4 all-you-can-eat restaurants changing the buffet game in Los Angeles
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Before the pandemic made people scrunch up their noses at the thought of communal serving ware, buffet restaurants in the United States made up a nearly $8-billion industry. It was an economical way to feed the entire family (or a particularly hungry diner), and most of the time, the sheer variety of food was its own luxury.
If you grew up in California, your introduction to buffet dining was probably Souplantation, the all-you-can-eat soup and salad bar. My family ate at the Pasadena location at least once a week, and more if my parents had coupons. I still recall the thrill of being able to eat Caesar salad, macaroni and cheese, a cup of chili, chocolate chip cookies and blueberry muffins in one meal. The salad was sometimes soggy and the macaroni and cheese too loose, but the autonomy I had over my dinner was ever appealing to an 8-year-old with a hearty appetite.
In 2020, the buffet restaurant market dropped 14% and the once-thriving all-you-can-eat Souplantation chain shuttered all locations.
McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, Jack in the Box and Carl’s Jr. all have $5 value meals. Whose is the best?
Now, with cereal boxes shrinking to the size of paperback novels and the price of eggs causing shoppers to flee the refrigerated aisle, all-you-can-eat restaurants are starting to gain back a bit of their allure.
In Los Angeles, there’s a new crop of buffet restaurants that opened in the last year, and a few established businesses attempting to fill once-empty dining rooms with new all-you-can-eat menus.
Moohan restaurant opened in Koreatown in September with an extensive hot bar of appetizers and side dishes alongside a wide selection of Wagyu and prime beef.
“‘Moohan’ translates into ‘infinite’ in Korean, and we wanted to offer our expertise to redefine the all-you-can-eat food scene in Los Angeles by making premium-quality and personalized dining experiences more accessible to everyone, because why not in this economy?” says Grace Jo, a marketing representative for Moohan.
The restaurant offers both an essential menu for $37.99 and a premium menu with more meat options for $55.99.
“Wagyu and prime cuts of beef are typically served in restaurants with a hefty price tag, but at Moohan, anyone can enjoy the highest quality ... at a much more reasonable price with unlimited rounds of buffet offerings,” Jo says.
I visited half a dozen of the newer all-you-can-eat restaurants around Los Angeles, in search of the best deal and food I’d crave regardless of the price. Here were the highlights:
AYCE Korean barbecue: Moohan
The setup: Each party is seated at a table with a grill in the center and various banchan and green salad. You order from an iPad at the table and choose between a regular all-you-can-eat menu or a premium version that comes with a handful more protein options including multiple cuts of Wagyu. The dining time is limited to 100 minutes.
If you opt for the essential set, there’s a bar with raw serve-yourself proteins like chicken, pork belly and beef intestine. Both menus include unlimited visits to a hot bar with a rotating menu of tempura, fried chicken wings, kimchi fried rice and yakisoba. There’s unlimited banchan and salads, kimchi pancakes, cheese Buldak Ramen and a few sushi rolls.
Premium items such as the Wagyu bulgogi are served on individual plates at the table. The staff is friendly, attentive and will grill the meats for you.
Price: $55.99 for premium and $37.99 for essential
Don’t miss: The Wagyu bulgogi is not the overly sugary stuff served at nearly every all-you-can-eat barbecue restaurant. The marinade caramelizes on the grill into a subtly sweet, garlicky glaze and the beef is nicely marbled and recognizably Wagyu.
Avoid: It is difficult not to be distracted by the golden chicken wings and the hand rolls, but stay focused on the barbecue or you’ll regret the space the mediocre spicy tuna temaki is now occupying in your stomach.
AYCE sushi: Here Fishy Fishy
I have to admit that I was hesitant to try this restaurant. The name is unforgivable and I imagined endless plates of maki filled with imitation crab and mushy rice. What I found instead was a menu that includes more than two dozen nigiri, including toro, 40 maki, sushi burritos and a long list of appetizers, salad, tempura, Korean barbecue and skewers. It will not compete with your favorite omakase, but the nigiri and maki are similar to what you can expect at the hundreds of neighborhood sushi restaurants around Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley.
The setup: The Western Avenue location of this restaurant has $3 valet parking out front and you can make a reservation online. There’s a 90-minute time limit and to avoid wasting food, the restaurant requests that you order “little by little” to gauge your appetite with each course. They also use small nubs of rice for their nigiri, tend to be modest with the rice around the maki and make a note on the menu to enjoy the sushi as is, and not leave a discarded pile of rice on your plate. While the rolls, appetizers, sides and most of the nigiri are unlimited, there’s a page of “special” sashimi and nigiri that you can order just one per person at the table. Maki are served as four or eight pieces, which made it easier to try more without feeling overwhelmed.
Whether you’re looking for an all-you-can-eat feast, galbi galore, a duck specialist or a full-on seafood spread, Koreatown has all the Korean barbecue you could wish for.
Price: $54.99 for dinner, $39.99 for lunch and late night between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m.
Don’t miss: Order most, if not all of the “special” menu to try the Spider Man, a deep-fried soft-shell crab over a sweet carrot puree, or the Screaming Orgasm, an unfortunately named dish of seared bluefin tuna sashimi in a “screaming sauce” that tasted like a cross between sweet miso and ponzu.
Avoid: The plate of bulgogi was a little tough and much too sweet, but you came for the sushi anyway.
AYCE soup and salad: Soup ’n Fresh
When Soup ’n Fresh, known as the Souplantation dupe restaurant, opened in a former Souplantation in Rancho Cucamonga last year, I was curious but not curious enough to wait in a line that stretched around the building. Now, there’s a second location in Chino Hills, and on a recent Monday in Rancho Cucamonga, my wait at 11:30 a.m. was 34 minutes.
Though Soup ‘n Fresh has no actual affiliation with Souplantation, the layout and most of the soups, baked items and salad bar are indistinguishable from the original restaurant. The chunky plastic soup bowls were the same. The chicken salad with crispy wontons was slightly sweeter but recognizable, and they even had the same tuna pasta salad with both penne and shell pasta tossed with tuna and chopped sweet pickles.
The setup: A staff member with a clipboard periodically marks how many people are in each party in line then calls diners in groups to enter the restaurant. You pay at the end of the salad bar and wait to be seated. Then you can return to the buffet for soup, pasta, baked goods, fruit and soft serve.
Price: $17.99 for lunch, $19.99 for dinner. Seniors and children have their own pricing.
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Don’t miss: If you’re nostalgic for Souplantation, pile a little of everything you remember onto your plate. Ladle a bowl of chili and go nuts with the shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream and onions at the end of the soup station. Swirl some soft serve into a bowl then take a cone to go. Relive the Souplantation glory days during the 2-hour time limit.
Avoid: The cheese pizza and just about all the muffins were overbaked, with crusty edges and cheese that turned to plastic. The blueberry muffins smelled and tasted the same as the ones I remember, though they were made in a square shape, much drier and with far less blueberries. I used to wrap a couple in a napkin and snack on the muffin tops on the way home. These were far from the original, but it was still comforting to taste something so deeply ingrained in my childhood.
AYCE dim sum: AYCE Happy Hot Pot
This hot pot restaurant in Rosemead introduced all-you-can-eat dim sum in early 2024. The earlier you go, the better, as the dining room tends to fill up quickly, even on weekdays. Call to check current specials and hours or visit the restaurant’s Instagram account for updates.
Price: $15.95 for breakfast during the week and $18.95 on weekends and holidays.
The setup: There’s a dim sum cart with most of the steamed offerings such as dumplings, buns, pork ribs, radish cakes, chicken feet and rice noodle rolls. Everyone ordering all-you-can-eat dim sum also has access to the hot bar of food in the back room with a variety of stir-fried noodles, fried rice, egg rolls, more sides and dessert.
Don’t miss: The steamed salted egg black custard buns were worth a return visit. They were warm and fluffy and the salted egg yolk oozed out from the center like lava. The fried sesame balls filled with sweet red bean from the hot bar made for a great in-between-dim-sum snack and dessert. And the vats of stir-fried noodles reminded me of the plates of chow fun and chow mein served with orders of congee at just about every cafe I visited in the San Gabriel Valley as a kid. Chewy, slick with soy and prime for a lashing of hot sauce and vinegar.
Avoid: I’m sad to report that the dumplings, including the shumai and har gow, were all tough and more than a little dry. The soup in the dumplings either evaporated or was lost to the steamer basket long before they hit the table.
Your guide to all-you-can-eat dining
Moohan, 3435 Wilshire Blvd. Ste 123, Los Angeles, (213) 232-1136, www.moohankbbq.com
Here Fishy Fishy, 414 S. Western Ave. B, Los Angeles, (323) 387-6588 and 3785 Wilshire Blvd, Ste 107CD, Los Angeles, (213) 318-5174, herefishyfishy.online
Soup ‘n Fresh, 8966 Foothill Blvd., Rancho Cucamonga, (909) 660-9347 and 4645 Chino Hills Pkwy Ste A, Chino Hills, soupnfresh.cfd
AYCE Happy Hot Pot, 8772 Valley Blvd., Rosemead, (626) 872-2096, happyaycehotpot.com
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