People tend to either love or hate buffets. I belong firmly to the former camp, and always have. While I did draw the line at trays of lurid-orange sweet-and-sour pork glowing from London Chinatown buffets of the early noughties, my adoration for the humble buffet was cultivated from a young age.
Growing up in Calgary, Canada, in the 1990s, dining out was normally a large family occasion and we rotated between our favourite Chinese and Japanese restaurants, the occasional splurge at seafood chain Red Lobster and, my favourite, the buffet chain Foody Goody. Even as a child I understood a buffet’s rules of engagement: scout first, try a little then load up on your favourites – even if that tended to be cubes of technicolour jello dusted in waxy-tasting desiccated coconut. Foody Goody in Calgary was a popular destination for many Asian families, drawn to its promising displays of excess and relative value.
Never mind that it was shut down in the early noughties due to health-code violations, according to Reddit users. It was a descendant of the Chinese-style buffets that first emerged in the West in the mid-20th century, starting with the famed Chang’s Restaurant in California. This pioneering venue launched in 1949, with its advertisement in the Los Angeles Evening Citizen News boasting of “over 20 delicious selections” of “choice Chinese foods exactly as prepared in Soochow, Shanghai, Peking and other large cities in China”.
Americans came to know it as a “Chin.
