Critic's Review
Back when I worked for the Phone Company in NY I had an Iranian co-worker named Hamid. Hamid and I were adversaries; I was a lab consultant and at 24yo I was making 50% more than him. When the office went out to lunch, I always heard about the Chelo Kabab which was always served at dinner parties at Hamid's. I didn't get invited to those; being a lowly consultant, and you can't get Persian food on Long Island. So I never got to try the stuff. It's just rice and a "kabab". If you want Persian food around here, you have to go to Sunrise.
The restaurant is in a strip mall across from Hooter's and Goldfinger's Cabaret.
There's a hostess station as you enter, but no hostess. A man just waves his arms and says to "sit anywhere". Fine. All of the tables are big. Tables for 6. Tables for 8. I nail a table for 6 in the back for myself.
I sit for a minute, but no-one is offering me a menu. I guess it's the buffet or bust. So I get up and scout it out. I start out with a salad, some lentil soup and a sample of some other stuff. The beef "kabab" platter is almost empty. It's only 1:15pm, so they should be refilling it. I head back to the table. Still no setup. No servers seem concerned that I don't have a beverage. I start eating.
The lentil soup; bland, tasteless with mushy lentils. Good soup is so easy to make, why can't anyone make decent soup?
A salad with a decent creamy Italian dressing, some persian salsa, a grilled tomato, a piece of grilled chicken and some hummus.
No bread for the hummus? I found some bread; well not really bread. Unleavened bread. Tasteless stuff. The hummus was ok. I didn't like the salsa; tasted like tomatoes with parsley. I'm half way through and a server comes over. "I'll take some water". I still have no idea how much this buffet costs. I didn't need an iced tea. The servers were really slow.
The bendy straw is a nice touch. The venue itself is very strange. Arched doorways; there was a stage behind me, a big DJ booth and a big screen showing soccer. I think this is some sort of converted strip club. Word is that they have belly dancers on weekends.
Back to the buffet, hopefully to get some meat. One very bad thing about the buffet was that nothing was labeled. Most people don't eat Persian food too often unless they're Iranian; I had no idea what I was eating.
I tried the green stuff with the kidney beans hoping it was chimichurri or some sort of parsley sauce, but it was awful.
"Chelo Kabab" is basically rice with a kabab, so that's what I got. The kabab was seasoned ground beef that tasted like a bad hamburger. The rice had sugar in it so I didn't care for it. The other rice dish had raisins in it. I don't like sweet things in my rice. The chicken; grilled but not particularly well seasoned.
For dessert, they just had some cookie-like pastries that didn't appeal to me. No dessert today. Check Please.
Some comedy is that they "suggest" an 18-20% tip. Really? How much do you tip for someone to bring you a glass of water with no refill?
$11.99 plus Tax for the buffet.
Conclusion
The problem with Indian and this Persian buffet is that you just get a lot of cheap stuff you'd never order for a price that isn't really that cheap. For $12 I can get what I want in this neck of the woods, and at a Chinese or Japanese buffet I'm getting a lot more food (and sushi) for largely the same price. Should I really pay the same for sushi as I do for bean slop with rice?
I doubt if Persian food is as bad as this buffet; I suspect that the restaurant isn't that good. They don't even have Chelo Kabab on their menu. The buffet was well maintained but there was nothing on the buffet that I'd order on it's own. A Kabab with rice (and no bread) is worth $7. Which is about what this buffet is worth.