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Is NYC an all-you-can-eat buffet town? A 5-year-old investigates.
By
James Ramsay
Published Jul 30, 2026
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James Ramsay/Gothamist
By
James Ramsay
Published Jul 30, 2026
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This column originally appeared in the Looped In NYC newsletter. Sign up here.
One night about a month ago, my wife emerged from putting our daughter Joanna to bed and informed me that our 5-year-old was now obsessed with all-you-can-eat buffets.
How Joanna reached this conclusion was through a combination of genuine curiosity and disingenuous bedtime-delay tactics. Their hold-on-one-more-thing discussion that night had touched on Disney World and cruise ships, two settings we won’t be coming near anytime soon. But in the process, she learned that these venues also offer restaurants where you can fill your plate with whatever you want, which apparently thrilled her.
And that kind of thrilled me!
I have great childhood memories of continental breakfast spreads at Hampton Inns, bacon bit-loaded salad bars at Shoney’s across the South, a Shakey’s Pizza buffet I once went to near Branson. Going to high school in San Diego, my friends and I used to hang out at a now-shuttered Souplantation franchise (it had a soft-serve machine).
Even if our family won’t be traveling to Orlando anytime soon, could I at least get my child a decent buffet experience here in New York City? It seems like half this town is currently lining up for frozen yogurt and chicken tenders — I figured our nostalgic-for-kiddie-food dining scene must have some options on the buffet front?
After poking around and calling some local hotels, I discovered that the Marriott Marquis in Times Square had what appeared to be a promising breakfast buffet that’s open to non-hotel guests, so Joanna and I set off for a late-morning feast.
On the ferry ride in, I asked her what she thought the buffet would have.
“Cookies,” she said, with no further elaboration.
“Well if you just wanted cookies, you could go to a cookie store,” I said.
“But they might have different things,” she remembered.
When we finally made it up to the eighth-floor restaurant, which is in the middle of a grand atrium, Joanna walked up to the buffet spread and immediately homed in on a tray of dark frosted brownies with rainbow sprinkles. When I told her “dessert” would have to wait until she finished a proper breakfast — it was 9:30 a.m. — she relented, and instead filled her plates with Froot Loops, bacon, a waffle covered in chocolate syrup and whipped cream, two slices of bread with a packet of Nutella, some pineapple, and a chocolate milk.
About 15 minutes in, she started moaning.
“I still want to get dessert, but my tummy is really hurting,” she said.
We decided to call it.
After dropping $47 plus tip for my entry to then push a lukewarm egg patty around my plate (they told me kids got a discount, but then didn’t charge me for Joanna), I was pretty underwhelmed. I knew buffets were on the decline — even the ones in Las Vegas are struggling. But New York City has every other type of restaurant from around the world — why not a good buffet?
“The all-you-can-eat buffet, known for short as AYCE, almost completely disappeared from the landscape during the Covid era,” said veteran restaurant critic Robert Sietsema. “The reason is, people didn’t want buffets where people were kind of poking into [them].”
When I asked Sietsema what does still exist, he pointed to some Brazilian churrascarias, where waiters in gaucho outfits come to your table with big skewers of meat; all-you-can-eat sushi places (“to me a very bad idea — with sushi, you want fewer pieces of exquisite fish”); and cook-it-yourself hot pot restaurants (“the bubbling pots are at eye level, which, to me, is kind of dangerous for a child”).
He said the city’s all-you-can-eat Korean barbecues are excellent, and highlighted Let’s Meat in Koreatown and the family-friendly Wonder Pig in Sunnyside as stand-outs.
And then there were the city’s traditionally excellent Indian buffets, which have nearly disappeared.
“There is still one called Dhaba, up in Curry Hill on lower Lexington Avenue,” he said. “What kid doesn’t like tandoori chicken?”
So, after working off our Marriott breakfast at the playground for a couple hours, Joanna and I headed over to Dhaba. The aloo gobi, chicken dishes and paneer were a little more my speed; Joanna appreciated the biryani and the naan. The gulab jamun, which she more or less accurately described as “donuts soaked in something,” was a hit. And the price was right: $24.74 plus tip for the two of us.
Joanna’s review: “I liked trying the rice. I liked trying the chicken. I liked most of all trying the new dessert.”
My review: Taking a 5-year-old who only wants carbs and sugar to an all-you-can-eat buffet really isn’t necessary. But in the end, I had a happy daughter who’d tried something new — and gotten over her stomach ache.
Will I eventually take her on that cruise vacation? No. But when she’s a little more coordinated, we’ll try hot pot.
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looped in
new york city
restaurants
James Ramsay
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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