to make an all-you-can-eat restaurant sound foreign and vaguely classy. As differentiated from a Pig Trough. And my first smorgasbord meal might very well have been at the Painted Horse in Miami. I remember the place, but not actually eating there. My father favored The Hofbrau House in Hallandale, it was run by a real German named Fritz. Father got to speak German to Fritz and the two of them hit it off, talking at length about the "Old Country" both were forced to leave in the 1930's. We used to eat Pig's Knuckles with Sauerkraut, which was served on a huge plate. To my mother's disgust, I managed to get it all down, that plus the German Layer Cake. I am still suffering indigestion about 32 feet down in some bend of my intestines.

First actual "buffet" may have been when I was a roadie and driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas every two weeks, bringing and picking up a rock band that performed at a casino (think it was the Stardust). I remember the meal as being incredibly inexpensive but not particularly good - not like today's offerings in Las Vegas. Oh, that Jell-O I had for dessert is somewhere 30 feet down, just above the sauerkraut. Those two ever meet up, and bam! ka-powwie! Zapp! More sound effects than in a Batman TV fight scene.