How Expensive Can a Buffet Get?

A new kind of AYCE restaurant is spreading across America, replacing steam tables with individual hot pots, tabletop grills, Wagyu beef and increasingly extravagant ingredients. Here is how shabu-shabu and yakiniku work, what Wagyu actually means, and how all-you-can-eat dining found a luxury tier.

Pizza Ranch began in a tiny Iowa town and grew by serving places bigger chains often overlooked. Today its pizza-and-chicken buffet, signature Cactus Bread and expanding FunZone arcades stretch across the middle of the country - and its first Texas opening suggests the once-regional secret is testing a wider frontier.