I lived in China when Pizza Hut opened and it was always fun to watch Chinese people pillage the salad bar. They also had a smoked salmon pizza with wasabi mayo dressing on top. It was so good.
this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2025
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LOL I did this one time in the college cafeteria. First made a full-size salad, right out to the edge of the plate. Dressing, sunflower seeds on top... perfect. Then I shoved in big cucumber slices all around the edge to enlarge the size of the plate by a couple inches, using the weight of the first salad to hold them in place, and piled a second salad on top of that. It was really just an engineering challenge. Took me an hour to eat that sucker.
Side note - in the cafeteria at one place where I worked the frozen yogurt was free if you could guess the weight within some small range. I always guessed the same amount, and got good enough at consistent dispensing that I almost always nailed it.
They could just charge by weight, that would instantly resolve the issue. And it's not as if scales are very expensive.
Years ago my university restaurant was modernized to have different kinds of food counters. After the modernization they had 2 problems with the salad bar: one problem was that some people were ordering meat at the grill counter and then piling salad on top to hide the meat, but more common was people building small salad towers, enough to feed multiple people with 1 plate. Eventually the restaurant resorted to billing the salads based on weight, which mostly solved the problem, but it also lead to a drastic drop in the consumption of tomatoes and cucumber.
What? It said one salad bowl, so I got one salad bowl.
If you actually eat the thing, it's fine for me.
Reminds me of those all you can eat sushi places, as long as you finish your plate.
Ppl would just stick the rice under the table, lol.
You should just order "sashimi" if you don't want the rice, in buffet place the "sashimi" is just the protein part of the sushi
Most of the all you can eat places don't offer that to ensure the patrons fill up on cheap rice which saves food costs.
The first time I went to one of those places I assumed they sold sushi by the piece not the roll. The way the menu worked, they gave you a paper menu and whatever you want you write a number next to that item and they give you that many servings. No where on the menu did it say that sushi was by the roll, which i think 8 or 20 pieces. But a serving of hibachi or fried rice was a couple of bites a serving. If all you wanted was hibachi, you could easily order 5. You could imagine my surprise when I saw my order after ordering 1 of every sushi.
Had the same thing with my wife's sister's husband. Like,
- Hey have you eaten sushi before?
- Sure!
- How many do you eat? 2? 3?
- Yes, and 4 or 5.
And I ordered plenty of servings. Which no one could eat afterwards. Still make fun of him to date.
This is an article that requires pictures
It’s weird because there is a thumbnail with pictures but no pictures in the actual article
Pretty funny, though I'm sure barely anyone would have been doing this other than to make meme photos for social media.
They'll be stopping it for the same reason most Pizza Huts in the US stopped doing it - profit. Not in the sense that people abusing the salad bar costs money - that's just a convenient excuse - but simply because it takes a lot to keep a salad bar well stocked and fresh, and they did the maths and figured they can make more if all they sell is pizza.
My dad used to do the same thing back when Wendy’s still had a salad bar. He and my mom would get a full meal out of one bowl and he was a big dude (230lb 6’3” construction worker big).
We used to joke that he was why Wendy’s nixed the salad bars.
You criminally underestimate the audacity of grab hags.
They'll be stopping it for the same reason most Pizza Huts in the US stopped doing it - profit.
We have unlimited salad included as part of the price of the meal in the UK. I’ve never gone back for seconds because I’m there for pizza.
When I was a student, they had a one bowl rule and students did try to cram in as much as they could by building towers like in the article (but nowhere near as impressive).
It’s like if you put a restriction on it then people will try to bend the rules to get more but if it’s unlimited then there’s no challenge.
Or it could be that students wanted to eat as much as possible for their money.
Supermarkets exploit that behaviour by displaying per-person limits on merchandise. E.g. "limit 5 per person".
It works.
Wow if only there was a way to like I dunno, limit the amount by weight or volume or something instead of just ending salad bars entirely due to that pesky self-imposed one bowl rule.
They only ended self service salad bars.
What other kind of salad bar is there? I'd just call that a salad off the menu.
One where someone is there to check weight/etc as you suggested.
Chinese people in American food restaurants exhibit behavior remarkably similar to American people in Chinese food restaurants. Curious.
It's the same thing Americans do at American restaurants. Have you seen what people do at Golden Corral?
No, why would anyone go to such a cursed place
There is/was a restaurant that offered IIRC $8/1 bowl, or $11 unlimited bowls (this was ~20 years ago). It was called BD's Mongolian BBQ, the crazy constructions I saw while eating there was ridiculous. Same goes for when we used to have Indian buffets (pre-COVID). I think the most insulting thing was that these were people who based on their dress, and the vehicles parked outside, did not seem to be hurting for money
Sometimes we had company lunches at that place. It was funny seeing the interns and newcomers building masive structures to maximize the amount of food in their plates
Bro you don't get your bag by eating steak every night, make that buffet trip worth it.
buffet minmaxing
It is in my asian blood.
My mom said no soda because that fills your stomach, also eat all the seafood.
Bruh, can't I just fucking enjoy a buffet? A Succulent Chinese-American buffet?
Also no carb at the start.
Sinus the pineapple structural?
Must've taken an hour plus for one person to create each of these monstrosities. Reminds me of Mongolian bbq strats in college. Veggies, then meats, then drape that shit in noodles and sauces.
Oh wow, flashback. I remember feeding four of us off a single bowl at the local Mongolian BBQ place. Other customers were literally hooting and cheering while I eased my tower to the grill. Apparently, they imposed a policy after that: one bowl means no higher than the rim. I was so proud.
We didn't even mess with the noodles, just meat and veg for days.
Ah, another nice thing ruined.
Respect.
Ghengis Grill: DO IT
I'm not sure why I'm not surprised it's about the Chinese one.
I guess veggies are expensive in China?