With your options now ranging from seared tuna and bruschetta to taro and tteokbokki, there’s no better time to embrace the smorgasbord with open arms.
There are two kinds of people in New Zealand. Those who enjoy a buffet. And joyless misanthropes.
At weekends all around the country, people queue with their fellow citizens alongside steaming, gleaming bain maries. Inside all manner of delicacies may await: tikka masala, macaroni and cheese, shumai or doro wat.
The latter can be found in the smorgasbord of options at Gojo Ethiopian Eatery on Auckland’s Queen Street. It’s been trialling an all-you-can-eat buffet ($34.99) on Saturdays since expanding from its New Lynn home with a city branch in late December – and it’s very good. The hope is that it will help bring customers through the door in search of kai and a good deal.
Gojo isn’t alone. Buffets are enjoying a revival as New Zealand diners explore both value for money and cuisines from around the world.
The format is familiar territory. Cast your mind back to the 1990s, when the highlight of the year was birthday dinner at your local buffet restaurant. These culinary oases in a land of takeaway shops and there’s-something-at-home culture impressed upon a whole generation that luxury was a self-serve ice cream machine.
A request for memories of “Valentines” and “Pizza Hut buffet” elicited a smorgasbord of flashbacks from misty-eyed Spinoff staffers recalling the heyday of the nation’s go-to birthday destination. Oysters! Trifle! Blue lagoon mocktails landing on cream jumpers! (An unfortunate young Alice Neville, now deputy editor but then drenched in a radioactive shade of cerulean.)
And the chips seemed endless. That blew the then-child-sized mind of a young Anna Rawhiti-Connell. The fellow Spinoffer also credits formative visits to Valentines with her enduring love of prawn cocktails.
That nostalgia factor is hard to shake. For a long time Valentines was New Zealand’s leading buffet chain. The number of restaurants rose – peaking at 18 across Australasia – and then fell to its current five. By 2019 industry experts were wondering if “the buffet thing” had failed here. The next year a certain global pandemic brought added challenges for communal dining experiences.
Dining in at Pizza Hut is long gone. It had a good run – 42 years. But the chain called time on its all-you-can-eat dine-in service in 2016, citing changes in family meal trends, with the New Lynn branch the last to close.
New Zealanders discovered tapas, bao, mezze and hand-pulled noodles. Palates evolved. We’ve learned to pronounce ‘nduja and gochujang. Restaurants began trumpeting provenance, purpose and a personal narrative. Pretty much every second one is named after a woman.
And yet… The buffet persists. Thrives, even.
Unlike “sharing plates” split between six friends or portion sizes that seem smaller than last time, buffets come with the assurance that you’ll leave sated, stuffed, even. Navigating the vast array of dishes with maximum success demands acumen and strategy. Fools fill up on bread and rice, sacrificing stomach space that could instead be devoted to proteins, flavour bombs or tiramisu.
Offering a buffet is strategic too. Some restaurants transform into buffet formats on certain days only. In Auckland, Sandringham stalwart Paradise serves its popular all-you-can-eat service from Monday to Friday; it’s strictly walk-in only and costs $30 for adults. Shefco’s Baklawa Cafe on Stoddard Road serves an open buffet for $30 per adult on Friday and Saturdays throughout the year (though it’s happening daily at present for Ramadan iftar, the fast-ending meal). Bookings are essential and you’ll pay $30 per person. Bivacco’s “elevated buffet” on Sunday will set you back a bit more, $85, and includes antipasto, a carvery, pasta wheel and desserts like basque cheesecake and a (buffet classic) chocolate fountain. One Tree Grill’s bougie buffet runs Wednesday to Sunday, with adult prices ranging from $125-$145. Japanese restaurant Katsura, located in the Grand Millennium, serves up a grand buffet between Wednesday and Saturday, with unlimited sushi, sashimi, teppanyaki and seafood for $125.
Others dish it up every day of the week. Wow Buffet in Wairau Valley specialises in hot pot, which costs $34.90 for adults. Korean buffet Paldo’s – think all-you-can-eat tteok bokki, kimchi pancakes and bibimbap alongside barbecue meat for $40.90 for adults – is located in Manukau. There you’ll also find Happy Days, which has a buffet-classic offering of pasta salads, coleslaw, roast pork, hot chips, taro and lasagna that costs $34.90 for adults (less for seniors).
Buffet dining is a staple for hotels. And you needn’t travel or even book a room to experience one. The Cordis hotel’s Eight restaurant serves up a “unique interactive dining experience” (a sprawling buffet) for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Dinner ranges from $119 to $149 depending which day you go and bookings are essential on the weekend: this is a high-traffic restaurant.
Zooming out, there are an array of Genghis Khan restaurants to be found across the country, serving up Mongolian barbecue from sizzling grills. The Wellington outpost dates back to 1982. In Rotorua there’s the elevated – literally – Stratosfare, which serves a beef rump slow-cooked for 24 hours and enjoys glowing Google reviews. A gondola ride to get there and dinner will cost an adult $109. For only $54 more you’ll get five luge rides, presumably not after eating. Queenstown has one of these too. Christchurch is well served by Koji, the Garden Hotel’s buffet restaurant and Coriander’s.
At many establishments children eat free, or pay very little. For parents doing back-of-the-napkin maths to feed a family, the buffet can emerge victorious. Some meals cost barely more than takeaways, compared to what you could spend on a large Big Mac combo ($19.10) or KFC’s three-piece quarter pack ($21.49).
Gorging yourself at a buffet might be more economical on the wallet than à la carte or, in some cases, even cooking at home. For price-conscious diners, the opportunity for an infinite meal for a fixed price is hard to beat.
But is the format economical for the restaurants? It’s a good way to drum up business, providing a competitive advantage in a crowded hospitality market, one that’s also beset by rising overheads and business costs.
“With guests serving themselves, the number of staff needed to take orders and bring meals to tables can be reduced,” explains Kristy Phillips, chief executive of Hospitality NZ. “Businesses can also prepare large batches of food at once, with more predictable pricing costs than à la carte dining.”
However, offering up a bountiful buffet isn’t necessarily fool proof. “As buffets are all-you-can-eat, some customers may eat more than their set-price covers,” adds Phillips. “The risk of food waste is also higher, and these are factors that hospitality businesses need to factor into their pricing.”
But, done well, the format brings people together around the bain maries and bread baskets, facilitating a communal experience in a world of siloed attention and food-delivery apps.
There’s an equalising quality to queuing for food or serving yourself from a shared dish. Even high-rollers who turn their nose up at Valentines will have, at one point or another, picked up a pair of tongues to grab smoked salmon from their five-star hotel’s continental breakfast. No one’s above a buffet.
Oh, and Valentines is still free on your birthday.
