The River Buffet - Norman

The buffet is low quality. They will be closed until May 16, 2018.

This is the worst buffet I've ever had in the United States, and at $18.99, it was really disappointing. While the staff is very friendly, the food itself is quite unappetizing—it's like something you'd find in a store, pre-cooked and lacking in taste.

I was very disappointed with my experience. I paid $20 per person for the Thanksgiving buffet, and I won't be doing that again. The food selection was quite limited, featuring only turkey and ham along with a few side dishes—nothing like what they used to offer. Half of the steam tables were empty! I rated it 1.5 because the staff was very pleasant, but I won't be returning.

The service was terrible. We had to wait in line to get inside, and when a family member went to look for his dropped player’s card, we were told he would have to go to the back of the line. He stepped away to search for his card when we were just one person away from entering. Honestly, it felt like their policies were written by elementary students. We ended up leaving and won’t be returning.

This evening left a lot to be desired. I understand a new company took over on 1 May, so I'm willing to excuse some of what happened as growing pains. I guess the single biggest problem was not enough floor staff to handle the workload. I waited in line over an hour a half. Whenever I had a opportunity to look inside I saw many empty tables. One table was empty the entire wait. There used to be buckets on the table to put the shells in as you ate. Someone decided to do away with them and use regular plates instead. All that does I put more pressure on the floor staff constantly having to go back to the tables more frequently. Using plates for the discards only caused a shortage of clean plates at the serving line. Which by the way happened way too frequently. I had to resort to desert plate just to be able to have something to eat. There seemed to also be a shortage of staff behind the serving line. There never seemed to be enough food on the line, even though there seemed to be less of an overall selection of food items available than in years past. They just couldn't seem to keep up, not from lack to trying but lack of them. There was one plus however, they did seem on top of serving the crab legs. One complaint I heard by a good number of people and I agree with was how much the salad bar has shrunk in size. What food I was I was able to eat when I had a plate to eat it off of, was actually pretty good. The management company that ran the buffet prior to 1 May, maybe the current people should learn a lesson from them, sometimes things don't need to be fixed if they aren't really. To sum this all up, it was less than satisfactory. I am willing to give them another chance provided some time goes by and some lessons learned.