Royal Pacific Buffet

So like four months ago, I went to the Royal Pacific buffet for Thanksgiving with half of Chris’ family. (The other half was in Boston because the little sister couldn’t get time off from work.) Chris doesn’t really like having Thanksgiving away from home. He likes having it at our house, but that just wasn’t going to happen this year, so we had our own little Thanksgiving a few days later.

But anyway, the Royal Pacific (the hotel that we stayed at along with all our guests when we got married), has a special holiday buffet for Thanksgiving. It’s all you can eat and has a variety of foods. Besides the traditional turkey, mashed potatoes and cranberries, they also have a seafood spread of oysters and crab legs, chinese stir fry, some basic sushi, roast beef and dessert.

The meat servers. As with any buffet, you have to make sure that you’re getting the meat pieces that aren’t crap. You have to specify that you want that piece or that piece and no big fatty pieces. Or you want the cooked bits and not the medium rare bits of roast beef. They’ll give you whatever crap is on their cutting board otherwise. I mean, somebody has to eat those edible but less desirable bits!

And since this is the Royal Pacific, they like to pretend that you’re on some tropical island, so they trot out the singer with the ukelele and the hula dancers. The last few times that we’ve seen them, it’s been the same guys, which is nice. He knows a lot of Hawaiian songs including the ukelele Over the Rainbow. We’ve also asked them to sing the wedding song last Christmas, which he did gladly and did a wonderful job of it.

I wasn’t too fond of the seafood, but then, I’m never really fond of seafood. The oysters tasted like they were some nasty items from the bottom of the ocean. I’ve had very nice oysters before, and they didn’t seem like I was eating ocean poop. They also had very nice looking salmon (which I’m not fond of) and lots of crab legs (which I also don’t eat). So the seafood section is completely lost on me. But from the other tables that I saw, they devoured the seafood, so I suppose it was good.

Since I don’t eat seafood, the buffet doesn’t seem to be very good for me. I also don’t have a huge appetite, at least not $50 worth. I ate some very nice turkey breast and roast beef, roasted vegetables and some potatoes (that I have a feeling were potato buds) because after eating just one small plate of food, my stomach felt like it was going to explode. My stomach usually feels that way after I eat something like potato buds. I drink tons of water when I eat and I never feel that way when I eat regular potatoes.

There seems to be huge assortment of desserts, but I always seem to think that there’s only creme brule and some chocolate cupcake things. There are many mouses and fried desserts and brownies. But the brownies always seemed to be a little big dry and stale and I don’t know, these desserts didn’t look too appetizing.

And since this is a Universal hotel, some of the characters come by. We’ve seen Shrek and Princess Fiona along with Scooby and Shaggy. I don’t mind them so much, but the In-Laws have a great dislike of them. I don’t seem to have a photo of Shrek and me dancing. I can’t find it in my camera, so I think it must be in someone else’s camera. But they never gave me a copy. I like taking my photo with those mascots. I think it’s funny and fun.

Would I recommend this buffet? Well, I don’t really like buffets in general. I think they overcharge you for the food and you always feel like you have to eat a huge amount for it to be worth what you paid for it. But if you’re on holiday here, then why not? Gorge yourself and have a great time. I know I do. I just regret it afterwards.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Crossposted to Samantha Ling, Dreamwidth and Livejournal