All-you-can-eat joints can prove to be too much temptation sometimes. It's easy to let your greedy nature take over when there's so much for the taking. Whether it's an offer of endless crab legs or the traditional buffet set up, these people went a little overboard, but at least they lived to tell the tale.
That Man’s Greed Is Unbelievable
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“When my family was on vacation in Florida, we went to an all you can eat pizza place. For dessert, they had these really tasty sticky buns that were in big demand. So me and my dad were in line to get one and once they put them out, some big guy at the front of the line literally just picked up the whole tray and walked back to his table. It was like 30 cinnamon buns, and nobody else was at his table…”
They Had To Sleep It Off In The Car
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“While my future husband and I were starving college students, a co-worker gifted us 2 for 1 coupons for The Sizzler. This was back in the ’90s when they had all-you-can-eat ribs as part of their ‘salad bar.’ We ate so much we couldn’t drive home. We had to put the seats back in his car and sleep a little of it off first. We lived less than five miles away but had to stop half way home at a golf course to go to the bathroom, hoping we’d digested enough at this point to poop some out. We made it home and were miserable all night. My future hubby thought he was having a heart attack because he couldn’t take a deep breath. However, this ended up being one of those moments in our relationship where we knew we were in it for the long haul. Our mutual grossness brought us closer.”
He Ate Himself Unconscious Out Of Spite
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“A good six years ago, I went to London with my dad and sister to see Les Mis at the West End. We stayed overnight in a Hilton, and I thought it was going to be posh and lovely. It was a darn dive.
The only thing that made up for it was the breakfast. It was an all-you-can-eat buffet, and the food was good. So, being a bit of a stubborn cow, I thought I’d get my money’s worth from the food, seeing as the rest of the hotel was so awful.
I had no less that twelve breakfasts. Started out with fruit and yogurt, came back for waffles, then pancakes and syrup, more fruit, and then a bacon sandwich, then eggs and bacon, then a full English…you get the idea.
After the sixth portion, I was starting to feel it. By the eighth, I was struggling. By the tenth, people were staring.
I fell asleep after the twelfth. Just there at the table. I then got bollocked for making a scene.
Worth it.”
This Wasn’t The First Restaurant To Ban Him
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“I had a friend come with a group of us to a little Chinese buffet. They had shrimp on the buffet and the guy picked up the entire steamer tray and brought it back to the table…no joke, just like that episode of The Simpsons. Thought it was a joke, but then he proceeded to chow down on them. To make sure they didn’t take the tray back, he dumped a ton of sweet and sour sauce on all of them. Yes, he was fat and he got banned from the place, which sadly wasn’t his first restaurant ban. So many stories of this guy, so many sad, sad stories.”
His Friend Conquered The Challenge, But It Cost Him Heavily
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“I was not the one to eat in this story, just a witness.
My local International House of Pancakes had a record challenge for who could eat the most pancakes. Break the record, your pancakes were free. Simple. So some friends and I went in one day, before our weekly basketball games, and looked at the record. 45 was the most anyone had eaten at this particular restaurant. We sat, looked over the menu, and waited for our waitress to take our order. When she got to my buddy, he said, ‘I will be breaking your pancake record today. Please bring me every pancake.’
Some time goes by and my friends and I have long finished our meal, yet our buddy who has set out to beat the record was still going.
52 pancakes later, he rests his fork and by the look on his face, he has filled himself with pancakes up from the stomach to the top of his throat. He didn’t look like he was going I move for days. Then it was time to go to the gym and play basketball.
Worst. Idea. Ever. He gets on the court, runs through a few plays in game and then calmly walks to the side of the court and his stomach empties all over the floor. There was enough on the floor that five people could’ve laid simultaneously and made vomit angels together. Most puke I have ever seen.
He went home after he finished puking. We went back to IHOP a week later and they said they had discontinued the challenge. They didn’t give us reason, the hostess wasn’t sure why, but we are fairly sure our buddy had something to do with it.”
After A Long Time On The Trail, That Chicken Was Like Manna From Heaven
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“I’d been backpacking on the Appalachian Trail for a couple months. Been eating nothing but ramen and instant oatmeal since Gatlinburg. I was getting hungry, OK? I was having dreams about meat.
So my friend and I hiked down from the trail to this tiny town, Catawba, Virginia, that only has one restaurant, the Homeplace–All You Can Eat Fried Chicken.
We walk in. We sit down. A waitress brings us a platter of fried chicken and a basket of homemade biscuits. And whenever we start running low, she brings another platter.
It’s not like most buffets, where the food’s crappy and watery and sugary but at least it’s unlimited. No. It’s the best darn fried chicken I’ve ever tasted. Crisp and juicy and greasy and just perfect.
Me and my pal gorge on fried chicken. Eat at least 5lbs each. I’m starting to feel very uncomfortable, so when the waitress shows up with the next platter, I wave her off. She clears the table.
And then she comes back carrying a freaking blackberry cobbler.
So we polish off the cobbler (it would have been impolite not to), pay our bill, grab our backpacks from the foyer & stand on the porch, contemplating the 1,500′ climb back up to the trail. And it becomes obvious that there is no conceivable way we are climbing back up to the trail tonight.
So I go back inside and ask the hostess if there’s anywhere to camp here in town, and she tells me, ‘You’re welcome to sleep in the gazebo out back.’ Apparently, this happens all the time.”
After What They Did, The Management Had To Step In
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“Me and my friends would go to the Mongolian BBQ in Roseville, California and basically just get enormous bowls of meat with a tiny handful of noodles on top of it as teenagers. It was something like $6 for lunch (one bowl) or $9 for dinner (all the bowls you can eat). Most people make the rookie mistake of getting mostly noodles, vegetables, and a few pieces of meat, we would probably pack 2 or 3 pounds of frozen beef, pork, and lamb into each bowl, never chicken. We even perfected the art of building a new rim around the bowl with frozen meat, considerably expanding how much delicious food the lunch serving yielded. After cooking it shrank quite a bit. The most any of us ever ate was three bowls of delicious spicy meat.
Finally, it all came to a crashing end when they basically stopped serving my friend and I after many, many trips. Their English was pretty broken, but they told us something along the lines of, ‘You no eat more! You no eat here more!’
This was in about 1997-1999, and I thought they had long since forgotten us. Actually though, apparently they remembered and held a grudge, because I went in last year and they kept giving me dirty looks and also undercooked my Mongolian BBQ.”
“I Wept, For There Were No More Egg Rolls To Conquer”
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“I once ate all the egg rolls at a Chinese buffet. To be clear, I don’t mean all the egg rolls they had out at the time. I mean I kept getting egg rolls until the restaurant ran out of egg roll materials. I estimated it at around ten thousand calories of egg rolls, maybe more.
I was trying to go up a weight class, and there weren’t that many vegetarian options, and I just got carried away. I wasn’t a jerk about it or anything, I would only take a few at a time, to give other people a chance, then come back for more. Only nobody else seemed to be taking them. Apparently, while the rest of the world squared off over the limitless seafood, I had the whole kitchen’s worth of egg rolls all to myself. It should have been enough! But woe, when I saw the breadth of my domain, I wept, for there were no more egg rolls to conquer.”
He Conquered The “Violator Breakfast” In A Way No One Had Before
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“I was invited to breakfast with a group of people that regularly went to a particular place every Sunday during the summer, for the ‘Violator Breakfast.’ On the menu they had an item called the ‘Violator.’ If memory serves, it consisted of four eggs, four sausages, four slices of bacon, four slices of toast, four pancakes, a rather large heaping of fried potatoes, and a glass of OJ. Not everyone ordered it, but it was the reason most folks in this group gathered at this particular restaurant, and it was a feat among those that did to finish the fabled breakfast.
I had heard about the epic size of this meal and how hard it was to finish for weeks before I went. I, of course, ordered it. When I did finish it with little difficulty, I jokingly commented as we left the restaurant, ‘I could eat two of those.’
There was a rather attractive young woman there who called bull. She offered to pay for both breakfasts the following week if I did. If I could not eat both, I had to buy her breakfast for the next six weeks. As she was attractive, and a wise man once told me to play to my strengths when courting women, I accepted. To prepare, I continued my life long training regimen of eating like a man who wants to die young of a massive coronary.
The following week I ordered two breakfasts and prepared myself for an uncomfortable ride home, but honestly was not really that worried. As they brought out both meals the owner of the restaurant did come out and warn me his insurance did not cover death by overindulgence, and I should take it easy. I finished the two breakfasts with no real trouble. In fact, I was done with both before some people even finished their first.
The woman kept her promise and paid for both. I, however, paid for our next meal together, as the sight of me stuffing pounds of bacon and pancakes in my gullet did not repulse her tremendously. We ended up dating for a while after that.
The sad part was my feat of gluttony kind of ruined the breakfast after that. Apparently, with the over the top decimation of the idea of eating two ‘Violators,’ people did not really seem too excited about even trying to eat one, and I was told the group apparently fizzled out on going to breakfast not long after.
Then there was the time a friend had to have his gallbladder removed after going head to head with me at an all you can eat prime rib place, but that is another tale for another time…”
All That Eating Changed Him Physically
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“A restaurant called Casey’s has all-you-can-eat fajitas. I started with the initial 1/2lb of meat and a 34oz beer. I managed to down an additional nine 1/4lb refills of beef or chicken. That’s right, 2.75lbs of meat, plus veg, tortillas, beer, etc.
Honestly, at the end after the first 6 or so refills I just started eating the meat to see how far I could go.
I finished, but I couldn’t straighten up afterward. It’s like the food baby had re-arranged my organs into this new shape. I walked to the car hunched over and fell into some sort of insulin shock coma.
Somewhere in the basement, I have the receipt preserved to show my future children what a freaking idiot their dad is.”
After This Incident, They Didn’t Invite Mark Out To Eat Ever Again
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“I’ll share a story about someone who my mother and I once invited to go to a buffet with us.
So this guy, we’ll call him Mark, accepts our offer to go to a local Chinese food buffet for takeout. I don’t know if most Chinese buffet places do this or not, but at least at this place, you could get a pound of whatever food you wanted for like $5 or something like that, and take it home with you instead of eating there.
The three of us split up to get what we want from the different buffet tables, and then I notice that Mark is walking around with his little takeout box in front of his face. I walk over closer to him and I see him eating a freaking watermelon slice, right there in front of the buffet, and then he sits the remains of the watermelon back on the buffet table.
I’m like, ‘What the heck?’ but I don’t say anything right away. He then walks down to those Chinese donut things and pops one into his mouth, and then he walks over to the chicken wings and starts eating freaking chicken wings and putting the bones back on the buffet table.
I go over to my mom and I’m like, ‘Do you see what Mark is doing?’
She goes over and peeks and starts scolding him under her breath. He’s like, ‘It’s fine! I do this all the time!’
So my mom walks away from him, pissed off, and then one of the employees walks over to my mom. He tells her that he sees what Mark is doing, and he sees that we’re none too happy to see him doing it either, so if my mom tells Mark to leave, they won’t call the cops.
Mom walks over to Mark and tells him to leave. He actually gets offended. Like, we’re somehow being rude to him by telling him to stop eating off the freaking buffet line and putting bones and crap back onto it.
So he actually puts some stuff into his container and walks it over to the front where they weigh the food and you pay. The cashier is giving him a dirty look the whole time but doesn’t say anything. He pays for his own food, we pay for ours and we walk out and get back in the car. We’re both like, ‘We can’t freaking believe you, Mark! We’re never taking you out anywhere again!’
Meanwhile, he reaches into his pockets and starts pulling out chicken wings, from his freaking pockets!
As he does this, he actually says something like, “So what? The Chinese are out to rip you off, anyway. They deserve it.’
My mom nearly made him walk home, she was so angry.”
The Staff Always Tried To Pull Their “Finishing Move”
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“I’ve had waiters and staff try what I’ll call the ‘finishing move.’
I recall an all-you-can-eat shrimp event. First order of shrimp was meal sized. Second, third, fourth orders were puny – like 6 – 8 shrimp at a time. Waiter got tired of bringing shrimp back and forth, and delivered an unsolicited double order of fried (as they’re so rich), hoping to shut down further requests.
The most obvious shutdown I’ve ever gotten was at a churrascaria. Was there with my father-in-law, and that man can put away some food. I made the mistake of teaching him to order an acidic drink, as it would cut some of the richness of the fat and allow him to eat more.
After about an hour of steak after steak, the manager showed up, flanked by three or four guys all carrying skewers of their most desirable meats.
‘Gentlemen, we just wanted to make sure you get everything you want before you have to go. What else would you like today?’
Whatever we asked for at that time was given double-portion style, and the check was put on the table. Don’t know if they would’ve refused to bring us more after that because that did effectively shut down our ability to eat.”
Their Jello Craving Could Not Be Soothed
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“A few friends and I are solely responsible for 6 different all-you-can-eat Japanese restaurants in our city changing their menus and ordering policies regards the Jello dessert options.
Formerly, there was no limit to the number of Jello servings that could be placed on a single order form – requesting 60 servings (three 1-inch cubes of jello constituted a single serving) of Jello at a time ended that particular policy. After that, a limit of 20 servings per order form was instituted and promptly overcome by preparing multiple order forms that could be handed in as the servings were delivered. In retaliation/escalation, a strict policy of one serving of Jello per customer per table every fifteen minutes was implemented, effectively killing our Jello hoarding.
As we moved from restaurant to restaurant, similar policies were quickly adopted, forcing us to move on in search of other restaurants with the promise of limitless Jello desserts. Currently, we’ve settled on a restaurant that is happy to pander to our love of Jello as our large orders of Jello are served to us in individual ramen bowls. Rough counts of their contents have shown that each bowl holds, approximately, twenty servings of Jello. The problem the restaurants had with our Jello ordering was that we would effectively order all of their prepared Jello, leaving nothing for the other customers until the next batch had finished setting (which we would then order as well). I can’t really fault them for their decision but learning of what we were doing didn’t slow our Jello consumption.
One of the reasons we tend to order a large amount of Jello at these restaurants is that we are all spectacularly terrible at making Jello ourselves, our Jello always ends up with that thick chewy film which really ruins the experience and enjoyment of the Jello. Restaurants, we’ve found, typically have really well made Jello.
For now, we are content.”
The Manager Threatened To Call The Cops
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“I’ve been booted from Sizzler for eating all the shrimp during one of their ‘steak and all you can eat shrimp’ dealios. The manager came over, refunded my friend and I, and quietly ushered us out. My friend said he wanted to stay and the manager quietly threatened to call the police.
It was as stupid as it sounds. This was at Sizzler in Carindale, Brisbane, Australia about 5 years ago. I dunno why he didn’t just let us eat – we were literally discussing leaving when he came over to the table. We are two normal guys too – it’s not like we ate much more than the average person.”
“The Manger Kept Staring At Us”
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“I took my friend to an all-you-can-eat Sushi/Japanese food place for his birthday the other year. Five of us went with the plan of eating staggering amounts of food, got very stoned before we arrived, brought loads of beer (byob) and proceeded to eat a staggering amount of rounds of food. Our check magically appeared on the table at one point in the night. Time went on and the manager kept poking his head out from the back and staring at us. Finally, after we ordered a second round of dessert, the manager came out and told us that we had to leave.
Had it not been all-you-can-eat, our bill would have been insane, stupid amounts of sashimi were eaten.”
His Wife Begged Him To Stop, But He Was On A Roll
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“I was 23 and home from the Air Force with my new wife. My parents wanted to take us out to dinner. I love seafood, Dungeness crab and steamer clams being my two favorites.
They took us to an all you can eat seafood buffet at a place called Tugboat Annie’s. I leveled the place. I was there about three hours and it was mortifying to my wife. People were coming out of the back and pointing at our table. ‘That’s him over there.’ It was like I was Homer Simpson.
A waitress even came over and said something like, ‘I’ve been allowed to offer you piece of Prime Rib if you’d like it.’ I declined and just kept going. Finally, my wife was squirming so much and we were laughing that we started to make a scene. I just called it and said we could go. I honestly could have stayed a lot longer.
Dungeness and I go way back, I just don’t fill up on it. My dad tells a story when he was stationed at Whidbey Island on the Navy base. They had an all you can eat buffet on Friday nights. He said I did so much damage one night that they tried to charge me as an adult instead of a kid. I was like 10-years-old. So yeah, I have a history.”
They Were Just Eating For The Thrill Of It
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“Went to Crab Fest at Red Lobster about ten years ago. We were there for six hours. About four hours in, it didn’t even taste good anymore, we just wanted to see who could eat the most. The same waitress was with us for all six hours. There were seven of us and we tipped her more than the total of the actual bill. They never once alluded that we needed to stop eating. As a matter of fact, multiple servers stopped by our table to see who was winning.”
How His Brother’s Steak Habit Almost Got Them Kicked Out Of Ryan’s Steakhouse
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“My little brother nearly got kicked out of a Ryan’s Steakhouse. When he was like 12, he had a crazy high metabolism and put away like five steaks from their buffet at once. Went to get a 6th one and the guy grilling them up forbid him from getting another one. Manager was called, my dad got pissed, brother got his 6th and 7th steak. It was a good night. I’m not denying that it shoulda killed him, but I’m telling ya, the kid could put away food like no one’s business. What’s funny now is that it didn’t make him fat. He’s fairly skinny and in pretty good shape these days. No adverse health problems at all either. His line of work has something to do with it I’m sure (he’s a line worker in a tree trimming business).”
