this, but this stuff really sticks to your ribs, and I literally gained five pounds over the course of one 60-minute eatin' (I weighed myself before and after, so that is mathematically indisputable, motherfucker.) Even better, I only spent about $8.99 on the whole meal, which is a steal, really, considering I easily ate at least that much in cheese quesadillas alone.

Oh, one last thing. They didn't have a game room with any coin-ops, but they did have a whole bunch of gumball toy dispensers, all of which looked basic as shit. I mean, the NFL stickers are kinda' cool, I guess, but who in the fuck wants a temporary tattoo of a pizza? Ditto for those crappy bouncy balls on the bottom left corner. Heads up, parents: if your kid is entertained by that stuff for more then two minutes, he officially has autism.

I'm not sure what the buffet owner's name is, but the guy behind the waving golden cat was a pretty nice chap who didn't give one fuck that I was taking pictures of everything like some sort of health inspector/paparazzi for burritos. In fact, I was so enchanted and enamored by my experience at The Atlantic Buffet that I even left them a huge tip of exactly $2.12, which is probably the most I've left at any restaurant so far in 2018. Hey, you folks deserve that change, and then some.

Interestingly enough, they also have a sister restaurant called — what else? — Pacific Buffet, which is about ten miles away in Kennesaw. That one I've been to many times in my youth, and while it's a bit ritzier buffet, I still think I prefer The Atlantic. For one thing, it's considerably larger and the menu has more nuance, but really, it's the atmosphere of the place that drew me in. It just feels like some sort of urban sprawl utopia, a place that could be either 20 years into the future or 20 years behind the times. Yes, it's a great place to eat General T'so chicken until your stomach begins to rupture, but it's an even better place to people watch. The animal kingdom has the watering hole, but in the land of man, we've got the line for more mayonnaise. And hers, indeed, is a sight to behold.

It didn't take too long to find The Atlantic's Yelp page, and their Facebook page is right here if you are curious. If you're ever in the 'burbs of Atlanta, I'd wholeheartedly recommend giving these guys a try. It's totally unpretentious, no-frills, straight-to-the-point, gimmick-free, kinda'-grimy-but-not-too-grimy buffet dining in its purest essence, and I'd love to dine there at least once a week, if I could. 

Except, you know, if I did that I'd probably weigh 400 pounds and die at age 38. Which kinda' begs the question; if these people literally live off this shit, how come you NEVER see fat people working at an Asian buffet? Methinks there's something major going on there that ought to be investigated. I mean, seriously ...

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I Tried Cici's New Deep Dish Pizzas ...

... and I survived, but just barely. (Also, because you asked for it ... MOTHERFUCKIN' ARBY'S MEAT MOUNTAIN REVIEWED!)

By: Jimbo X

JimboXAmerican@gmail.com

@Jimbo___X

Buffets, just as a general concept, hold a special place in my heart. There's just something so idiosyncratically American about being able to waltz into a restaurant, slap $10 on the counter and subsequently eat a smorgasbord of random foodstuffs until you barf, shit yourself or get thrown out of the building by management super pissed you were able to eat an entire metal bucket of jumbo shrimp all by your lonesome. These places are literally monuments to gluttony, our secular synagogues and mosques dedicated to our one true lord and savior, unabashed, brass balled over-consumption. Go ahead, I'll actually give you permission to read that festering Internet shit hole sometimes called Reddit this one, very special occasion - you NEED to bear witness to these tales of buffet-inspired lunacy as soon as possible.

While all buffet places may thematically be the same, no two all-you-can-eat dens of obesity are identical ... yes, even if they are chain restaurants, like Sweet Tomatoes or Golden Corral. Each one has a local taste (or is it taint?) that makes it unlike any other buffet place in the country. Sure, Billy Bob's Home Cooking Buffet Catfish-A-Rama and Happy Lucky Dragon All-U-Can-Eat Good Time Asian Express are going to have a very unique style, sensibility and atmosphere, but you don't necessarily have to travel to the one-and-done, perennially 60-to-70-on-the-food-score holes in the wall to experience buffets with a distinct personality. Indeed, all you really have to do is to hit up the local Cici's Pizza, and you'll get a firmer grasp of the local sociocultural milieu than ANY travel brochure could ever possibly offer.

For those of you not in the know, Cici's - as the name would imply - is a national all-you-can-eat pizza chain. The gimmick is pretty straightforward. You walk on in, pay $5.99 plus tax, and you can eat carbohydrates until you come *this close* to dying. Of course, they also have a salad bar, but fuck that. It's only good for adding black olives and banana peppers on your double Alfredo sauce noodles and extra pepperoni and tater tot pie - and maybe slathering your garlic bread in thousand island dressing, but that's only if you're already TLC reality program fat.

Now historically, I've always preferred rival pizza buffet place Stevie B.'s, which has more or less the same gimmick but better overall food (their loaded potato pizza HAS to be one of the greatest things mankind has ever created - plus, their salad bar has chickpeas AND they usually have a soft-serve ice cream machine, too.) The problem there is that the overall quality of those chains fluctuate WILDLY from neighborhood to neighborhood. Every single time I try out a new buffet place, the tomato sauce tastes just a little bit different - sometimes its thicker and pulpier, other times its way soupier and more watery - and the crust can run the gamut from chewy and garlicky all the way to salty as fuck and nearly burnt to a crisp. That inconsistency really miffs me, because it makes every trip to the buffet a crap shoot. It's either going to be good Stevie B.'s or bad Stevie B.'s, and there's pretty much no in-between. In that, I think Cici's might gain a structural advantage, because although "good" Stevie B.'s always outdoes their pizza, at least their food has a consistent taste and texture from restaurant to restaurant. No matter where you go, the pineapple and ham pizza is always going to taste more or less the same, and no matter where you go, the brownies topped with confectioner's sugar is always going to taste the same. And as a bonus, the Cici's buffet is usually anywhere from 50 cents to two dollars cheaper than the Stevie B.'s buffet, which I think is an agreeable enough amount to pay for food you really don't expect to be anything better than "just all right." 

Which brings us to Cici's great big marketing campaign for Spring 2017 - the unveiling of their newfangled "Deep Dish Pizza." Now, you may be wondering why I'm putting "Deep Dish Pizza" in quotation marks. Well, you'll find out soon enough, but before we talk about the pizza itself, we've got to talk about this particular Cici's I visited. 

For whatever reason, this one is pretty much the ONLY Cici's within 50 miles of my place (conversely, I know of at least five Stevie B.'s within a 15 mile radius, and that ISN'T me being a snide, hyperbolic cocksucker.) Incidentally, it was one of my go-to-hangouts when I was in college, since it was a.) very, very close by the house I was living in at the time and b.) being broke as shit, their then $4.99 buffet was often the only thing standing between me and death by emaciation.

Since it was a buffet and the owners kinda' expected you to lollygag around and take at least an hour or two to leave, I used the local Cici's as something of a makeshift library, which came with the added benefit of giving me an opportunity to carbo-load like a motherfucker. Hey, I'm not gonna' lie - when money was REALLY tight, I wasn't above sneaking in some tupperware in a backpack and taking home a couple of slices with me. I almost always brought a notebook and a mechanical pencil with me, and used the non-stop cheese, pasta and sauce binge to plan out my week, do some creative writing, knockout homework and generally map out all the stuff I wanted/needed to do. So I guess you could say those trips to Cici's back in the day were just as much about strategizing my own personal life as it was devouring garlic knots and mozzarella bread. I really can't count up the hours I spent at this particular buffet, dreaming about one day being out of college and being my own man and having a career and not being poor anymore. It's going to sound stupid, I know, but that gives it a certain sentimental value that few other locales in my life have.

And this was the first time I've been inside the place in at least three years ... maybe closer to four, now that I think about it. Of course, the building looked more or less the same - it had the same seriously-eat-and-get-the-fuck-outta-here-yellow walls, the same pastel plastic dishes (a nice bonus, since most of the Stevie B.'s around me have long-since switched to these shitty little metal pans to save money) and I'm pretty sure they haven't changed the arcade at all. There were more TV monitors than I remembered and the logo had been really gay-i-fied, but beyond that? It was just they way my half-starved, struggling junior ass remembered it - right down to the tandem of a huge, Khalil Mack-looking black dude and the most school-shootery white kid you've ever seen tag-teaming the noodle refill tray. 

Unless your eyesight was really, really bad, you prolly didn't miss the giant placards outside heralding the arrival of the new "Deep Dish Pizzas." Advertisements for the shit was pretty much everywhere, inside and outside the restaurant. There were static cling decals on the window. Giant cardboard cutout displays next to the cash register. You even had a couple of those little two-sided paper pyramid thingies on every table. And, of course, don't expect to amble through the rest of the lunch line without first getting a big eyeful of "Deep Dish Pizza" propaganda. 

Oh, that's right - they literally put stickers all over the sneeze guard to let you know "hey, did you know we have 'Deep Dish Pizzas' now? No, seriously, look ... THEY ARE RIGHT FUCKING HERE, NOW TRY SEVERAL OF THEM."

To begin, I apologize for the shitty quality, but I had to use my phone since the aforementioned Khalil Mack stunt double armed with a pizza cutter was giving me the stink eye whenever it looked like I was yanking my regular camera out near the buffet line. So, for those of you that need the caption, from left to right we're working with GARLIC PARMESAN, JALAPENO CHEDDAR and, uh, DEEP DISH PIZZA. Yeah, that's right, they couldn't even come up with a proper gimmick for the last one. What's important for you to know is that the first two have special spices baked inside the crust, while the eponymous "DEEP DISH PIZZA" has, well, more toppings than the other two, I guess? 

Now, before we hop into the proper review, let it first be stated that I didn't expect top of the line, Aurelio's IS Pizza-caliber stuff here. Hell, I wasn't even expecting stuff on par with Little Caesar's Deep! Deep! Dish pizza, which is actually really damn good considering the price point. To be honest, I expected the food to be kinda' bad, but I had NO idea what I was about to hop into. Very, very rarely do you see me hand out a negative food review, but trust me - Cici's Pizza deserves ALL the piss and vinegar I'm about to give 'em on these fuckin' things.
  

Alright, to begin, we're going to start with the Garlic Parmesan ones. From the get-go, you can see for yourself the intrinsic problem with Cici's take on deep dish pie (which, as I have stated numerous times before, is prolly my favorite food of all-time.) Essentially, this stuff isn't Deep Dish Pizza at all - it's just the regular Cici's pizza, only cut into squares with slightly more breading than usual. Sorry, kids, but that does NOT a deep dish pizza make. At the absolute bare minimum, for something to qualify as "deep dish" the crust has to be at least six inches deep, sopping in butter, and covered with no less than THREE jugs of marinara, with approximately four whole blocks of mozzarella melted on top of it. Like I said, that's the LEAST you can do to even meet the criteria for ho-hum "deep dish," so this shit right here is just pathetic with a capital "P." Calling this a "deep dish" pie is like you and your two best friends hitting the road tomorrow night and presenting yourself as the original founding members of The Sugarhill Gang. 

Let's count up the big infrastructural mistakes made here, why don't we? One, there's too much bread. Second, there is nowhere near enough sauce. Third, the lack of cheese is not only disappointing, it's kind of disturbing. Fourthly, look at those edges - motherfuckers are nearly burnt slap up. Fifth, those sliced tomatoes are the worst fucking things in the whole world. Sixth, why so few meatballs, guys? Seventh, how ghetto is the seasoning on this thing? They just sprinkled some oregano and literally poured some garlic powder on it and said "yep, good enough." And eightly, you can't see it, but the inside of the crust has a pitiful sprinkling of basil and even more garlic powder. Not only does this thing suck out loud at being an alleged "deep dish pizza," it really shouldn't even call itself a REGULAR Garlic Parmesan pizza. And you know the really, really awful thing? This is actually the best of three pizzas Cici's is trying to shove down our gullets. 

Next up, we've got the default "deep dish," and it's somehow shittier than its already shitty cousin the Garlic Parmesan pizza. It's more or less the exact same thing as the first one, only with the diced tomatoes out and a couple of piss-ant slices of pepperoni and Canadian bacon in. 

Pretty much everything bad you can say about our first pizza, you can say about this one, too. It has the same crappy seasonings, only this time WITHOUT anything baked inside the bread. Furthermore, this thing had virtually NO SAUCE on it whatsoever, which is just about the worst thing you can do with a deep dish pizza besides stick your dick in it. Even worse, the whole damn thing just tasted abnormally salty, like they dumped a little bit too much Morton's into the dough mix. Regardless, this is NO deep dish pizza, and even as regular old pizza cut up into mismatched rectangles (just take a look at that scrawny little motherfucker in the middle!), it is woefully, WOEFULLY substandard stuff. But, again, as bad as it may be, I saved the absolute worst for last.

Alright, this jalapeno shit right here was a bigger disaster than 9/11, and that's probably a wild overstatement, but whatever. There's literally one or two jalapenos per slice, so it's like eating a big, cheddary cyclops with a mild Mexican accent. The cheese itself is burned so badly the pizza might as well be cosplaying as Freddy Krueger. And there is absolutely NO SAUCE TO BE FOUND WHATSOEVER. This shit wouldn't cut it as a Lunchables meal, let alone an authentic deep dish pizza. But no, we haven't gotten to the absolute WORST thing about this sorry piece of shit just yet. 

My good, the salt. There is so much of the stuff inside the crust that it's pretty much like eating a piece of cornbread with a slice of American cheese melted atop it. The speckles of jalapenos inside the crust are really the only redeeming thing about this god awful excuse for pizza, and really, the only thing saving it from being nothing more than an edible doorstop. 

Just take a look at that. How long do you think that thing's been sitting underneath one of the chain's shitty-ass heat lamps? An hour? Two? Well, I cans safely say this is the stalest pizza I've ever paid money for. If I didn't know any better, I would've assumed it was the very first batch they made that morning, and since nobody touched the shit, they just keep it sitting out there for the next four hours. Now, ya'll know me, and ya'll know I can eat some REALLY suspicious shit. But this? This took things to an entirely different level. I never, EVER leave food behind, but I could only stomach one of those jalapeno cheddar abominations. It really did taste like something you would buy at Big Lots, and it may very well be the WORST pizza I've ever eaten in my life. The really sad thing? If Cici's actually gave a fuck and threw in some blue-cheddar sauce and some chipotle chicken chunks, it could've been some really good eatin'. But noooooo, they reckoned if you just melted some colby atop a giant piece of bread and dropped ONE jalapeno on it, people would accept it. Well Cici's, let me tell you something: I've eaten some remarkably substandard novelty foods over the years, but this stuff was just TOO terrible even for ME. This is the fast food equivalent of being the whore too nasty even the dude who kinda likes being peed on won't tap it. Ya'll motherfuckers ought to be ashamed - damn, DAMN ashamed - for serving this crap to real people. A-S-H-A-M-E-D.

Dat shit was so nasty, I immediately went back to Stevie B.'s and ordered a pineapple, potato and bacon pizza just to get the taste of failure out my mouth.

Well, historically, I guess Cici's abysmal "Deep Dish Pizzas" are significant. I mean, it is the shittiest thing I've ever put in my mouth, and that includes a turd I once ate when I was three. Like I was saying earlier, I really had to trash a fast food place for the quality of their foods, but sweet Jesus, this stuff literally stunned me with its inherent awfulness. Pretty much any Mama Celeste pizza will outdo this one, and although it's been awhile, I'd probably pick Mr. P's cardboard tasting junk over these three buffet abortions. I'm not too keen on class action lawsuits, but Cici's had to have broken some kinda federal law by marketing this shit as "deep dish" pizza. Eating this stuff is like walking into a car dealership, buying a Honda Fit and then having the dealer take a big fat shit on your shoes and start running. In either scenario, they've got your money, and all you've got is doo-doo.

C'mon, Cici's, we all know you can do better than this. After all, it'd be pretty hard not to. Alas, as long as you keep conning innocent, supportive patrons with your fake deep dish nonsense, I hereby advise ALL Cici's customers to protest their fraudulent behavior by taking a water cup and filling that shit with everything EXCEPT water. Mix and match the Hawaiian Punch with the Diet Dr. Pepper like it MEANS something to you, guldarnit; 'cause until these heartless, cash-grabbing buffet places learn we ain't taking their bullshit no more, they're just going to keep deep dishing us with NOTHING but disappointment.

SPECIAL BONUS GOOD TIME EXTRA SUPER DUPER FEATURE:

Because YOU demanded it, I review Arby's MEAT MOUNTAIN!

I promised myself I wouldn't try this damn thing, but because I got at least three or four emails from people asking me "hey, old Jimbo, good buddy, when are you going to review that there Meat Mountain from Arby's?" I suppose I had no choice but to heed the cattle call of fast food satire Internet populism. You wanted my thoughts on Meat Mountain, then by golly, you're going to GET my thoughts on Meat Mountain.

The premise of Meat Mountain is pretty much the ultimate carnivorous dope-smoker munchies nosh. Under two greasy ass buns, Arby's decided to chuck in ALL of the following ingredients: angus beef, cheddar cheese, chicken tenders, corned beef, pepper bacon, roast beef, roast turkey, smoked brisket, smoked ham AND Swiss cheese. So basically, they just emptied out an entire fucking barnyard and said "here you go, fat people, enjoy."

Yes, this thing is a hulking beast, no doubt. At $10 a softball-sized sammich, you're definitely getting enough food to fill you up for an entire day, maybe even two of 'em depending on your body's natural resistance to sodium. Mine was so massive they had to wrap it up in wax paper, and the main chef looked legitimately terrified while assembling the burger. Take it from a guy who, in the past, has actually ENJOYED giant ass hamburgers with hot dog weenies and a handful of potato chips on them and Pizza Hut pies with pigs-in-a-blanket fried into the crust - this is the most astounding example of fast food absurdity/our culture's normalization of obesity I've ever seen. 

Just gawping at this thing you can tell whether or not you would enjoy it as a novelty one-and-done meal or vomit after three bites (and trust me, actually wrapping your mouth around this behemoth require some effort, if not the ability to temporarily unhinge your jawbone.) Not all of the divergent meats converge that well together (the tastes and textures of semi-spicy bacon and watery, soggy slivers of ham are, perhaps unsurprisingly, gustatorily combative) BUT as long as you have a penchant for your usual Arby's fix-ins, you prolly won't be too grossed out by the orgy of dead animals. Well, that is, until I reminded you what you're eating IS an orgy of dead animals, essentially. 

Unless you have the oral muscles of a championship competitive eater or a porn star specializing in fellatio, there's no way you can eat this thing like a "normal" sandwich. Basically, I had to play lunchtime Jenga with Meat Mountain, carefully chipping out "rows" of meats so I could sink my teeth into the burger. I had to knock out about three layers of meat before I could eat the sandwich, missionary style. Your natural penchant for jamming sandwiches/penis down your throat hole will determine whether you'll need to pull out more layers of meat or less layers of meat. And if you are an attractive female between the ages of 18-34 who can eat this thing whole right out the wrapper (and you don't weigh in excess of 300 pounds), please, do send me your photo and contact information. Y'know, for social science purposes and shit. 

The big problem with the sandwich isn't the fact that it contains more than 1,000 calories, though. The real Achilles' heel of this fucker - as both a fast food delicacy and health risk - is just how much salt is packed into it. As in, we're talking more than 3,000 milligrams of sodium, which is easily twice the recommended daily allowance of said NaCl. Considering this thing has more salt in it than the Pacific Ocean, naturally, it's going to dry your throat out very fast. Which means you're almost certainly going to need a little bit of lubricant to help you scarf this sucker down ... 

... and since we're combining all the Arby's meat ingredients into a singularity, why not mix all of the proprietary Arby's sauces into a goulash of goop, too? What you're seeing here is a the confluence of the eponymous Arby's Sauce, horse radish sauce, three pepper sauce, honey mustard sauce and ketchup into one special dipping bucket. Naturally, I call the fusion product "Meat Mountain Sauce," and - much to my surprise - it didn't taste anywhere near as horrific as I'd imagined (indeed, it tasted like a fairly sugary barbecue sauce.) Then again, the evil eye from the cashier woman as I pumped all this shit into one paper thimble MORE than made up for that, I reckon.

So, all in all, Meat Mountain is a pretty impressive little spectacle food that you should probably try at least once if you a.) really, really enjoy quirky consumer experiences or b.) are so fat, eating 1,000 calories in a single meal is actually a decrease from your usual lunch time diet. I can't say it's truly exquisite eating, but it was much better than I thought it was going to be; thus, if you have a healthy admiration of ephemeral, out-there marketing stunts or an unhealthy admiration of mutant fast food offerings that the F.D.A. was clearly bribed in order to advertise, I say what do you have to lose except $10 and maybe a few months of your life expectancy when you're a senior citizen?

Oh, and in case you are wondering, there are already customers out there finding ways to make this thing EVEN fatter as a stand-alone product. And it looks to me there's ample room to get some onion rings on that sumbitch, and possibly some curly fries, too. Hell, we might as well throw some venison on there and get the sandwich apocalypse over and done with, shouldn't we? I wouldn't be shocked one bit if this isn't the last we see of Meat Mountain; indeed, considering how absurdly fat the American mind is getting these days, it may indeed be but just the base we're looking at right here ...

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I Went To An All-You-Can Eat Buffet Owned By Scott Steiner

Holla' if you hear me ... I'm about to puke scrambled eggs all over Big Poppa Pump's parking lot. 

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo__X

It's not everyday that you learn that a former WCW world heavyweight pro-wrestling champion opened up a buffet restaurant in your neck of the woods. But sometimes, fortune, she doth smile upon you. 

Living in the northern environs right above Atlanta, I noticed a few months ago that there appeared to be a brand new, totally remodeled Shoney's restaurant around exit 277 off Interstate 75. Now, this is interesting, because there was a long-abandoned Shoney's just sitting there for months and months. That someone - anyone - would invest the financial resources in literally bulldozing the eatery to build a whole new eatery on top of it seems just about the weirdest thing anyone could do with the property that the Acworth, Ga. zoning commission would've authorized.

Well, much to my surprise, I recently learned that someone was none other than WCW stalwart Scott Steiner, who spent 80 percent of his career playing some guy with a mullet before discovering ster...I mean, developing a new muscle-building-intensive training regiment...and becoming this beefed up dude with blond hair that wore a chain mail headdress for no discernible reason whatsoever and once tried to kayfabe rape Vince McMahon's daughter on live television. Oh, and when I say he "bulldozed the property," I goddamn mean exactly what I say ... he was indeed the person responsible for using diesel-fueled, mechanical death to pound the old buffet restaurant into rubble. 

So, a couple of months back, the all new Big Poppa Pump Shoney's opened its doors, complete with a grand opening spectacle in which the man himself - as well as a host of other pro 'rasslin has-beens like Jeff Jarrett and Kevin Nash - showed up to the rechristen the franchise. After driving by the thing for the better part of a year, my curiosity finally got the better of me, and I decided to try out this newfangled buffet place, to see if it really was worthy of, ahem, a title shot. 

All right, so I am going to assume that about half of the people reading this already know what Shoney's is, and really have no need for any background info. Alas, I also expect those of you from locales without a big Shoney's presence to have a lot of questions, so to catch those out of the loop up to speed, basically, the restaurant is a sit-down buffet "assemble-your-own-heart-attack" chain, not unlike something like Golden Corral. Granted, the buffet itself - while the main attraction - is a bit downplayed for more festive menu fare. So yeah, you can go in there and savage the buffet line like a neanderthal if you want, but if you want a big meaty steak or a huge honking hamburger, you can also sit there and politely wait for someone to carry out your made-to-order meal like a normal human being. But hey, where's the fun in such a banal dining experience?

Before you get into the exterior of what will forever be known as "The Scott Steiner Shoney's," I reckon you first have to describe its surroundings. It's in a really bad place, traffic-wise, since there is no real outlet accessible for motorists coming southbound or northbound from the interstate. Indeed, once you take the I-75 off-ramp, you have to drive quite a bit down Highway 92 before you can find a decent U-turn spot so you can actually enter the parking lot. It's wedged in between a Waffle House and a Hardee's, with a huge hunting store right across the road. There's some economic development stuff going on behind it (hotels? warehouses? office complexes?) but for the time being, it's mostly just dust and debris in the background. As for the patrons, it was your usual mix of weather-beaten Vietnam vets, late-evening church people and scruffy day laborers. Literally everyone in the building - my tongue-ring-sporting waitress included - dipped out at least once while I was there to get their Marlboro fix in between gnashing down plates of scrambled egg and grits. 

As soon as you walk in, you are bombarded by all of the expected "'Merica" iconography, right down to the giant-assed American flag with the corporate restaurant logo emblazoned upon it next to the cooks' 10 foot-by-6-foot cubby hole in front of the buffet line. There are a ton of plasma screen TVs all over the place, and a full bar, complete with a giant jug of what appears to be bagels floating in a translucent blue fluid. I honestly have no idea what  that's supposed to be, so if anyone out there can fill me in, please, do send an email. The general layout of the place was a little weird. You had a "U" shaped row of booths flanking the perimeter of the dining area, but there was this long row of standalone tables stacked side-by-side creating this buffer between the diners and the buffet trays, with these (comparatively) narrow choke points on the sides that pretty much put your ass in the face of somebody downing a key lime pie every time you get up for a new plate. And, as anyone who has ever been to a buffet in the Deep South can tell you, considering the awe-inspiring girth of many restaurant regulars, at some point you just KNOW some lard-ass has gotten stuck in between tables here. 

As soon as I was seated, the very first thing Miss Tongue Ring said to me was "do you wanna' try any pancakes tonight?" Keep in mind, this is before she asked me what I wanted to order as a main entree, and even before she asked me what I wanted to drink. Meanwhile, the old dude behind me - whose wife, presumably, didn't give a shit - kept calling her "honey," because yeah, in old Dixie, there's a fine line (and sometimes, none at all) between old fashioned camaraderie and blatant sexism.

Unbeknownst to me, the evening I showed up was apparently breakfast night, which is totally cool with me because I'm never really out and about eating stuff until at least 6 p.m., anyway. The buffet line itself was a good 15 feet, with your standard salad bar on the far left end, some chilled desserts (mostly, a bunch of pudding and iced cantaloupe slices) and two mystery soups I didn't have the time/available stomach space to sample. The main breakfast itinerary took up three full sections, which are broken down, Noah's ark style, in the paragraphs below.

First up, we have our heavy proteins. You've got your standard scrambled eggs (enhanced by a heaping helping of nacho cheese), sausage links, grits, chopped up home fries, sauteed mushrooms, chicken-fried steak (a Southern cuisine staple, for those of you not in the know) and the prerequisite made-from-scratch biscuit, which could be slathered in either your basic creamy milk gravy or a more savory one containing chunks of crumbled up sausage. So, yeah, not a bad little offering at all right here. 

Round two was a little more diverse. You've got your breaded and deep fried chicken tenders and maple-soaked bacon to meet your protein needs, but everything else is decisively starchier. For one thing, the section included a large bucket of Spanish rice, which I've never really considered a "breakfast-type" of food, but whatever. Annex to that an entirely different kind of grits (it was way mushier than the kind I tried earlier) and a confectioner's sugar-drenched fried French toast thingy and you definitely had all the makings for a carb-induced headache. 

But the dessert section is where things get really out of hand. Here, there's not even an attempt to justify the inherent unhealthiness of what's on the docket; you've got sugar-encrusted fruit jam-crepes, super-duper-sugary apple cobbler, a sponge-cake drenched in molasses and a gigantic, sugar-coated fried triangle that I'm pretty sure is type 2 diabetes distilled into its purest organic form. Of course, Shoney's tried to make you feel a little better by including some sliced up pineapple in the tray, but it's a ... pun, somewhat intended ... fruitless effort. If you're even sniffing around stuff like this, it's pretty much a given that you don't give a fuck no more about having all of your appendages, and no puny little slice of Adventure Island power-up is going to convince you to change your obese ways, neither.

Ultimately, I was able to put down five plates before my endocrine system started shutting down. In hindsight, it doesn't seem like that much food, but that's probably because there was a (relatively) smaller amount of individual foods being offered. When you go to an Asian buffet where they've got out 30 different types of macaroni and 94 exquisitely made sushi rolls, yeah, you tend to rationalize eating an insane amount of food, but when there are just a dozen or so things you kept devouring, it's easy to see how your brain might try and fool you into thinking you aren't as big of a glutton as you actually are. Still, I was utterly fucked up for two days afterwards, completely sick to my stomach and having to drink water like a half-starved camel for 48 hours afterwards. Regardless, the all-breakfast induced food high was probably worth it - for just $8.99, I'm pretty damn sure I ate at least $40 worth of sausage alone, and really, there's no way to go to bed feeling bad about that, for sure. 

The one thing that really struck me about the visit was the complete and utter lack of any kind of Scott Steiner iconography anywhere. I mean, I didn't expect Scott himself to waltz on out and give somebody a Steiner Screwdriver for leaving behind a shitty tip or Frankensteiner the barmaid for being too slow or cut a promo about how he wants to kill Hulk Hogan again next to the ranch dressing dipper, but one would expect to see at least a photo of the franchise operator somewhere. Indeed, unless you really had your ear on the ground when it comes to ex-professional 'rassler entrepreneurial endeavors, there's no way you would have suspected a former WCW champ owned the place. 

As a pure dining experience, I think it is safe to say I have experienced way better at other buffets. It would've been nice to have tried their proper dinner buffet (and, pending I am in the area for some abstruse reason, I may indeed do just that), but the breakfast slate, overall, was rather unremarkable. Now, don't get too mad at me, Mr. Big Bad Booty Daddy, "unremarkable" doesn't mean "terrible," it just means "good in all the expected ways." It was yummy, it was filling and I feel that I certainly got my nine dollars and some odd change out of the meal. Still, in a glutted buffet market, you really have to up the ante and trot out an experience that separates you from the herd. All of the stuff Shoney's was hocking, I could get at any Howard Johnson breakfast buffet line in America. I mean, you couldn't have ran with the pro wrestling theme and given us Rick Steiner waffles, or Sid Vicious's extra crispy whole pork patties? Hell, not only would I patronize an old school WCW-themed buffet on a weekly basis, I'd probably buy a house within ten miles of it just to be on the safe side. 

Still, I've got no real complaints about my Scott Steiner Shoney's encounter. Granted, the stuff I remember most wasn't the food - never really a good sign if you are a fledgling franchise - but the really small things, like how my water came out with the lime juice already sprinkled in it, or the dude in the bright green shirt who kept asking me 900 times if I liked the home fries, and the fact that the forks that came with my napkin were easily the biggest fucking eating utensils a restaurant has ever supplied me. That, and it was pretty hard not to be distracted by that weird, mechanical "beeping" that kept emanating from the chef's cubby hole.

But then again, for all we know, that could've just been the cooks trying to pump themselves up by blasting their owner's old theme music at full volume...

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