With budgets tightening and food costs rising, it’s no wonder all-you-can-eat restaurants are making a comeback in San Antonio. It’s nice to know the upfront costs, and besides, it’s fun to mix and match flavors until your tongue goes numb. While Alamo City’s best buffets may not ever win a Michelin Star, they offer more workaday pleasures — good value, good food, and a pleasantly full stomach all day.
Brasão Brazilian Steakhouse
San Antonio’s only locally owned churrascaria is a whimsical place, with fairytale floral arrangements and kooky Flying Spaghetti Monster light fixtures looming overhead. You probably won’t take much notice. Skewers of picanha, mozzarella-stuffed alcatra, and leg of lamb circle the room, luring patrons into a Pepé Le Pew haze. The salad bar is equally magical with salads, sides, and mounds of pão de queijo.
Chas Market & Kitchen
Sure, a sign reading “taco, hamburger, fish plate” doesn’t inspire any confidence that this East Side market has Korean barbecue bona fides. But the all-you-can-eat deal is a steal at $29.99. Charcoal grilled choices include beef bulgogi, short ribs, paper-thin brisket, and even baby octopus. Just don’t think of creating food waste. There’s a $15 charge for unfinished plates.
Endless options at Dimassi’s Mediterranean Buffet.Dimassi’s Mediterranean Buffet/ Facebook
Dimassi’s Mediterranean Buffet
San Antonio’s sole remaining location of a Houston-based mini-chain cranks out more than 60 options for its daily spreads. Classics like dolmas, kabobs, and sumac chicken meat a spectacular array of dips like hummus, baba ghanouj, tzatziki, and garlicky toum. The best part? It’s impossible to run out of warm pita.
El Ceviche de Waldito
Where’s Waldito? Happily cooking so you can stuff your face with selections from the “Miami” buffet. The mix includes Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Peruvian cuisine like arroz con gandules, maduros, and slow-stewed black beans. Charmingly, a slate of awards and write-ups is framed on the cramped walls, a sort of scrapbook of Chef Waldo Castro’s culinary life.
King Buffet
Your eyes will always be bigger than your stomach at this massive North Side spot, which specializes in American-Chinese favorites like moo goo gai pan and kung pao chicken. That’s just the start to a massive feast that includes solid sushi rolls, Mongolian barbecue, seafood, and even salads. Eat it all in a glitzy dining room with blue lights, space-age lighting, and a little Las Vegas glitz.
A fisher’s bounty at Kumi.Kumi/ Facebook
Kumi
This newish place offers build-your-own ramen, steamed bao, and good-enough sushi, but guests come to feast like Neptune. The chafing dishes are overflowing with crab legs, mussels, crawfish, and plump prawns, but savvy diners head for the house specialty. The Cajun boils are a treat unto themselves, filled with corn and potatoes to soak up all that zippy butter.
Susie’s Lumpia House
Filipino cuisine might have created the world’s ultimate à volonté dish in lumpia; they’re thin enough to eat by the fistful, featherweight, and have a snap that never gets old, bite after bite. Susie’s weekend buffet is relatively small with just a few rotating choices like pork adobo and pancit canton, a stir-fried noodle dish. But say it with intention, “lumpia, lumpia, lumpia,” and make it an (almost) daily affirmation.
Tandoor Palace
This Northwest Side favorite delivers a dependable mix of North Indian classics and vegetarian fare in a setting that’s barely adorned. But what it lacks in ambience is made up for on the plate. The butter chicken is a popular starter dish, but dive deeper to find fragrant lamb vindaloo and earthy palak paneer. Ignore warnings not to fill up on bread. The clay oven garlic naan is worth loosening a few buttons.