hometown buffet | san diego, ca

Hometown Buffet. You know it. You’ve probably been at least one in your lifetime, right? I was recently offered some coupons to try out Hometown Buffet’s “revamped” menu:

“HomeTown Buffets has decided to overhaul all of their restaurants in the San Diego area.  They’ve always been a family friendly, casual place with lots of selections for the entire family. Now their goal is to enhance guests’ dining experience with enhanced quality menu items and completely new dishes and flavor profiles. Upgrades include food stations featuring Asian, Italian and Mexican cuisines, along with a Fresh Market for customizable salads and a Soup Bar.”

I’m going to tell you off the bat: I’m not a huge fan of this place. But knowing that they’re trying to revamp and improve their menu made me insanely curious. Plus, Jake’s kids love Hometown. We haven’t quite figured out why this is and they haven’t really ever been able to articulate why they love it so much. Maybe it’s the plethora of American food, the satisfaction of all-you-can-drink sodas, or the lure of all-you-can-eat-desserts? In any case, off we went to the Mira Mesa Hometown Buffet, which was the first restaurant in the area to be transformed.

I could see the differences in the location right off the bat. The whole area has been “spiffed” up to feature different stations: the “Fresh Market” (salad bar), the “Asian” station, “Italian”, “Mexican”, “American”, “Soup Bar”, “Desserts/Bakery” (and probably some other stuff I’m missing).

The salad bar looked like it had a lot more options for creating your own salad as well as a large variety of pre-made salads. The Asian station had orange chicken and fried rice, neither of which I was very interested in trying from the looks of things. The Mexican station had “make-your-own” tacos, enchiladas, nachos, that kind of thing. I personally mostly had a bunch of American stuff, some Italian stuff, and of course, dessert. Check it out:

I got some sliced steak, pork, mashed potatoes, fried shrimp, meatloaf, a little stuffing and a roll. I wasn’t excited about the steak – it was kind of dry. The slice of pork I got was tasty, though. The mashed potatoes tasted slightly better but still kind of “instant-like”. I liked the shrimp – they have itty bitty popcorn shrimp and then these larger, regular type shrimp. The meatloaf was also good (improvement!) and the stuffing was a huge, incredible improvement from what they used to serve (which was really crappy). This stuffing was flavorful and moist – score. Bread roll = thumbs up.

I was starting to get full, but nope – I moved right along to try a few more things. The cornbread? Pass. The chicken and dumplings? Pass. The stuffed pizza thing? Pass. The chicken alfredo pasta dish thing wasn’t too bad, I was just happy to see something besides pizza at the Italian station and grabbed this while it was still there.

Ahh, dessert time! I got a pecan pie, key lime pie and a cookie that was on a baking sheet like it had just come out of the oven (though it was just lukewarm). The cookie was …. totally unflavorful. I think it was supposed to be peanut butter but it just tasted like flour. The key pie was ehh. The pecan was tasty, though. The pies were both in tins still that you scooped out yourself. I also read that they have hard packed ice cream now, though I didn’t try any. Some of the desserts here are an improvement, but most are the standard stand-by desserts.

Other new things that I noticed were real tea (not just Raspberry Lipton in the fountain), Icees, and a variety of hot coffees.

All in all, I do say that this is an improvement over their old menu, since I didn’t like anything on their old menu and now I can say that there are a few things I did like. For $9.99 (without the beverage bar), it’s a decent buffet, but I still don’t think it’s something to rave about. If you’ve got kids, this is a really kid-friendly place to take them and it’s decent enough for the adults to enjoy it, too.

All of the San Diego Hometown Buffets are getting the new and improved style and all of the roll-outs should be complete by next January. Here’s a little list in case you’d like to see when your nearby Hometown is getting the new diggs:

Mira Mesa                        10660 CAMINO RUIZ                         OPEN
SAN DIEGO, CA 92126
(858) 566-9848

San Marcos                      288 RANCHEROS DRIVE                   OPEN
SAN MARCOS, CA 92069
(760) 471-9944

El Cajon                        390 WEST MAIN STREET                      September 12, 2010
EL CAJON, CA 92020
(619) 441-6477

Oceanside                        491 COLLEGE BOULEVARD              September 26, 2010
OCEANSIDE, CA 92057
(760) 945-6080

Santee                                265 TOWN CENTER PARKWAY       October 10, 2010
SANTEE, CA 92071
(619) 562-1555

San Diego                        5881 UNIVERSITY AVENUE              October 24, 2010
SAN DIEGO, CA 92115
(619) 583-7373

Clairemont                        3007 CLAIREMONT DRIVE             November 7, 2010
SAN DIEGO, CA 92117
(619) 275-4622

Chula Vista         651 PALOMAR STREET                                     November 21, 2010
CHULA VISTA, CA 91911
(619) 426-0505

National City        1135 HIGHLAND AVENUE                           December 5, 2010
NATIONAL CITY, CA 91950
(619) 477-7990

San Diego                        930 DENNERY ROAD                             December 19, 2010
SAN DIEGO, CA 92154
(619) 662-9181