Maharaja Indian Cuisine – Albuquerque, New Mexico
In his Netflix “23 Hours to Kill” special, comedian Jerry Seinfeld posed the question: “What is the idea of the buffet? Well, things are bad. How can we make it worse? Why don’t we put people that are already struggling with portion control into some kind of debauched Caligula food orgy of unlimited human consumption?” Frankly, that’s a notion I’ve contemplated myself, but it’s not the only reason I don’t partake of buffets. As an independent observer of the culinary condition, reviewing buffets–irrespective of how good they might be–is not a true indicator of a restaurant’s quality. For that, you’ve got to order off the menu. Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not anti-buffetite. My Kim loves buffets. So does our friend John Martin, a fellow trencherman. During the height of the Cabrona virus, even culinary cognoscenti believed all-you-can-eat buffets were a thing of the past, just like sending Christmas cards. The more fastidious among us were relieved that sanitation protocols would be the riddance of those too short plexiglass sneeze guards and the sharing of serving sporks and tongs. Sadly, doing away with buffets–even if only for a short time–resulted in the permanent closure of such buffet favorites as…