Category: Food Critic

review of Paula Deen’s restaurant

This past weekend I ate at Paula Deen Buffet restaurant at Harrah’s Casino in Tunica, MS.  For those of you who don’t know who she is, she’s one of the stars on The Food Network, and she’s famous for Southern-style cooking.  She’s also famous for using butter in almost everything she cooks.  As you might guess, the food was great.  I don’t even want to know how many calories I consumed.

The restaurant has 7 different buffet lines, and none of them were the kind that are just there for looks (like fruit*) — there was something scrumptious on every one.   The fried chicken was the best I’d ever eaten from a restaurant — it was very close to what my mom makes.  The baked macaroni and cheese was incredible.  I could go on and on about how great the food is.  Let’s just say I could eat there every day.   I do need to mention that one of the buffet lines has only desserts, and from the ones I sampled, it was all good.  I have to recommend the chocolate ooey-gooey butter bars — I even brought back a box of those for later.   🙂

If you ever get the chance to eat there, by all means, do so.  (I wonder what needs to happen to get one of those to open in central Arkansas…)

* I have nothing against fruit, but when I go to an all-you-can-eat buffet, I’m not there for fruit.

Burger King NY Pizza Burger

Burger King is about to debut a New York Pizza Burger, which contains: four quarter-pound patties topped with pepperoni and mozzarella and smothered in marinara sauce — all on a sesame seed bun that spans nine-and-a-half inches.   If you think about it, that’s like four Whoppers plus pizza toppings, all in one burger.   (If you plan to eat one by yourself, you should stop reading now.)  It adds up to 2,530 calories, 144 grams of fat (59 grams saturated) and 380 mg of cholesterol.  (For reference, a Whopper is comparatively healthy, delivering 670 calories, 40 grams of fat (11 saturated), and 75 mg of cholesterol.)  You probably know that those first statistics are extremely unhealthy, but to put them in context, nutritional guidelines say most people should consume no more than 2,500 calories, 65 grams of total fat, 20 grams of saturated fat, and 300 mg of cholesterol in an entire day.

One website called it a “fat bomb”.   That could be a valid description.  Another way to look at it is that you’re getting your whole day’s worth of food in one burger.  🙂

food critic, corn dog pizza

Someone today was talking to me about a corn dog pizza, and it reminded me of this picture I had saved for our food critic series.   I’ve never tried a corn dog pizza, and if I made one it wouldn’t be done quite like this.  But this picture is what it is, so let’s start with it.  What do you think about this food item, and how could it be made better?

review of America 13-50 restaurant

Today some of the Buffet o’ Blog staff had lunch at a fairly new restaurant called “America 13-50“.  It’s a somewhat odd name, but that doesn’t matter to us.   This was our first time to dine at this establishment, and there weren’t many other patrons there, so we decided to post a review so more of you know about it.

America 13-50 is located downtown, across the street from Larry’s Pizza.  (If you live in Conway, you should know where Larry’s Pizza is.  If not, you’ve really been missing out and you need to go eat there at lunch during the week to enjoy their “pizza parade”.)  The inside of the restaurant was nice-looking, making me initially wonder if this was going to be an expensive lunch.  Fortunately the prices were reasonable.

Two of us ordered the Alamo Burger, which has bacon and chipotle mayo, and the menu calls it “a two handed beefy burger you’ll remember”.  The other guy ordered the Ozark BLT, which was a blackened catfish sandwich with bacon (which is not something we’d ever heard of before).  They were all delicious, and the portions were generously-sized.  We all talked of going back to try other items on the menu.

I realize this post wasn’t all that funny or random, so it kinda doesn’t fit with this blog.  But it was about food, which is an important subject among the staff.   If you’re itching for something funny (or at least ironic), here’s a food-related quote for you:

America has more food to eat than any other country in the world and more diets to keep us from eating it.

Ain’t that the truth!

Anyway, check out the restaurant.  You could tell them Buffet o’ Blog sent you, except they wouldn’t know who that was — we were incognito, protecting our secret identities.   I don’t think the waitress was prepared to handle the full outburst of randomness that can erupt from a group of us.   So we kept it on the down-low, to maintain some degree of order.  But what are we doing maintaining order?  We’re supposed to promote randomness.  True, that is.  But some people can’t handle the randomness (hence the warning under the title of the blog).   Some folks have to be eased into it, or their mind may implode (and that’s not pretty).   So it was for the greater good of those involved.

Now you’ve got me to rambling (which is what you wanted, right?).   Just check out the restaurant, and perhaps you’ll see us there.  Don’t worry if you don’t know us by face — if you see a table of the coolest guys you’ve ever seen, that would be us.