Choose a seafood buffet
he best seafood dishes use fresh, clean, uncontaminated ingredients. The longer seafood has been away from the ocean, the more likely it is to have an unsatisfying taste.
If you love seafood, it is essential that you find a quality seafood buffet in your area. Use these time-tested tips during your search for the ideal seafood buffet.
As soon as you walk into a seafood restaurant, you will get a good overview of the buffet’s quality. The environment should be clean and smell good. It won’t have a strong fishy odor. Nor should you detect even the slightest whiff of ammonia, a common by-product of seafood caught several days ago.
Quality seafood restaurants keep their customers informed and educated about freshness. They will likely have notices about when their products were caught and cooked. If the dates are not openly displayed, ask one of the waiters or waitresses for information.
The best restaurants know that their catch should be less than a week old, even if the store is located in the middle of the country.
All seafood and fish should be in a refrigerated case or kept on ice at all times. Products stored on or in ice should never touch the water produced by the ice’s melting. Seafood spoils very easily. Even a brief period at room temperature can cause it to develop an offtaste. Seafood and fish kept at an improper temperature will likely grow bacteria, making you or your family sick.
Michael Mann, owner of Abe’s Ole Feed House in Benton, said Abe’s is the only seafood buffet in central Arkansas that offers allyou-can-eat catfish every night and both freshness and the restaurant’s staff play big roles in a customer choosing the restaurant.
“Of course, you want the freshest ingredients, never frozen, prepared fresh every day,” he said. “It certainly helps to have a great staff there that really cares about the preparation of the food, as well as the service.”
Fresh, wholesome seafood and fish have a price tag reflecting their quality. Never purchase a seafood buffet if the price seems too good to be true. It usually is.
Mann said customers get what they pay for.
“There are certainly ways you can cut corners and not get the U.S. farm-raised catfish or bottom-of-the-barrel seafood items,” he added. “There are different grades of seafood, and that’s certainly not a place you want to skimp, in my book — on the quality of the food that you’re putting out on a buffet.”
Learn everything you can about factors that influence the freshness of seafood and fish. With this information, finding a quality seafood buffet will become less of a mystery and more of an enjoyable experience.