I hate it when my hunger takes precedent over all other things. Sometimes I feel driven to triage life’s events just to satisfy a craving for a certain food. When my eyes first peel open after a long slumber, the first thoughts that begin running through my head revolve around what I want to eat for the rest of the day. Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner are usually all planned out before I dare pull back the covers and take that long morning piss.
Saturday was no exception to this rule. I awoke in bed holding my beautiful girlfriend in my arms.
“Good morning,” she said in her slightly raspy morning voice.
“Good morning,” I said as I kissed her forehead. “What do you want for lunch?”
Yes, lunch. As a night shift employee my day usually begins somewhere between two and four in the afternoon, so lunch is usually the first order of the day. Working night shift tends to make you crave fats and sugars more for some strange weird reason. Scientist say it has something to do with your circadian rhythm, the natural rhythm that regulates your sleep patterns. I just blame it on being an American and having a ton of shitty food available to me 24 hours a day.
She giggled, “You always think with your stomach”.
How can I argue with that? “I Know.”
She yawned as she stretched her nude body alongside mine, “How about Chinese Food?”
“Chinese?” Hmmm….yes…. the mere thought of sweet and sour sauce instantly kicked my salivary glands into overdrive.
“Yes, there’s a buffet my friends were talking about but I’ve never been there yet.”
“So it’s pretty good then? Because I have had some scary experiences at Chinese buffets.” No shit. Stephen King would be scared of some of the dishes I’ve seen.
She smiled, “From what I’ve heard, its pretty good. They have all-you-can-eat sushi.”
I forced a smile on my lips. She giggled because she loves seafood and I on the other hand, well…let’s just say you will never see me author a post entitled “All You Can Eat Mussels – Yum Yum Mother Fucker”.
[Insert Dry Heave Here]
One of the best things about my girlfriend is that she loves to eat just as much as I do. Sure, sometimes she pulls the “I’ll just have a salad” trick, but most often she picks up a hamburger right beside me and hers is dripping with mayo.
After some research using the website known as Yelp, we managed to track down the New Century Buffet in El Cajon, California. I had actually wanted to try this place for a while, so now my excitement was building and so was my hunger. The reviews were all mostly positive and if I know one thing about Yelp, it has never steered me wrong yet.
After some sweaty but almost-too-dry morning sex and quick shower we found ourselves pulling into the restaurant’s parking lot. We had worked up our appetite and now it was time to cash in.
We were immediately impressed by the smiling staff who seated us and took our drink order in the blink of an eye. The interior was clean and there was plenty of comfortable seating. The buffet area was large and contained a wide variety of the usual items you would expect to find at any given Chinese Buffet: Sweet and Sour stuff, Orange Chicken, Beef and Broccoli, Dumplings, Fried Rice, Chow Mein….the list goes on and on. I was surprised to see corn on the cob and steak – it was probably there just to appease the super picky friends of visiting round-eyes.
All of the food looked delicious. I never once found myself staring at a bin of food and wondering, “What the fuck is THAT?” and trust me, I have been there before. The only items I personally didn’t try were located in the Sushi area – and I believe I already explained my love of raw fish earlier – [Insert Dry Heave Here] – a few paragraphs ago.
There is a big difference between look and taste when it comes to buffet food. Some things look great simmering on top of steam baths, and if you ate them right there, they probably would taste really good. However after you have orbited the buffet a few times before returning to your table, some items begin to seriously lose their luster. In my case, the fried rice became a little too sticky as it cooled and for my girlfriend, the crab legs were far more work than they were worth for the tiny bit of black muscle waiting inside.
[Insert Dry Heave Here]
I snapped a few photos of the buffet and my girlfriend’s plate as we joked about posting our experiences on the blog. She offered to start grabbing handfuls of food from the buffet so I could take a few funny photos. We laughed about how humorous it would be, but in the end we decided not to do it because we were really thinking about coming back here another time. This place was pretty good, for a Chinese Buffet that is.
We joked and flirted through our several plates of food and even though were we getting full, we made sure we saved room for the ice cream machine and desert bar. We held each other’s hands as we walked up and took our place in line for ice cream behind two other kids. My girlfriend grabbed her cone and filled it with a delicious looking chocolate and vanilla swirl. Then it was my turn. I pulled down on the lever and suddenly I was surrounded by a horde of pudgy Samoan children (yes, I know that’s a redundant statement) who were crawling all over each other like insects as they screamed and jumped around the ice cream machine. For one second I wondered why they “weren’t in line”, but then I realized this was quickly turning into a clusterfuck and I needed to grab my ice cream and get the fuck out of there before one of these little bastards chewed my legs off.
Somewhere in this turmoil I had lost sight of my girlfriend. I glanced around and noticed she had escaped safely to the trays of cookies and Jell-O. I raced toward her, leaving the festering mob of kids behind me. Just as I approached her side, I heard the distinct sound of a plastic bowl full of ice cream bouncing across the floor before ending with a loud splat. We glanced over at the swarm of kids fighting over ice cream and questioned each other about the whereabouts of their parents.
We heard another bowl of ice cream hit the floor!
“Fuck, really?” my girlfriend gasped. “I’m so glad I don’t work here!”
As we were walking back towards our table we were stopped by an amazing sight: an Asian guy was standing near the seafood area and just piling crab legs into his bare hands. And I don’t just mean, like, he was grabbing a just crab leg or two. This motherfucker was piling crab legs in his hand like he was shoring up a levy for a category 6 hurricane. We watched him walk back over to his booth and plopped his ass down, spilling a few crab legs along the way. This was the exact same type of shit we were joking about doing, but here was some asshole actually doing it – at it wasn’t a joke! If my hands hadn’t been filled with plates of food I would have taken a photo with my cell phone. Oh well…the memories will haunt me for a long while.
Within seconds I saw an employee wiping down the buffet while another was mopping up ice cream while another was picking up the crab legs. Damn, now I was really impressed with how clean this place was kept, given the fact that sloppy assholes appeared to be eating everywhere around me.
My girlfriend and I laughed our asses off as we returned to our table. Handfuls of crab legs, really? I mean, REALLY? Fuck me, that shit was incredible.
Who knew the New Century Buffet would ultimately satisfy our appetites and entertain us to the point of tears at the same time!
When our server dropped off our check, I was delighted to see the cost was only $9.99 a person and that included our beverages! What a fantastic deal.
My girlfriend and I promised, despite some of the crazy events which had just unfolded, that we would indeed return another day, but the next time we would bring bear mace with us just in case that pack of kids returned as well.
