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Fyre

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  1. Fyre

    Minado

    Anyone know about the Thai/Malaysian buffet that is in the same mall as someone said? I passed it once and am very curious. I haven't been to the International Buffet in Bergenfield in a long time, is that the one that is in a little shopping center with a big Asian food market? If it is, I don't remember it being so spectacular. I remember that they seemed to go for quantity over quality; they had a lot of choices but most things were so-so (even on buffet food scale). I do remember they had fresh sushi made by a sushi chef, but I wasn't into sushi at the time; I think I remember there not being a whole lot of variety of types of sushi, but then again that could be wrong. Has this place improved in the last couple of years? Because I wouldn't even put it in the same hemisphere in regards to quality of food AND quantity at Minado.
  2. Yep, that is the kind of place. The greens are varietal, the salad ingredients are all nicely chopped and there is quite a variety. Wish there was something like that around me. :( Maybe this Saladworks will pop up around here. I was saying that a place like that would be a goldmine and wish I had the means to create a place like that. I am not a fan of Panera, but for what that place is, it's not cheap and it's usually pretty busy.
  3. I am definitely not looking to work at a chain. Even though chain restaurants may have high volume, they are the worst places to waitress. Crazy tip outs, small stations (where I work, we do 8 to 10 table stations no lie.. in a chain, you get 4 tables maximum), not much turnover, and the most bs anywhere. I am looking for a privately owned restaurant or bar that is always busy. The kind of place that always has a wait every night. :)
  4. It's more of an unnatural red.. actually totally unnatural :) I'm not a redhead at all without my dye. I was turned down by TGI Friday's once.. Yes, the place that made their waitstaff dress like clowns told me my hair was not a natural color and unacceptable. Ha. That was funny. I really, really did not want to work there and it was only a good thing cuz I would have hated it. I've had my fill of working in corporate/chain restaurants. I was told by a couple of non chain restaurants that I'd have to change my hair if I wanted to work there. I couldn't work at ESPN Zone in the City because of my hair.. that is owned by Disney and is a superduper corporate place with exact regulations on every single thing in the world. Earing size, makeup/nail color, how you do silverware rollups... it was ok, I couldn't function in a place like that anyway. Most places don't really have a problem with it; one place I worked at, one manager confided to me after a few months that when I first showed up to work after I was hired, she ran in the back and asked the manager who hired me: WHO did you hire?? But, she saw after a short time that I am a really good waitress and had many tables compliment me. I don't think my hair is that crazy, I get lots of compliments randomly wheather at work or in the mall or walking down the street and women of all sorts ask me all the time how I get my hair that red and what I use and where they can get it.
  5. First question: In Manhattan, there are tons of places that have a very extensive make your own salad with a lot of different ingredients to add including very varied chicken choices (usually grilled, thai, cajun, and others), shrimp and lots of dressing choices. They also have mixed greens or romaine as opposed to boring iceberg. I am wondering if there are any places in Northern NJ that have that type of thing? It's the perfect thing that isn't that expensive and is great to grab and go to work. Diner salad bars are completely incomparable. Second, does anyone know a restaurant or bar looking for a bartender or waitress that is very consistently busy? I live in West Milford and will drive within a reasonable distance in Northern Bergen County or Passaic County. Suffern area works too. I have six years in the restaurant biz. Nothing too upscale or too uptight. Prefer high volume over ultra high quality if you know what I mean. I have very red hair that some places might not love, but it's not blue or green or purple. It's just very vibrantly red. I am looking for full time only (I support myself and my mother) and am hoping to find the right job before the Summer. Feel free to PM me if you have any info/leads.. Any help is very greatly appreciated!
  6. I love buffets. Sure, not the highest quality dining experience, but I like variety and plenty of it. I like being able to eat a lot of different things for a good price, and for me, not every dining experience has to be a four star formal dining affair. I sometimes like to go where I get a lot of bang for a little buck. The buffets I frequent are: Minado's Japanese seafood buffet: I've eaten here probably twenty five times or more. I LOVE sushi, especially eating different varieties. I think their sushi is particularly fresh although once in the past few dining experiences, on a particularly crazy busy Saturday night, i found things to be a little off and things tasted substandard for their usual quality. But, all in all, I like the sushi there a lot. I don't know if they truly use fresh crab or not in their sushi, but at the very least they finely chop either real crab or the imitation stuff but it gives it a MUCH fresher better taste and consistency than the usual whole piece of imitation crab bit most places use. The California rolls are superb and are as good as any Japanese regular restaurant that I've eaten at. I love their terryaki salmon and it is one of the only salmon dishes I will eat anywhere as it does not taste in the least bit fishy. They also a have great cod dish that is in a crispy batter with a yummy sauce. I like their noodles with vegetables; they are quite tasty and better than lo mein anywhere. They offer shrimp cocktail already peeled for you- something I have yet to see in any buffet restaurant. They have very large fried shrimp that is tasty as well as shrimp and vegetable tempura. Delicious salads like cold asparagus in creamy sauce and cucumbers in a biting sesame dressing also provide lots of variety. They have jumbo crab legs, but they are cold and I only personally enjoy hot ones. My companion though said they are very fresh and delicious. Occassionally, you might be able to snatch a piece of lobster, but it involves waiting for 15 minutes or so and being the first there when they bring the tray out and they are instantaneously snatched up. So, I don't hold my breath for one and believe that they purposely hardly bring any out even though they are quick to advertise that you get lobster. Plenty of other things to choose from. I usually can't get to try everything I intend because I get too full as there is so much to eat and choose from. Anyway, I love this place. I like the Grand Buffet on Rt 17 S in Ramsey. I think they have the best quality of food on a Chinese buffet of all the places I've eaten. It is extremely consistent. I have eaten there myriads of times so I am a little tired of their selection. They also have the best crab legs on any buffet - extremely large and meaty. I've ordered crab legs in a restaurant for more than this whole buffet costs and the ones on the Grand Buffet were of better quality and had far more meat. The sushi is nothing to speak of, most of the time with the exception of a piece of eel sashimi I don't even take any. Salad bar is ok, also nothing to write home about, but ok if you want a basic salad and of course shrimp cocktail. They have excellent general tso's, pepper steak, boneless spare ribs and sometimes spare ribs on the bone that are awesome, tasty wonton soup, their beef or chicken with brocoli is one of the bests I've had anywhere, chicken with garlic sauce has giant pieces of chicken with large strips of vegetables in a tangy sweet and spicy sauce, the duck that appears sometimes is good and not too greasy and the plum sauce on the side is delicious - I am a sauce FREAK; my boyfriend says I have a sauce fetish- Most meat dishes I enjoy have some kind of sauce and the more interesting and tasty the sauce, the more enjoyable the meat is to me. I used to eat at this place on an average of once a week, but now I only get take-out (they weigh and charge per pound) on the way to work once in a while. I need something different and different selections. A buffet opened up in Saddle Brook last year called Dynasty Buffet that I go to once in a while. They have a very good salad bar. They have real, fresh made sushi by an actual sushi chef- no supermarket fare here, but no exotic crazy rolls either- just the typical california, tuna, vegetable, and eel. The quality of the food on the buffet is better than good but not excellent (on buffet food scale). Most of their Chinese dishes lack the full flavor you might get if you went to a regular Chinese restaurant: I find their pepper steak, for example, to be bland and the sauce is oily and not rich and full. General Tso's was fair, but the chicken tends to be a bit over cooked and the sauce lacks any punch or distinct taste. Egg rolls are fine and they have American food which is also good but not excellent. Ordinary salmon and penne with vodka sauce taste like they could be made in a good hospital cafeteria. Mozarrella sticks are like the kind you buy in a box in the supermarket so I wish they wouldn't bother and would put something better on instead. They do have very delicious boneless spare ribs that are succulent, sweet and juicy. The dumplings and dim sum are very good also. What stands out at this buffet, however, is their grill section. They have excellent chicken terriyaki, sirloin steak, and some kind of absolutely delicious short ribs that I can't get enough of (amazing marinade- see my sauce fetish comment above) that are continuously made on a grill you can see so that everything is freshly made within minutes and replenished constantly. They also have grilled portabello mushrooms that my mother said were outstanding, but I don't eat mushrooms. In addition, they have spare ribs made on the grill and cut for you- again terrifically fresh and it gives a true barbecue flavor. They have prime rib which is never a favorite of mine but my mother said is pretty good, but obviously not like any steakhouse, but really not bad. You also can get real peking duck sliced for you by a chef that you can put in dough puffs with real scallions and a fabooo plum sauce. No cut up bits of dry duck sitting in grease like most buffets. Cut off a roasted duck for you. The peking duck was as good as peking duck that I had at a mid-expensive Chinese restaurant in NY that features Peking duck as a specialty. Well, the duck and sauce and scallion were; their dough puffs are extremely airy, a bit dry and bland, and don't really do it for me like the flat pancakes that are typical which seem to have better flavor, but the ones at Dynasty still are not bad for its purpose. The only problem is that the guy cutting your duck for you is a bit stingy and gives you looks if you ask for more. When I made a second trip for duck, he acted a bit gruff and gave me a very small portion- I don't see how it affects him; I know he is not the owner. Oh well, I sent my mother to get me more as she doesn't eat duck. Dynasty Buffet has a very large selection of desserts including cheesecake that sometimes is a bit frozen, ice cream with select toppings, fresh fruit, bananas in strawberries, cream puffs, chocolate pudding, rice pudding, banana cake, coconut cake, etc. I went many times in a short period of time and also burned out of this place a bit, but I go when I have a craving for terriyaki chicken and marrinated short ribs. The places I will not eat at again: Joysac on Rt 46: terrible food, dried out and sitting there forever it seems. I went there twice (what was I thinking?) and both times it was not even close to busy- a bad warning sign. They say they have a mongolian barbecue, but no one was there to make it and there was just some dried up vegetables and a few sauces sitting there anyway. Blech. I forgot the name but a buffet on Main Street in Clifton: It is the largest buffet I've seen with just an unbelieveable amount of things to choose from. I really haven't seen a place that has 5 buffet tables plus a sushi bar plus a grill. But, everything just tasted so mediocre at best. Like Chinese food gone school cafeteria quality. I'd rather have not an outrageous crazy amount of a selection with food that actually tastes good. My friend got sick literally from their sushi and said it tasted off before he puked. I went there a long time ago before I disovered that I actually like no love sushi so I didn't try the sushi there, but that was probably a good thing. Also gets a blech. Lodi Buffet on Main St in Lodi: It's ok but just that- ok. Not huge selection at all and always the same old stuff. Haven't been there in ages, but couldn't iamgine eating there again nonetheless compared to Dynasty and Grand. Gets an Ehh. So, does anyone know of any great chinese (or other) buffet restaurants in Bergen or Passaic county or even in Rockland around the Palisades Mall that are noteworthy that you recommend to a buffet lover that have both good food and a good selection?
  7. Hi. This is my first post here. I saw a bunch of posts about the Cheesecake Factory - specifically in Hackensack, NJ- and saw things like the food comes frozen and wanted to point a few things out and shed some light on some of the myths and urban legends of the super-hyped disneyland of a restaurant that is the CF. I consider that job to be one of the most horrible places to work of all the jobs I've had in my waitressing career, so what I say I consider to be unbiased. 1. The food is extremely fresh and every single thing is made when you order it. Very little is pre-prepped. Nothing is frozen or microwaved. In fact, they will not even press down on a steak with weight like they do in any other chain restaurant to speed the cooking time, that is a fireable offense. So, if you order well, you are going to wait. They don't want the steak losing any of its juices -which happens when you weight down a steak. This is one of the reasons why your dining experience will be the longest in your life and you will sit an average of 2 hours or more at your table after waiting 1 to 2 to 3 hours. This also is what causes the 3 hour waits. When you order chicken madeira, for example, the chef reduces veal stock (the real thing, not instand bouillion or anything like that) and makes the madeira sauce ingredient by ingredient to order. When you order chicken fingers for your children thinking it will be fast, they do not flour them until they are ordered and your children will not eat for at least 15 minutes if not 20. If you order pizza, they roll out the dough then and there. It is the ONLY chain restaurant I have worked in where the cooks really cook and do not just mix together a bunchy of pre-prepped or frozen stuff. There are like 7 cooking stations, saute, broil, pizza, salad, fry, and I am sure something else I forget. Food will not go out unless the plate looks perfect to specification. Many times, they will make the cook remake something because something is not perfect. The cooks really cook everything just like a real restaurant. That is a reason for the "open kitchen" so that you can see them cooking everything and also so you know how clean and wonderful the kitchen is. 2. The waits are almost deliberate. That is why no reservations, no call-ahead. And, if in every CF there are 2 to 3 hour waits virtually every night of the week, why don't they build the place bigger when they open a new one? Because they want you to wait 3 hours, it is part of the hype. Before we opened the restaurant, we had many meetings with silly music (they actually played the music that they call basketball players to the court with and said while all of the management and training staff ran down the aisle: Meet your new kitchen manager.. meet your new server manager. They had motivational speakers. It was dorky and I felt like I was in a freaky cult). Anyway, they shoved it in our heads many times that "people wait over 3 hours!!! to get into "our" restaurant. They want people to come in and think the place must be so fabulous if there is such a crowd waiting and dying to get in. Makes it almost exclusive-like, sort of. Why don't they try to figure out how to get food out faster and get people out faster? Because they don't want to! Too much actual cooking many, many different dishes for a restaurant that size takes a lot of time. Ticket times sometimes reach 45 minutes for appetizers. The most disorganized organization is what I called that place. They had exact procedures for everything, expeditors and at least 5 food runners per shift, managers walking around with head sets, yet food goes to the wrong table constantly, cooks make things wrong and somehow special orders (lite sauce, no mushrooms, etc) are not heard or not communicated, things aren't ready for the same table at the same time so they send out 2 entrees leaving 1 person without food for 15 minutes on a table.... All this adds up to longer times that people sit at tables and why it takes so long for you to get a table. 3. The beepers work until Sharper Image in the mall. When I worked there, the customers were told that when they got their beeper; customers went to Houstons and got a beeper, and to CF and got a beeper, whichever went off first was the place they went. Then, they left beepers all over the mall. They cost A LOT of money to keep replacing. So, now they tell you you can't leave the restaurant. It's a lie. 4. The cheesecake is made in a factory in Texas and is frozen and shipped. It is then thawed. That is why sometimes they run out, sometimes they do run out, other times, the bakery waits till they are out of something and *then* tells a manager and then the manager gets it from the freezer and it has to be thawed to be served. I don't think it's a big deal, it tastes good anyway. Imagine though, you are a waiter/waitress, someone asks for a recommendation for cheesecake.. You sell them on the Oreo cheesecake. You put it in the computer. You go to the bakery to the area where you would pick up your cheesecake for said table. There are several pieces of cheesecake, none are yours. "Run desserts, people. Don't just stand there." is shouted at you. So you run a few, come back and check and still no dessert for your table. The bakery staff is working on the line of people going out the door and no one is working on the desserts for tables. So, you go do something else for another table. "Run food. Let's go, food in the window! Let's get it out" is shouted at you. You are now in the weeds... You are sat 2 tables and they are looking around for a waitress. But, you dutifully run food. Go to 2 new tables. Both are not happy, one asks for kid's menus. We don't have any. Not happy. One table has no idea what to get, as they peruse the menu while you stand there fidgeting thinking about the other table's cheesecake. You make several suggestions thoroughly describing each dish (because most people do not know what something like Thai Chicken Pasta entails and everything has to be described and I must say whether or not I like this dish). This table decides they need more time. Phew, on to the bakery to get my dessert. I see the table waiting and try not to make eye contact, but I know they are looking around very anxious and almost annoyed, wondering what in the world could take so long to get a dessert. Go back to bakery. Bakery staff person tells you, sorry we are out of Oreo cheesecake, we just put it into the computer. Great, I am so glad they put it in now as opposed to when they really ran out so when I ordered it 15 minutes ago, the computer would have told me! So, now, after all that time, I have to go back to my table and tell them that sorry the wonderful Oreo cheesecake I talked you into is out of stock. There goes my tip and this leads to #5.... 5. I can not say how many times I heard: "you must make SOOO much money here" when I waited tables at CF. If I had a nickel for everytime I heard that, I wouldn't have to wait tables... Sometimes, yes the money can be good, but not that much better than some other restaurants. In fact, I work somewhere now where the food is so cheap, the customers are cheap and miserable and I make much better money more consistently than I did at the CF even though the food is pretty expensive (a check for 2 people can be $75 EASY) and the clientelle supposedly a bit higher class. A. They made us tip out a minimum of 27 and a half percent of our tips, but more like a third plus some. So, on a Saturday night, if you have $150 in your pocket, you hand about $50 out to the busboy, foodrunner (even though you are constantly yelled at to run food no matter how busy you are and how long your tables are sitting there before you can get to them), and bar. B. People who wait 3 hours for a table are miserable and crabby and miserable, crabby people are usually miserable tippers. And, trust me I gave GREAT service and rarely scewed up. In addition, all the screw ups that happen due to the size of the place as I mentioned previously, cause mistakes to happen to your customer's food and then you get screwed on tips. C. Since every table has appetizers which can take 1/2 hour to 45 mins sometimes, and then the dinners take forever, and EVERYONE has dessert, you have no turnover. You can get 25% tips from all your tables, but you make more money if you can turn your tables faster. It is definitely quantity of tables versus quality of tips except in rare cases that makes a waitress money. D. If you work in smoking in the bar, the middle high-top tables are first come, first serve... people waiting for tables park themselves there and order drinks from the bar and take up your table while you make no money from them at all and there is nothing you can or are allowed to do about it. All of those factors add up to sometimes you make good money, sometimes not - when you bust your ass on very long shifts and deal with a lot of hostile, not so happy people and sometimes a very stressful work environment- it was all not worth it! The most I ever made was on a 14 hour straight through double with a 5 minute break while I shoveled food in my mouth sitting in a corner on a milk crate with someone yelling at me that I should hurry as it is unfair to the person watching my station; I felt like I was in a war zone by the end of the night- beat up and disheveled. I've made more at my job in a 'dive' now in a 7 hour dinner shift than that double. 6. They make the wait staff wear all white because the owner is superstitious and thinks white causes people to be hungry. That in addtion to they think it is very neat and clean looking and makes peole think everything is neat and clean. All white would be ok if you didn't have to touch any food, but when you are sometimes almost elbow deep scraping out a dressing container or you stack plates with sauces on your arms and go the other side of the Earth with them trying to not get bumped into as you weave through crowds, white sucks. I burned holes in my clothes from all the bleach! I don't know any recipes, everything is top secret. We had to know the key ingredients (like what is in tex mex eggrolls) and everything on the menu thoroughly, but we never saw recipes. We even had to sign a confidentiality contract. The only way I know of to get a table faster: sometimes when I was in smoking, people would bribe me to give them tables. Yep! I did it! By the time the hostess passed the table to check if it was "open" like they do, someone was sitting and they didn't know it was someone not from their list; no one was the wiser and I was $10 or $20 richer. Nope, no guilt for it either. If you are desperate, I would try that. I eat there myself nowadays, but not so often because I want appetizers, salad, entree and dessert and I end up with a huge check. But, I don't wait more than 45 minutes so I go later in the night after prime dinner time. Tip 20%. www.tip20.com
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