Beach Buffet: The All You Can Eat Experience

Remember the pie eating contest scene in the movie "Stand By Me"?  The characters stuff and stuff and stuff themselves until...well...you know what happened.

Last Saturday night, I was trying to think of a place to take my Mother for dinner.  I knew that she wouldn't care for the type of restaurants that I like (aka anywhere that doesn't serve a baked potato with butter/sour cream toppings) so I did a quick Google search for "Ocean City MD restaurants".  At the top of the list was The Bonfire on 70th St.  I read a few of the buffet menu items to my Mom and she seemed pretty excited so, even though it was only 4 PM, we headed south.

The Bonfire is huge.  It's a dizzying maze of dining rooms, bars, buffets, mirrors, windows, and mish-mash décor (sort of a mix of late 80's/early 90's brass and floral with some nautical elements thrown in, along with a strange landscape mural in a fully enclosed rock and water garden).  The hosts and servers were extremely friendly and we didn't have to wait long before we were guided to our table, which was somewhere toward the back of the restaurant (I think).  It was easy to get lost in the sea of people carrying plates full of crab legs and dessert items.

The food really isn't bad.  Since they have pretty much every type of food known to man on the buffet, there is something for everyone.  Mom tried the baked ham, prime rib, and crab legs while I munched on chicken wings, salad, and mac and cheese.  The dessert buffet offers all sorts of pies, cakes, ice cream, and cookies as well as home made fried doughnuts (yum). 

Did I eat my $34 worth?  Definitely not.  But, from what I could see, there were plenty of people there that did!  I think it was worth the money just to experience the buffet phenomenon.  Everyone there seemed pretty happy to be indulging in the vast array of items that they had to offer. 

Although the focus was more on quantity than quality, I expected a less tasty experience.  Most of the items that I tried didn't excite my taste buds, but it wasn't like cafeteria food either.  It was more of the type of food that you want to stuff yourself with on a Sunday afternoon in front of a football game right before you take a really long nap to sleep off your food coma.


Mom seemed to enjoy herself and had to eat more than a few Tums that evening. So glad she didn't eat the blueberry pie!