An Orlando vacation can involve a remarkable amount of deciding. Which park? Which day? Which reservation? By dinner, a menu that lets you try several things can feel like a small act of kindness.
Fortunately, this is a very accommodating part of Florida for people who enjoy going back for seconds.
Buffet Authority’s Orlando-area collection includes more than 140 places to enjoy a buffet or an unlimited meal. Some make dinner an attraction in its own right. Others put out a neighborhood lunch spread or keep a familiar family meal coming to the table. Together, they make a very convincing case for giving the food a little more room in the itinerary.
Follow the food from the attractions corridor into Kissimmee, Winter Garden and Winter Park, then farther through Sanford, DeLand, Lakeland and Winter Haven. A detour for lunch can introduce you to a different part of Central Florida and give the afternoon a very agreeable beginning.
Disney gives the meal a setting
Walt Disney World is particularly good at making unlimited food feel like part of the outing. At Biergarten, German sausages, schnitzel and apple strudel belong to an indoor Bavarian village, with a polka band supplying the festivities. At Garden Grill, a family-style meal comes with Disney characters and a dining room that slowly revolves past scenes from the Living with the Land attraction.
Those two restaurants require EPCOT admission. You can also plan a Disney meal without entering a theme park. Boma, at Animal Kingdom Lodge, puts African-inspired soups, stews, salads and roasted meats into a buffet whose food deserves attention of its own. Whispering Canyon Cafe turns an evening at Wilderness Lodge into a leisurely meal of replenishable skillets and playful service.
A park restaurant can be a welcome part of a busy day. A resort dinner leaves room to enjoy the lodge, its grounds and the people you came with. At either, the next helping may arrive on a shared platter while you stay comfortably seated.
Brazilian dining has several ways to be generous
Brazilian all-you-can-eat means more here than a procession of skewers.
At Camila’s, a self-service spread brings together Brazilian home cooking: rice, beans, salpicão chicken salad, changing meat dishes and Saturday feijoada. It is a complete reason to sit down to lunch, with no need for a carver to appear beside your chair. A true Brazilian home-cooked buffet.
Cafe Mineiro offers another arrangement. Its base buffet includes selected carved meats, while the fuller Brazilian Experience adds tableside rodizio. At BR77, guests choose their cuts at a grill station. BoiBrazil, meanwhile, offers the familiar pleasure of meats arriving through the dining room on skewers.
The carving station suits someone keen to choose a favorite cut; tableside service makes a long steakhouse dinner easy to enjoy with company. At a home-style buffet, beans, rice and farofa can be just as much the reason to return as the meat.
Sushi takes a Japanese-Brazilian turn
Another of the collection’s pleasures is sushi rodizio. At Kingdom Sushi on International Drive, the made-to-order selection brings Japanese forms together with a Brazilian fondness for guava, cream cheese and fried preparations.
Sea-San Sushi Bar builds part of its identity around djos: little rice portions wrapped in salmon, with toppings that can include cheeses, fruit and truffle preparations. Musashi’s Orlando restaurant has its own exuberant variations. This is sushi with quite a bit to discuss over dinner.
At Sushi Masa in Lakeland, ordered sushi shares the menu with Japanese kitchen dishes, with dinner widening the selection. Elsewhere, sushi might be a first course at a broad Asian buffet or something to enjoy while a friend tends the table grill. Choose the restaurant for the kind of evening you want; the words unlimited sushi describe several quite different meals.
Some dinners give you the tongs
A tabletop meal brings the group into the preparation. At SoGongDong & K-BBQ, bulgogi and pork belly share the meal with Korean kitchen dishes. Izziban Sushi & BBQ combines the table grill with sushi orders, so the person tending the meat and the person contemplating another roll can remain very good dinner companions.
Gogi adds hot pot to the possibilities, with different packages covering sushi, barbecue and bubbling broth. The collection’s Volcano in Kissimmee offers another place to cook ingredients at the table and make your own dipping sauce, with a full self-serve buffet of all ingredients. Orlando offers multiple ways to experience hot pot and barbeque, in varying combinations.
These meals suit an evening when conversation and a little shared activity are the point. Dinner takes some participation, but nobody has to go home and wash the saucepan.
A neighborhood lunch can be the discovery
Lunch is worth planning too. Indian buffets offer some of the collection’s most rewarding midday meals. Indian Pavilion in Winter Garden serves a daily lunch spread, while Mynt in Winter Park makes its buffet a weekend occasion. Aashirwad brings house-blended spices to a changing selection near the attractions corridor.
The attraction is the freedom to build a meal across several preparations: a little biryani, a vegetable curry, something from the tandoor, then naan for the sauce you liked most. Weekend stations and changing selections can make one restaurant’s lunch quite different from another’s.
There is Latin home cooking too. El Palacio Buffet in Kissimmee gives Puerto Rican and Dominican dishes substantial space, from pernil and rice to frituras and stews. A rare find to discover so many home-cooked Latin dishes in an affordable all-you-can-eat setting. El Patron offers an enormous Mexican lunch buffet, with separate weekend brunch and recurring taco occasions. These are useful reminders that a buffet can be an introduction to a kitchen’s particular traditions.
Seafood and brunch can each fill an afternoon
At Boston Lobster Feast on International Drive and its Kissimmee sibling, whole steamed lobster is something you can return for. Snow crab legs, chowder and the wider seafood spread give the shell crackers plenty to do.
Brunch offers its own range of indulgences. Mia’s Italian Kitchen puts pasta and pizza into the same unlimited ordering plan as breakfast dishes. And they don’t stop there… their take on “Italian brunch” includes such creativity as Meatball Benedict, Italian Scramble, Pepperoni & Cheese Waffles and Eggs with Sunday Gravy. Across the road, Café Tu Tu Tango brings small plates into an art-filled, lively setting. Its eclectic, global menu ranges from street tacos to Cuban to seafood and mediterranean, with impressively creative brunch dishes. Santiago’s Bodega gives weekend brunch an eclectic buffet, including crab legs and steak in the walkable Lake Ivanhoe district.
A lively small-plate brunch and a leisurely seafood buffet make very different afternoons. The dedicated brunch menu is worth a look when booking: bottomless food and drinks may be separate, and the unlimited-food window can be shorter than the full brunch service.
There is still room for an ordinary good meal
The collection also includes pizza buffets, family American spreads and familiar unlimited restaurant meals. Fred’s Market in Lakeland gives Southern cooking a generous home, with fried chicken, vegetables, casseroles and changing soups. Golden Corral on International Drive offers a broad family buffet in the visitor corridor; Cicis nearby makes pizza the reason for another trip.
Sometimes the pleasure is a meal you already understand. Sometimes it is discovering that the dish you almost passed over deserves a second helping. Orlando’s abundance accommodates both.
The next meal worth planning around might be inside a Disney lodge, above a Winter Park street or beside an ordinary shopping-center parking lot. Follow your appetite a little farther than expected. There are more than 140 places in this collection where it might take you.
