New York has spent years turning dinner into a competitive sport: $19 cocktails, tasting menus that require a mortgage application, and restaurants where the portion is best described as “conceptual.” So naturally, the city’s newest culinary rebellion is something gloriously unfashionable: the all-you-can-eat buffet.
Enter Good Time Country Buffet, the East Village newcomer from the team behind Kisa and C as in Charlie. Located at 166 First Avenue, the restaurant is resurrecting the classic Southern country buffet—the kind of place where restraint goes to die somewhere between the fried chicken and the mac and cheese.
And this isn’t some ironic, Brooklynized buffet served on a handmade ceramic plate. The owners are going all in on nostalgia, drawing from the Southern buffets they grew up eating in Atlanta. Expect fried chicken, collard greens, cornbread, Salisbury steak, fried green tomatoes, stuffing and rotating specials including fried catfish and meatloaf.
Even the décor reportedly embraces the buffet aesthetic, complete with carpet, mismatched wallpaper and a drop ceiling. In other words, the restaurant has achieved something remarkable: making New Yorkers nostalgic for a room they would normally describe as “the place where my dentist used to have his office.”
The price is equally nostalgic. Adult admission is expected to be $26.99, with a lower price for children and a senior discount.
The genius of Good Time is that it understands the assignment. This isn’t dinner theater disguised as fine dining. It’s dinner. Lots of it.
In a city where “bottomless” usually means brunch cocktails, Good Time Country Buffet is making it mean fried chicken—and honestly, New York could use more of that.
