Critic's Review
This homeTown Buffet has closed. A poorly run buffet can't make it.
Review 8/12/15
With a $7.99 all-inclusive coupon and proximity next to Costco, I figured that even just a salad and a drink was worth the price.
I'd forgotten how bad the iced tea is here; they must make it with bathwater or something. I had to bring the first class back and go for the icewater and raspberry sweetened tea. I also made a big salad; they still chop the onions with a hatchet into too big chunks to eat.
The "servers" here are actually annoying. They give you this whole thing "I'm your server, Trixie' and I'm thinking, "What are you going to serve me?". They basically just clear the placed and bother you by asking if everything is "Perfect" ever time they go by. I asked about the wifi, and she said "We don't have wifi". I showed her my phone.
"Isn't Ovations the name of the company that owns HomeTown?". Oh, yeah, but that's not for customers. Great. they need 2 wifi accounts for the workers and none for the customers?
Something I noticed today is that the "thing" seems to be to bring big cups and fill them up with stuff to take home. There were a bunch of people who had big cups that they apparently brought in with backpacks that they filled with ice cream, beverages and mac and cheese. I have trouble relating with such things.
They had some nice looking potatoes with onions which along with the pulled pork were just about the only edible hot items that they had. The pulled pork was braised rather than slow cooked and it was wet and had no taste. The potatoes were good as expected.
No meatloaf; just some burgers that they threw mushroom grave over to form makeshift salisbury steak. Boiled cabbage with no flavor, and extremely over cooked macaroni that wasn't as good as some that I've had here previously
I didn't have much food, so why not have dessert. There was one brownie left, and they have the soft serve with M&Ms.
Lousy coffee, but the dessert is a must have rather than the hot food.
Conclusion
This place could be so much better if they just did a better job of preparation. It's really unfortunate; they chop stuff up with hatches and just about everything is overcooked except a pizza that looked like it was half done. Even stuff freshly put out is overcooked. They had 3 kinds of chicken and all of it was awful looking.
Better for breakfast; they're just not putting any effort into making this place very good. They really can't fix the iced tea recipe?
Dinner 10/4/14
Another day, another coupon. This one for $3 off dinner. I've been wanting to do dinner, but rarely feel like trucking up to Davie at night. But, they start serving Dinner at 3:30pm, so on a Saturday I headed down for a late lunch, knowing that I wouldn't be eating dinner until 9pm.
The normal price is $13.99, which includes bottomless beverages, so this cost me $10.99 plus tax.
Not too crowded at 4:15.
I headed straight for the carving station for some really nice looking Prime Rib. I got a nice slice, grabbed a piece of fried chicken and some broccoli with cheese sauce (cheese sauce is at the taco station).
I'd forgotten how bad the iced tea is; I had to add some sweetened raspberry tea to make it drinkable.
I also grabbed a salad from the salad bar.
The chicken was juicy inside. A pretty good haul for a first plate. This was more food than you'd get just about anywhere else for $25.
The "other" difference between lunch and dinner is the sirloin steak. I wanted it medium rare, so the carver dude went into the kitchen to get another plate; fresh off the grill. I grabbed some mac and cheese.
Not the best sirloin I ever had. But it was hot, charbroiled and not overcooked.
The fish was terrible; Fish can't sit on a buffet for very long. It looked ok but it tasted old. Probaby Swai (Vietnamese Catfish). Yuck even if it's cooked right.
Time for some dessert. Chocolate cake and ice cream.
Not bad for "included". The ice cream is better, however.
They were almost out of M&Ms so I got some crumbs. I wish I could eat the whole thing.
Conclusion
With a coupon, this place is a no-brainer if you're just looking for some fuel. It's not great food, but there is enough variety that you can certainly find something to get more than your money's worth. The prime rib, salad and mac and cheese by itself is well worth the price; and drinks are included.
Breakfast 9/27/14
I got a coupon for a $6.99 breakfast, including beverage, so I felt compelled to use it, considering that Pomperdale is charging $7.95 for ham, egg and cheese on a bagel. The buffet is pretty much the same as the last review, so no need to bore you with plates loaded with breakfast food. Well, maybe one or two.
The big "pull" of the breakfast is the omelet station, which is your only chance at getting real eggs. I didn't go for the over-easy today, I decided to actually try an omelet.
The station is built for speed; every is par cooked. They don't like people taking pictures of the food area so you'll have to use your imagination. Pre-cooked onions, ham, mushrooms. And some cheese.
If you've ever been on a cruise, you'll know how this works. Except the woman here couldn't get a job cooking on a cruise. She loaded up the pan with oil from a squirt bottle, and, put too much egg mixture in, and then butchered it badly, trying desperately to make it look like an omelet.
No matter, omelets are just a bunch of stuff; it's not really important how well organized it is. They don't melt the cheese; they put grated cheese on and fold it over and hope that it's hot enough to melt the cheese.
One thing to note is that if you go late enough you can get the lunch foods; they start to put out the pulled pork and stuff after 11; so go late and have 2 meals
Lunch 7/25/14
I got an email informing me that this location was now including beverages in the price, which reminded me that I hadn't been up this way in a while. The "deal" is supposedly only at this location, but there's no way to really tell from their generic websites.
As it turns out, it's kind of a trick, because the $11 it cost me was just about exactly what I paid last year when I paid separately for a drink. So they've raised the price and included the drinks, which is the way it should be anyway. The idea that they have to police beverages and keep track of who paid for drinks and who didn't is pretty unmanageable.
This time of year, it's pretty dead at lunch. I got there at about 2pm.
I was starting to go back on a diet, having gained a few pounds since going off my Slow Carb Diet, and buffets are a good way of kicking up your metabolism with heavy low-carb loading. So today I'm staying away from the soups, Mac & Cheese, pasta and gravies and sticking to protein and vegetables. Butter is in, which is a good thing.
I started out with an Iced Tea; unlimited free lemon. They have big tanks of Sweetened and Unsweetened.
It doesn't taste freshly brewed. Not the best tea, even with I loaded it up with lemon.
I started with a big salad. Greens, cucumbers, hard boiled eggs and red onion with blue cheese dressing.
The onions were rough cut, as if they were cutting them up with a hatchet or something. I had to so some extra slicing myself. You can't bite into a big chunk of raw onion. Good blue cheese dressing although short on the chunks, and they don't have blue cheese crumbles to put on. But overall a good salad. Figure a salad and iced tea on Las Olas is $11 so I already got my money's worth. I didn't eat the entire salad at once.
Off to the buffet to find interesting stuff that I could eat.
The ribs looked particularly sloppy. They weren't smoked or braised, so they didn't really taste like ribs. It was just like a tough rib with BBQ sauce on it. The meatloaf has a BBQ sort of taste also; I liked it better when I dropped some Ketchup on it. Another good thing about buffets is the butter; just grab as much as you need. The Broccoli was just right; there were some boiled brussels sprouts that looked so awful I didn't even want to put them on a plate with other food.
There was also cabbage that was terrible. Push the plate to the end of the table and go get something else.
The "Specials" today were some sort of ravioli and Pulled Pork. Ravioli is out, but I tried the pork.
I almost didn't take it; it reminded me of the ribs. Under the globs of sauce looked like some decent pulled pork.
There wasn't much of it, but it wasn't bad. There were some potatoes underneath but I wasn't eating potatoes.
Back to the buffet for some fish.
Unmarked fish sitting under a hot lamp in some liquid. Unfortunately it had been under the lamp for too long; it was badly overdone. Thick and chewy. Even lemon butter sauce couldn't save it.
The cole slaw was lousy, as expected, while the chicken wing was "Ok". I just don't usually eat wings this way anymore.
I went back for some broiled chicken and more brocolli.
Good basic protein and veggies. I doubted that there would be anything I could eat at the dessert station: Bread Pudding, chocolate cake. Coconut pie. Cheesecake is borderline, but I could have a taste.
It had a bit of an aftertaste, which isn't good. I only has 2 bites.
I still haven't been here for dinner. I'll have to go for a late lunch. They start serving dinner at 3:30.
Review 6/8/13
With just about every restaurant doing a fancy, expensive weekend brunch on Las Olas, I decide to use a gallon of gas and head over and check out the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet at HomeTown. There's no traffic at 10am on a Saturday, so it's a nice ride. I went to lunch last month, but breakfast buffets can be fun. If you've ever been on a cruise you know the deal; load up on protein in the morning and you're set for the day.
The buffet is $6.49, which is ridiculous. $2.19 for a beverage which doesn't seem proportional for coffee, but it comes to $9.20 all tolled after tax. Not bad considering there's no tip. You could leave the busser a tip I suppose, but what would you leave to clear some plates? 5%?
The place was less than half full; mostly Costco shoppers grabbing a bite on their way in I suspect.
There are a bunch of buffet tables; one has pancakes waffles and syrups, there's a salad bar and taco bar for those not into breakfast. There's an omelet station, but not a good one. Old looking ham; old looking peppers, salsas; no fried eggs or mushrooms or spinach. No omelets for me. I hit the first table where they had bisquits and gravies; I passed on the bisquit and went for the chicken fried steak and sausage gravy. They also had some smoked sausage which looked pretty good. They have a station where you can make your own eggs benedict with phony poached eggs, but the ham didn't look good, and the hollandaise was, well it seemed to be missing the egg yolks and I wasn't putting it on my eggs. Breakfast sausages, of course.
The chicken fried steak and gravy were pretty benign. Not much flavor. The smoked sausage were excellent; not Kielbasa but a good sausage. The muffin as too hard to cut so I just had the egg.
Coffee is self serve. They don't have much in terms of breakfast beverages. Orange juice or coffee. The oatmeal tasted like oatmeal; I didn't come here for oatmeal. Time to check out the carb options.
French toast, wonky blueberry pancakes, bacon and more sausage. Maple Syrup, or so they say, looks strange in a steam table instead of a bottle. They have a big tub of nice, soft butter for dolloping on the pancakes. Not really hot, but not terrible. They had lots of well done bacon which is better than underdone bacon.
The bread offerings are weak. Bagels or white bread. They have a toaster so at least it's hot. I didn't see any cream cheese. They have whipped cream though.
Back for another pass. It's at this point that I realize that they don't have any potatoes; just the McDonald's hash browns. Ok, well I was protein loading anyway. A couple more of the sunny side up eggs that they try to pass off as poached, some salmon, scrambled eggs, more smoked sausage.
The scrambled eggs are as bad as expected. With no fried eggs, it's a good thing that they have the faux poached eggs. One more try, just to see if I missed anything.
I got an idea while looking for something to substitute for the hollandaise. They have a spicy queso sauce; maybe that would work? It doesn't. The mini-waffle, however, was much better than expected with the hot strawberry sauce and some butter.
They have some of the dessert cakes; carrot cake and chocolate cake, and what I thought was key lime pie. I figured I'd taste it.
Sadly, as it turns out, it's coconut cream pie. Not what I wanted at all.
They also have the soft serve ice cream available, so if you want dessert for your breakfast, or if you're doing a salad, you can have a sundae.
Well, for $9.20 you can't complain. It's not fancy Las Olas brunch, but you can certainly get your money's worth. They have the breakfast buffet on Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 8am to 11am.
Lunch Review 5/17/13
After reading all of the 1 star reviews on Yelp, you'd wonder why anyone would come here. So when I saw the nearly full parking lot, I really started to wonder what kind of crowd would be inside. It starts out similarly to the Golden Corral, with a winding area meant to accommodate a line to enter. No line today at 2pm. With bottomless beverage, the price for an adult comes to $11.11.
The place is one big room, with half of it the buffet and the other half booths and tables. The dining room is similar to Sweet Tomatoes.
The buffet area is more like a chinese buffet, with rows of buffet tables. One table is "comfort food", one has specialty items, there's a salad bar and a table with salsas and sauces, and theres a table with tacos, enchiladas, pasta and potato salads and fruit.
One thing I like about this buffet is that they have self service for beverages. You don't have to flag down a server to get a refill, and you can get whatever you want. They ask if you want a drink when you enter, but I don't see how they could tell if you didn't pay. They don't give you a cup or a wristband; so it's sort of the honor system.
Another thing I like about buffets is that they always have lemon as part of the buffet, so I can load up my iced tea and get more for refills.
Time for some food. They give you a little card when you pay that says "This table is reserved", so you just leave it on the table when you go to get your food. I was thinking that it would be all fried chicken and gravies, but they had some skinless roasted chicken. I got some roasted potatoes, Mac and Cheese and some green beans that didn't have a very bright color to them.
As expected, the beans were bad news. But the chicken was good, maybe a tad dry but a good slab of protein to start off. The mac and cheese were actually very good; not the usual overcooked macaroni with coagulated cheese. They were more like you might make at home with your favorite cheese-food. The potatoes where good also; roasted so they weren't greasy.
After tasting everything and realizing I wasn't going to eat the beans, I hit the salad bar. The usual crappy grape tomatoes, and everything was sliced too thick. The only thing they didn't have that I would have liked that most buffets have was crumbled blue cheese. The dressing was semi-chunky and it would have to do. Some chopped up hard boiled eggs. Not too shabby. I liked the dressing.
Time for another pass. The meatloaf looked decent so I lopped off a chunk. They had some sort of fried fish fingers and I found some tarter sauce on the extras bar. They'd thrown some fresh broccoli over some wildly over cooked stuff; I picked out enough and dropped some available cheese sauce on them.
The meatloaf was reminiscent of my Mom's meatloaf; surprisingly not bad. The fish finger reminded me of Arthur Treachers fish and chips, and there's nothing wrong with that. Good broccoli. This plate was a plus.
Time to troll for stuff I hadn't tried yet. They only had hard taco shells, and the enchiladas looked like they'd been there since 11am. They had chicken noodle soup that didn't excite me, and new england clam chowder with huge chunks of potatoes. I decided against the soup. I found some broiled white fish (note that most items aren't labeled). I grabbed a slice of pizza and some fried okra which looked interesting.
Fish on a buffet is always a tough one; it's invariably overdone and this fit that bill. Good for protein only; not much on taste. The okra was terrible, old and squishy. The pizza was terrible too; just puffy bread with some cheese and pepperoni. Definitely not worth the calories. I barely touched this plate, knowing I needed to save some room for dessert.
The dessert bar is small compared to the Isle Buffet, but better than Sweet Tomatoes. They have the soft serve ice cream machine, some cakes and pies and some unlabeled stuff I couldn't identify.
The chocolate cake was a very dark brown; i grabbed a piece along with some carrot cake. i also made myself a sundae. The have hot fudge, but I passed on that.
The chocolate cake was heavenly; reminding me of the cake my Mom used to make with very sweet icing. Carrot cake isn't my thing; this was a bit spicy but I'd have to say that if you like carrot cake you'll like this. Not too sweet and just the right texture.
The ice cream was Carvelesque; just some simple vanilla soft serve with mini-chocolate kisses and M&Ms.
Are you kidding me?
Ok, so I came here with ultra-low expectations and it was much better than expected. Considering that there is nothing high end here; no beef, burgers, carving station; no shrimp mussels or clams, there's still enough to make yourself a couple of pretty good meals. It's $10 for a salad on Las Olas, so for $8.95 this is a ridiculous value. They do have a stir fry station, but it wasn't clear what the choices are.
Compared to other buffets, Golden Corral has more stuff but this place has more stuff that's edible. This is much better than Sweet Tomatoes; not quite as good as the Isle Casino, but definitely better than Fresh Harvest.
They also have a breakfast buffet on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I'm intrigued enough to try it some time. So stay tuned.
