Under food:
The Manor
111 Prospect Avenue
West Orange, NJ 07052
(973) 731-2360
Happy birthday to me and T! We decided to celebrate with a few friends we haven't seen in a while. The Manor is a great place for "event" dining. Our families have spent many a special occasion here, so we have very fond memories of the place.
The Manor looks like one of those old Victorian estates that you see on the covers of trashy novels (I mean this in a good way), with its wrought iron gates and long curving driveway. Inside, it tries to go for historical grandeur, with lots of gleaming wood, ginormous flower arrangements, antiques and displays of fine china.
Gingerbread houses and candied fruits displayed in the main lobby.
DJKung was visibly overwhelmed at the detail of the houses.
They have a seafood buffet (lobsters galore) on some nights, but it was not available the evening we went. The displays are certainly very appealing, with the main table flanked by an ice sculpture next to the seafood bar. The entrees are arranged on either side, and overflow into a second little table. There is a lot of imposing pieces of gleaming silverware, which adds a very luxurious feeling to the buffet. The desserts are at the end.
For this post, I think I will share with you my special strategies for approaching buffet settings. My goal is generally not to get gut-bustingly full (unless we just finished a hike). Rather, I aim to try as many dishes that interest me while preventing precious stomach space from getting wasted on mediocre food. My tips are based on exhaustive experience in partaking of buffets, from all-you-can-eat Chinese and Indian buffets to places like The Manor. So here are:
SUPERFATTY'S SUPER BUFFET TIPS
1. Get settled in, say hello to your waitstaff and order your drink. If you are ordering an alcoholic beverage, keep in mind that what you order will affect your appetite as well as your palate as the meal progresses.
2. Forewarned is forearmed. Before attacking the buffet line, observe the flow of traffic (if any) and any areas of congestion. Popular items (e.g., peking duck, lobster, salmon sashimi) tend to have either a queue or a huddle of people. It can be useful to see what these are, decide whether to join in before the supply runs out. I prefer not to grab a plate first thing, but perform a canvas of the entire line of dishes. Because I am not a big dessert person, I tend to ignore the sweets until I am already satiated.
3. It is good to have an idea of the order you prefer to enjoy your food. I like to have cold appetizers first, then a salad if I feel like it, then soup, followed by hot dishes, then dessert. In this way, you can leisurely enjoy each course before proceeding to the next.
I ordered a kir royale to start off. (Bubbly for my birthday!) I am very partial to oysters, so I grabbed a few. Despite the season, they were not very plump. The oysters were briny, but they could have been fresher. I also grabbed a little bit of each of the accompaniments: cocktail sauce, horseradish, capers, lemon. The horseradish went best with these mollusks.
4. Use one plate for each course (i.e., avoid mixing two or more courses together). Else you will muddy up your palate, and you will hit "buffet fatigue" too soon. I have seen many a buffet-goer fall into this trap---mixing a salad, a meat dish, a pasta dish (both hot and cold together), a piece of sweet--- all on one plate, till the whole pile starts to topple over. Or worse, grabbing two plates of mishmashed food. After the first round, they are usually full and complain that they ate too much.
5. The key to a successful buffet experience is to be selective. Life is too short for mediocre food. Use all of your senses, and do not trust your eyes alone. Take only a small portion (one biteful, if possible) of the dishes you want to sample, and note which dishes you like. Avoid the temptation to scoop up a large serving, just because you are partial to a certain dish. You'll be surprised to find that a lot of the dishes look pretty and appetizing, but very few actually taste good enough that you will return for seconds. For instance, I am very fond of oysters, but I will only try two or three at first, to see if they are good that day.
I decided to go back for the oysters, then moved on to other cold apps. Here, I got (from left) a dolma (rice-stuffed grape leaf), a gooey cheese (Camembert?) and a gouda. Although I like dolma, I realized that I did not want to have more of it that night. The gouda was a bit dry and not even nutty. The gooey cheese was mmmmmmm. I had to go back for more.
Gravlax and more gooey cheese. Bread on the side. See how the cheese on the right got very runny, but the cheese on the left was still solid in the middle? I know that cured fish and cheese look strange together, but trust that I was washing all this down with my kir royale.
Also, although your taste buds may crave a certain flavor, it may be satisfied after just a little bit of it. It is difficult, not to mention wasteful, to still have a plateful of food in front of you that you've become sick of eating. I recall a rather disastrous experience way back when DJKung and I were buffet neophytes. We must've grabbed three pounds of boiled shrimp while at a Chinese buffet, and spent thirty minutes shelling them. In the end, we struggled to finish the shrimp. I think this is why I'm not too crazy about shrimp since then.
Another advantage of this try-a-little-bit approach is that if you find that you differ with the kitchen's interpretation of beef au jus, at least you only have a small portion on your plate that you can leave behind, and won't feel bad that you're wasting a lot of food.
6. After figuring out which dishes you like, you can go back and get more of it. This, I think, is the beauty of buffets---yes, you can go back. If, say, the fried calamari has run out, politely ask the waitstaff when it will be replenished. Hopefully at this point, you have a little rapport with the staff as you go through the buffet. Do not be embarrassed to ask for fear of looking like a gluttonous pig (c'mon you are in a buffet, after all!) ... the waitstaff know what the popular dishes are and try to anticipate demand, after all.
7. You will know when you need to move on to the next course. You will start to lose interest in what you are eating. Hopefully, there is not much on your plate, so you can leave it and get a fresh one.
On to my soups. The warm apps probably did not appeal to me. This one is lobster bisque, which was so-so. It was rather floury, with very little lobster taste, and no pieces of lobster. Note that I only got half a cup, which worked out well because I wanted to try the other soup. The mushroom soup (not pictured) was velvety and creamy, it made my toes curl. I got seconds of those.
Now I've moved into my entrees. Clockwise from top: deviled egg (it tipped over), cheese puff- looking bread, fried shrimp, Seafood Newburgh, rotellini alfredo. They all looked good, tasted ok, but I find that I liked the fried shrimp best. Which is odd given that it was shrimp (which I am not too crazy over) and it was fried. My experience is that all fried food in buffets becomes either soggy, or dry. This was neither. The shrimp was crunchy and had enough shrimp flavor.
8. The buffet is not a race. Take your time with the food and make as many trips as you want. As long as you are judicious with your selections, and prudent with your portions, you should be in good shape.
Second entree set. Clockwise from top: paella, more fried shrimp, mushrooms, steamed asparagus. I really liked the balance on this plate. The paella was pretty good, comparable to a good paella joint's, with a lot of seafood.
9. Desserts kinda all look alike to me, so I don't spend a lot of time looking at them. A cheap-ish buffet will have a selection of sliced fruit, pudding and jello. Some just have pastries and different variations of fake cheesecake. As usual, my advice to start small and be selective applies. Unless you're picking ice cream. All ice cream is good!
On to dessert! Creme brulee and yummy whipped cream on the side. The creme brulee was silky and creamy, although the caramel kinda melted because it was sitting at the buffet for a bit. The creme had a dab of orange liqueur on it, which was nice.
More dessert! Clockwise from top: more creme brulee, a lollipop, fruit cake with more yummy cream, a rapidly melting ice cream neapolitan. The lolly was intriguing; it had a salty creamy interior and an outer shell of milk and white chocolate. The fruit cake was ok, nothing memorable. And the neapolitan---well it was ice cream, so of course it was good!So there you have it. You should finish the meal being comfortably full and well-satisfied. You can undo a button for more breathing room, of course, but you should not be painfully full. It is good to come out of a buffet with a happy, sated feeling.
Anyway, going back to our experience at The Manor. Everybody had fun comparing notes of the food and enjoying the company. We heard at least two "Happy Birthday" songs from the other tables, so it was a very festive moment. Overall, one dish or two may not sparkle enough to your liking, but with the sheer variety they offer (I did not even cover the meat selections), it is hard not to find anything you like.
If you go, jackets are required for men. (Don't worry, they carry a lot of fusty jackets in the basement for those caught unawares). The Manor also has a la carte dining and and a Sunday brunch buffet, which we have yet to try.
