French Fry Diary 504: Kobe Grill & Buffet

The sign went up over a month before they opened. Kobe Grill Sushi & Seafood Buffet in big red neon letters. Everyone was talking about the new place opening up in what was currently a dead strip mall, even the K-Mart and SuperFresh had vacated. There was nothing here, nothing but the big red neon sign, and folks working tirelessly inside to renovate and construct. Now, after less than a month open, the sign reads Kobe Grill Sushi & Seafood uffet. That's not a good omen.

When you walk in there is a quite beautiful lobby entrance, fountain, sculpture, and water wall between the lobby and actual restaurant. I should say up front, this place was way fancier than the buffets I have been to, even at the casinos. This place was huge, and despite what it says on Foursquare, it wasn't all that crowded. Maybe the novelty and newness has worn off after a month? I know that the sign maintenance has.

As soon as we were seated, and had our drink order taken, they brought us lobster, two halves of lobster, one for each of us. I guess it was free half-lobster night. I'm not a eating-the-inside-of-a-fish-thing's-scary-armor-skin-type guy, so I passed. They took mine away, and I couldn't help but wonder what they did with it. I hope it didn't end up on someone else's plate. The Bride wasn't too thrilled with hers, and didn't eat much.

The buffet was not large. It was spread out over a large area, but really, not all that much offered, and for catastrophically picky eater me, not all that much either. On my first foray into the buffet (or uffet), I got buttered potatoes and sweet fried plantains. Both were very good, and the potatoes were very soft and well cooked buttered wedges of potato, succulent. These were very good, two thumbs up. I got seconds on those babies. However the French fries were regular cut frozen fries, which seemed to have lived beneath the heat lamps for much longer than I would to think about. Not good.

There was grilled steak available but it didn't seem like anyone was ready cook any new for you. No, scratch that, they seemed unwilling to. We also seemed to have multiple people waiting on us due to the lack of crowd. We couldn't find butter or knives. Is this the TSA? Some of the food was very good, and some really not, and the customer service was also not, despite being plentiful. And when I say really not, I mean really really not good. This was really not a good experience.