"Son look at all the people in this restaurant..."

One of the world’s greatest concepts, next to free childcare, is the all you can eat pizza buffet. It’s a scientifically documented fact that no two people can agree on the optimum pizza; somebody is going to want a different set of toppings, or a different crust, or a completely different pizza place because yours treats grease as a mandatory topping. The only solutions from a traditional pizza place are to buy two pizzas, which inevitably leads to sedentary layers of leftover pizza slices buried beneath bags of breast milk deep within our freezer, or I could “order whatever you want,” which generally means I’m about to order the wrong thing.

At an all you can eat pizza buffet though, there’s no haggling over what kind of pizza to order; simply slide up to the warming table and load up a plate with an assortment of doughy, cheesy, and preferably sausagey slices. Plus there’s no waiting at a buffet for someone to take your order, assemble your pizza, throw it in the oven, and then explain to you that it’s going to be a few more minutes because the oven’s heat blew the pepperoni off your first pizza.* Speed is always a virtue when you have to care for twin babies who won’t nap forever, and a toddler who thinks the time it takes to carry food from the microwave to the kitchen table is too long to wait for a meal.

I knew of a couple of good pizza buffets in my hometown of Sioux City, but hadn’t found one yet in Des Moines. Imagine my pleasure when Ellie reported to me that a co-worker had taken her to a previously unknown pizza buffet for lunch this past weekend. She said it was pretty good pizza, and cheap enough that our whole family could eat there for about the price of one ordinary pizza, plus we wouldn’t have to deal with any leftovers that someone will theoretically eat someday. When she called me this morning to say that she would be free for lunch today, I knew exactly where I wanted to eat.

We loaded the kids into the car around noon and embarked on my second daytrip in as many days. The restaurant was a few miles away, but it was a good day for a nice little drive with the family as the skies were sunny and the air was warm, probably warm enough for the kids to demand the car’s AC if only they were old enough to demand such things.

We arrived at the restaurant, paid an eye-popping $3.99 for each adult and nothing for the kids, and let the gorging begin. Feeding Abbie at a pizza buffet can be tricky since she won’t eat pizza, but fortunately they had pasta with choice of red or white sauce for her. The twins slept while we ate, which was outside of their scheduled naptime, but at least it let me concentrate on the pizza.

The pizza was as good as I could expect from a place that charges $3.99 for all you can eat: Minimal grease, a nice variety of traditional pizzas, some less traditional pizzas like ham and pineapple, some wacky pizzas like macaroni & cheese,** and dessert pizza. My only complaints are the slices were small, and each slice only had sauce and toppings covering half of the top, making for some comically large crust. Fortunately I could compensate for this by not eating the crust, and eating more pizza since it was all I could eat; they never said I had to eat the crusts too.

Ellie and I filled up quickly on pizza, while Abbie ate her pasta and refused all pizza, even the dessert pizza. I made sure to leave a generous tip since Abbie left a marinara masterpiece on the table, while I left a pile of crusts. We loaded everyone back into the car, and returned home in time for afternoon naps. No doubt we’ll be back some day. When the boys are eating a quarter of their body weight in junk food every day in a few years, that $3.99 lunch buffet will sound pretty tempting.

* This was an actual reason given to us once for why our pizza was taking so long. Presumably no one was hurt in the explosion.
** Seriously, they had pizza dough topped with macaroni and a cheese sauce. It was okay as a change of pace, but I don’t think I could have eaten more than a slice of it.