Savor Scout › Food guides › Buffets
How to find a good buffet
A buffet is only as good as its turnover. The same food is fresh and hot at 12:30 on a busy day and tired at 3pm on a quiet one, so when you go matters as much as where.
What separates a good one from a bad one
- High turnover — Busy buffets refresh trays constantly.
- Small trays, refilled often — Better than huge trays left to sit.
- Cooked-to-order stations — Grills, noodle stations or carving stations add freshness.
- Hot food hot, cold food cold — Steam tables at temperature, salads on ice.
- Clean serving areas — Tidy tongs and fresh plates.
What to order
- Go at peak times — Noon and 6pm.
- Start with the cooked-to-order station — Freshest food.
- Small portions first — Then go back for what is good.
- Look for what's just come out — And take that.
- Skip the fried things that have been sitting — They go limp first.
Where to find Buffets
Open listings put 4,425 buffets across the US. These are the cities and campuses with the most of them.
Cities with the most
Las Vegas, NV 56 Houston, TX 40 Orlando, FL 28 New York, NY 23 Phoenix, AZ 22 San Antonio, TX 21 Tucson, AZ 16 Indianapolis, IN 16
Campuses with the most within a mile
Touro University 7 FIT 7 The Graduate Center 7 Hostos 5 Baruch 5 UT 4
A few to start with
- The Buffet — Las Vegas, NV
129 Fremont Street Experience, Las Vegas - Cicis Houston — Houston, TX
935 N Shepherd Dr Ste 10, Houston - Panda Asian Buffet — Orlando, FL
2845 S Orange Ave Ste 180, Orlando - 99 Favor Taste — New York, NY
285 Grand St, New York - Club Annexus — Phoenix, AZ
201 E Jefferson St, Phoenix - China City Buffet — San Antonio, TX
3524 S New Braunfels Ave, San Antonio
Counts are listings in Overture Maps open data (September 2026), counted by the town in each address. Independent places only in the examples above, and they are a starting point rather than a ranking.
How Savor Scout looks for it
The search reads reviews for fresh, busy and replenished, and lets you specify the cuisine — Chinese, Indian, Brazilian, seafood — since buffets vary enormously.
Looking in a particular city?
Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.
- New York, NY
- Los Angeles, CA
- Chicago, IL
- Houston, TX
- Philadelphia, PA
- Phoenix, AZ
- San Antonio, TX
- San Diego, CA
- Dallas, TX
- San Jose, CA
- Austin, TX
- Indianapolis, IN
- Jacksonville, FL
- San Francisco, CA
- Columbus, OH
- Charlotte, NC
- Fort Worth, TX
- Detroit, MI
- El Paso, TX
- Memphis, TN
- Seattle, WA
- Denver, CO
- Washington, DC
- Boston, MA
- Nashville, TN
- Baltimore, MD
- Oklahoma City, OK
- Louisville, KY
- Portland, OR
- Las Vegas, NV
- Milwaukee, WI
- Albuquerque, NM
- Tucson, AZ
- Fresno, CA
- Sacramento, CA
- Long Beach, CA
- Kansas City, MO
- Mesa, AZ
- Virginia Beach, VA
- Atlanta, GA
- Colorado Springs, CO
- Omaha, NE
- Raleigh, NC
- Miami, FL
- Oakland, CA
- Minneapolis, MN
- Tulsa, OK
- Cleveland, OH
- Wichita, KS
- Arlington, TX
- New Orleans, LA
- Bakersfield, CA
- Tampa, FL
- Honolulu, HI
- Aurora, CO
- Anaheim, CA
- Santa Ana, CA
- St. Louis, MO
- Riverside, CA
- Corpus Christi, TX
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All-you-can-eat, Indian food, Chinese food