Critic's Review
On a cool, sunny Saturday I decide to do some nostalgia and head down to Miami. Back on Long Island, the 56th Fighter Squadron was a pretty big deal. 20 years ago, it was just a unique restaurant with cool decor; later on it became the hottest happy hour in the summer due to it's large outdoor space. During it's peak, you couldn't park anywhere near the place on a Friday night; if you couldn't get there by 5:30 you might as well go somewhere else.
Food-wise, it was pretty mediocre; the big special item was the beer-cheese soup. It was the only place you could get beer cheese soup, and it was a nice change from the french onion and clam chowder that every other restaurant had. It was a good place to take your Mom, because they might like the 40s music and WWII theme more than some younger folks.
This place is owned by the same people. The 56th on Long Island closed in 2012, which seems unbelievable to me, considering the volume of business they were doing in 2006 when I left the area. It's not like anything new and great opened up; where are people going now, The Crazy Donkey? Who knows?
Traffic by the airport is a disaster, like most of Miami. I forgot to get gas, and there's no gas on the parkways between here and there, so I turned off to find a Chevron station, luckily, right at the exit. I then got to sit in traffic for 10 minutes, and just before you get to Perimeter road; there it is. Turn into the lot and it's like an oasis in between the airport and Dolphin Expressway.
Plenty of free parking. I get out of the car and I hear the stupid crooner music playing; a sure sign that I've found the right place. The outdoor decor has some walls that look like they've been damaged by bombs, which was always something that I liked when I was a kid.
The indoor decor is similar as well. Lots of planes hanging from the ceiling and photos from the WWII era.
The hostess shows me to a booth; old school all the way. No roll-ups here. Every booth has it's own WWII fighter jet painting.
The room is very bright during the day; the room consisted of a row of booths and 2 levels of tables.
She didn't give me a menu, which I thought was strange. I'd passed the buffet on the way in, but they have a lunch menu also. A server came over and tells me about the buffet, which I intended on having. "Is there beer-cheese soup on the buffet", I asked, as I wanted to have some of the signature dish. "Oh, we don't have soup until 4pm. I told him that I wanted to order that separately if they could whip up a bowl for me, and he said he'd try. I also ordered an iced tea.
I headed over to the buffet, to see what they had.
The buffet consisted of: Meatballs with peppers and onions, Salmon; Jerk Chicken, yellow rice with chicken and chorizo, vegetables, potatoes and zita pasta. They also had a salad bar, fruit, a self-carving area and rolls. The carving station had prime rib and some unbelievably dry-looking meat that looked like it might have been brisket in a past life. I'm not doing potatoes or pasta, so I filled a couple of plates and made it back to the table.
As I was sitting down I saw the server dude, and asked about the soup. "Yes, I'll get you the soup". Cool, I wanted to try some of that first.
This soup has just enough cheese to add flavor; not like the cheese dip they have at the Tilted Kilt. But I'd have to say that the Beer Cheese at Big Bear Brewing Company is better.
I dug into the food, not expecting anything too good based on the look of it.
The food was filled with disappointments. First, the veggies were just zucchini and squash, which aren't exactly my favorites. The prime rib would have been good if it wasn't ice cold, and I do mean ice cold. The jerk chicken was just dry chicken with no particular jerk flavor. The salmon was the only decent thing here.
The salad was fine, except that they only had 2 unlabeled dressings, one was white and one was brown. I surmised that the white was caesar or parmesan and the brown was some sort of balsamic derivation; I went with the white. They had cherry tomatoes, but no red onions, blue cheese or eggs. Just weird stuff like grape leaves and pepperoncini.
Music here is pure oldies; Mel Torme, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw. Even in the bathrooms.
I went back for some more salmon, and to try the meatballs. Obviously they decided that meatballs were cheaper than sausage, which is what should have been in this dish. Whoever heard of meatballs, peppers and onions?
The meatballs weren't very good and didn't go well with the peppers. The salmon, obviously, nad too much stuff on it: capers, mango, green onions. It was kind of mushy at this point, probably from sitting in the pan for a few hours.
I saw someone carrying coffee, but I went back and didn't see any, so I just cashed out. No offer of a refill on my iced tea.
I hit the bathroom on my way out and found the lounge; much smaller than the lounge was on Long Island.
On my way out, I found the dessert table, which is in a different room from the lunch buffet. That's where the coffee was from; oh well, I wasn't really hungry for dessert and it was just a bunch of cake squares.
Conclusion
They used to have a happy hour buffet at the 56th Squadron on Long Island, and the $18 lunch buffet here was about the same. The buffet *could* have been worth $18 if the food was fresher and they didn't scrimp on the ingredients. For a happy hour buffet I might expect them to use meatballs instead of sausage; for $18 I expect sausage. There was hardly any chorizo in the rice, and NO food was put out towards the end of the buffet. As I was leaving, I saw someone at the carving area; all of the prime rib was gone and there was nothing left. If you're going to serve until 3pm you can't just put food out at 11:30 and leave it out for 4 hours. People are paying the same at 2:30 and deserve good food.
I learned along the way that they only have the lunch buffet on Saturdays; they have a lunch menu M-F only in addition to the buffet. At least I got to have some beer-cheese soup; and to refresh some memories. One memory that I'd forgotten was that the food was never very good.