Eating The Road

Old Country Buffet
Address: 1700 Fruitville Pike, Lancaster, PA 17601
Phone: (717) 390-8800
Website: www.oldcountrybuffet.com

Breakfast: Sun & Sat 8am-11am $5.99
Lunch: Mon-Sun 11am-3:30pm $7.99
Dinner: Mon-Sun 4pm-8:30pm $12.99

Typical breakfast: Carved ham, fresh fruit, bacon, biscuits & country gravy, eggs benedict, waffles, corned beef hash, pancakes, French toast, country fried steak, sausage, pastries, scrambled eggs, quiche.

Typical lunch/dinner: Spinach, romaine lettuce, mixed greens, carrots, radishes, raisins, hard-boiled eggs, beets,  olives, pineapple chunks, peach chunks, prunes, mushrooms, green pepper, sunflower seeds, cauliflower, broccoli, shredded cheese, potatoes, mac & cheese, French fries, pasta, taco bar, meatballs, orange chicken, fried shrimp, fried fish, salmon, chicken noodle soup, chili, pizza, mashed potatoes, gravy, cornbread, dinner rolls, hot dogs, tortilla chips, fried chicken, cornbread stuffing, sausage, barbecued chicken, baked beans.

Typical dessert: cookies, rice krispie treats, chocolate cake, carrot cake, bread pudding, hot fudge  sundae cake, peach cobbler, puddings, brownies, cheesecake, sugar-free desserts, soft serve ice cream bar.

I’ve eaten at HomeTown Buffet before but I can’t recall eating at an Old Country Buffet. Both are owned by Buffets, Inc. along with Country Buffet, Ryan’s Grill Buffet and Bakery, Fire Mountain and a few smaller stores like Granny’s Buffet and Tahoe Joe’s Famous Steakhouse. Essentially HomeTown and Old Country are the same. They serve your typical American food.

There are many serving areas set up here. The first houses the Jell-O, cole slaw, potato salad, pasta salad, fruit salad and taco bar with hard corn tortillas, soft flour tortillas, meat, nacho cheese, sour cream, salsa, shredded cheddar and shredded lettuce. There was no beans.

Next you’ll find the salad bar with lettuce (which was in poor shape, I did not have any), peas, carrots, beets, hard boiled eggs, cauliflower, sunflower seeds, bacon bits, raisins, carrot salad and the dressings, Ranch, Thousand Island, blue cheese, Italian, etc.

The first hot foods station has chicken noodle soup, chili, fried okra, French fries, fried fish and their sauces, BBQ, soy sauce, tarter sauce, cocktail sauce, horseradish sauce and mayonnaise.  Next to that is a table with pizza, baked potatoes, brussel sprouts, hot dogs, grilled chicken and fried chicken. Past that you’ll find the steamed fish, mashed potatoes, beef gravy, turkey gravy, green beans, corn, cornbread stuffing and sausage.  The last serving table has dinner rolls, cornbread, orange chicken, spaghetti, meat sauce, macaroni & cheese, baked beans.

In the dessert area you’ll find oatmeal cookies, sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies, fudge, rice krispie treats, peach cobbler, apple cobbler, hot fudge chocolate cake, chocolate cupcakes, brownies, bread pudding, cheesecake, cherry cheesecake, chocolate cheesecake, vanilla pudding, chocolate pudding, butterscotch pudding, Rocky Road pudding, carrot cake, chocolate cake, apple pie, vanilla and orange frozen yogurt, vanilla, chocolate and swirl soft serve ice cream, hot fudge sauce, chocolate syrup, strawberry syrup, butterscotch syrup, crushed Heath Bar, crushed Oreos, crushed peanut butter cups and chocolate chips.

I must say that I was pretty disappointed with my experience here. Normally I have a least a decent meal at a Buffets, Inc establishment but there were several things that were wrong here. Starting with the food, most all of it was much much too salty. You might assume that a buffet and especially one serving mostly fried foods would be salty to begin with but a lot of the items were inedible because of how salty they were.

The only items that were okay to me was the fried chicken, corn bread stuffing, the fried fish and the French fries. Other than that I would say give it a pass. The spaghetti with meat sauce was watered down. The pizza was way overcooked. The sausage was one of the saltiest things I’ve ever tasted. The orange chicken had no taste. There were a number of things that I’ve seen at other locations that they did not have, cinnamon rolls, muffins, hamburgers, chicken wings, ham, sauerkraut, turkey and roast beef.

The desserts were what they normally have. The hot fudge chocolate cake, peach cobbler, apple cobbler, brownies, carrot cake and chocolate chip cookies were very good. The chocolate cake was so dry as to not be edible, the cheesecake was horrible and not what I would even call cheesecake. The puddings were okay with the Rocky Road (chocolate pudding with walnuts, marshmallows and whipped cream) standing out.

There were several other problems that occurred while I was here. The plates and spoons were frequently empty and took a long time to be refilled. I had to ask and wait several minutes for warm flour tortillas because the few that were there were rock hard. There were no serving spoons for the dessert toppings. The empty cup trays were not removed making it difficult to get new cups (which were extremely small by the way). It was quite strange because they had plenty of staff and they weren’t overly busy but for some reason they just didn’t do a good job of handling everything.

The staff was friendly and did do a good job of clearing the table of empty plates. Oddly enough too, the manager was frequently roaming around, I’m not sure how he missed all of these things. The areas were adequately clean including the restrooms and all the serving stations.

This was the worst experience I’ve had a HomeTown/Old Country Buffet and normally it’s not like this. I would say skip this location and head over to Cactus Willie’s, from what I hear it’s got much better food but I can’t say I’ve tried it myself.

Further reviews:
Yelp
Trip Advisor
Art of the Buffet (Not this location)