I felt like I was going to throw up the entire way home.

I don’t consider myself a food snob; I eat equally well at a fine restaurant as your neighborhood fast food joint because I understand that there are a multitude of reasons why you might choose either one.   There is a time and place for thick, heavy, greasy burgers and a perfect setting for filet mignon with a white wine reduction and asparagus.

This, however, was completely off the scale for me.

In reality, I should have been tipped off by the fact that no good place would label themselves as partaking in multiple, unrelated pursuits in their name as Ryan’s Grill, Buffet & Bakery on Collins Road in Cedar Rapids, IA, but I figured it was probably akin to Bonanza which, while they do indeed serve steak, could not be readily considered to be a steak joint.   Rather, they are a buffet joint that just happens to have sliced and grilled dead steer inside.    They smartly leave this out of their name, however, so one is not misled; you believe you are attending a Bonanza of something.    Exactly what, of course, varies by the night.

Upon entering, I was greeted by a girl who seemed infinitely disappointed that the cash register was not an iPad and struggled to figure out how to ring up one meal + drink for me.   I do suppose this is because, from looking around, she was used to a mom and dad with at least a dozen children in tow, so I’m sure the math was daunting.   Nonetheless, I got approved to descend upon the goods and chose a table.

The first plate off the stack still had food on it.    Had I been a person of delicate character, I might have stopped right there, but I’m realistic — I understand this happens in busy places.   I set it aside, grabbed the second, and went to the islands of steaming goods to pick my wares.

If it takes me more than once around a buffet serving bar to fill up my plate, there’s a problem.   This one took THREE times around before I finally selected a few things I felt brave enough to try:   a horribly over-baked and depressed salmon fillet, some boasted chicken, and mashed potatoes.   I delicately skipped past the dish marked, “beef tips”, which looked like everything out of the reject bucket doused in a slurry of brown gravy.

I ate the first plate and sipped on the brown water that was labeled as being iced tea but bore no resemblance thereof.   Nothing was remarkable, that’s for sure.   About halfway through, in the middle of a mouthful, a teenage boy in an ill-fitted apron suddenly appeared at my elbow and loudly asked, “Do you want a DINNER ROLL?”, while staring off into space.   Shocked, I blinked, swallowed, and said, “uh, no, I’ll be OK, thanks” and he was gone before I finished.

I went for a second plate of grub, by this point feeling a bit off, but figuring it was just hunger.   I grabbed a plate — and it was soiled.   So was the next one.   And the next.   And the next.   Five dirty plates into that stack and I switched stacks.    The next wasn’t dirty, it was greasy, like it had been rinsed in lard.   The entire stack was.     Third stack:  first one was dirty, second was clean AND didn’t feel slick, so I took it.    Got a spoonful of mashed potatoes on it and looked down to see this greasy, fingery smear across the opposite side of the plate.   I stopped, stared for a bit, and then proceeded to put a few more pieces of food (if you can call it that) on my plate and shuffle miserably back to my seat.

I sat.

I stared.

My stomach imitated a Quaker on acid.

About this time a roughly 250-p0und 12-year-old girl a few tables away threw a meltdown hissy fit over the fact that her father wouldn’t let her have a 3rd bowl of ice cream.    My stomach lurched, I grabbed my ticket, and I left in a hurry.    The rest of the way home (2.5 hours), my innards did flip-flops and I cursed driving past Panera.

There are probably a few good uses for a place like Ryan’s:     Revenge comes to mind.   Perhaps social experiments in 3rd-world hygiene.    There’s a good chance it’d work better than waterboarding in torture camps.

If, however, you like organs to be intact and non-hemorrhaging at the end of your meal, I highly recommend you avoid stopping at Ryan’s of Cedar Rapids.

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