On a recent Friday night in New York's East Village, the Journal's Adam Chandler found a line. It wasn't outside a matcha shop or a vintage store. People were waiting for a Southern buffet. Good Time Country Buffet charges $26.99 for all you can eat. Two of the tables were celebrating birthdays.
Buffets are having a moment, and food prices are a big reason. Yelp's annual trend report counted a 252% jump from 2025 in searches for all-you-can-eat buffets. Golden Corral, the big national chain, has roughly 350 U.S. locations. The newer spots are smaller and more personal. Good Time opened last month. Some two dozen dishes sit on the line, meatloaf, collard greens, mac and cheese, peach cobbler. Co-founder David Yun's father delivered produce to country buffets outside Atlanta. "Even a bowl of salad with some protein is like $25 these days," Yun said. His group runs two other New York restaurants and thinks this one could grow into several.
From Uzbek hot bars to Korean grills
Across town, Tashkent Supermarket runs a famous hot bar. The Uzbek grocer opened its first Manhattan store last year. Its Brooklyn stores already had a following among critics and food tourists. You fill a to-go box and pay by weight, usually $10.99 to $11.99 a pound. Plov, lamb or beef with rice cooked in a cast-iron cauldron, is the star. KPot Korean BBQ and Hot Pot has opened 165 locations in five years and is in nearly 40 states. Tables have their own grills and pots of broth. Grill plus hot pot is a $5 upcharge. The price runs from $36.99 in New York to $31.99 in Oklahoma City.
The heartland has its own stars. Der Dutchman has seven restaurants in Amish and Mennonite country and has been family-owned since 1969. Dinner is about $20 for adults and breakfast about $14. Fogo de Chão, the Brazilian steakhouse, grew from 60-some locations to nearly 115 in four years. Its Market Table lunch bar, soups, salads and breads with no limit, costs $20. The full churrasco, with chicken, lamb and beef on skewers, runs roughly $30 more. Last year Fogo topped Technomic's ranking of Gen Z's favorite full-service restaurants. Shad Ahmed, 31, has posted about dozens of New York buffets. He says younger diners want the most for their money and don't want to feel limited.
Our read
This is Cash Flow (M5), and it's good news hiding in a steam table. People aren't eating out less. They're changing what they compare. A $25 salad against a $26.99 plate with no limit is an easy call. That's the mind doing honest math, and it's the same math a budget asks for. The 252% figure is search interest, so treat it as a mood rather than a sales number. The mood is clear enough. Restaurants that can promise a known price for a full meal are the ones filling up. None of the chains here trades under a ticker the paper prints, and none sits in our books.
The connection is the food line in your own budget, and most households have two of them, groceries and eating out. This week, pull last month's totals for both from your card app and put them side by side. Then work out what one dinner costs you at home and what it costs out. That per-plate number is what the buffet crowd is comparing, and it's the number that moves when prices rise. If eating out keeps winning, bring it to your next review and we'll look at it together. You check the gutters before the rain, since nobody wants to find the leak during the storm.