Indeed, many daring vacationers often do foolish things, such as skydiving, or bungee jumping or something equally as stupid, that they wouldn't normally do in their offices. I guess vacations just bring out the fool in a lot of us, including myself.
While I'm normally a pretty tame sort of guy, I guess it was something about being in Virginia Beach that made me feel just a bit daring. Yes, I admit it. I took my life in my hands and did something that, in retrospect, I'd just as soon forget. However, I'm thinking it will be quite some time before I can totally erase the memories from my little brain.
If you're familiar with Virginia Beach, perhaps you're one step ahead of me and have already figured out what I did. But, in case you're not (familiar with Virginia Beach, that is), I'll tell you.
I went to eat at Captain John's Seafood Buffet. There I said it. You know, I've written quite a few articles about restaurants. I've often said that I don't do restaurant reviews, because you cans always find something good to say about just about any restaurant. Well, Captain John's is an exception to my little rule.
Have you ever been to a 50 plus item buffet and found that everything on it was horrible? I never had before. But Captain John's gets some sort of award for being truly bad. Come on and relive some of my memories with me. My first stop on the buffet was the seafood. After all, I'm in Virginia Beach, the seafood capital of the world. I helped myself to a heaping helping of fried clams. They're not good for me, but they're oh so good. At least virtually every fried clam I'd ever consumed prior to this moment in time was good. They looked good...golden brown. But they were as tough and as dry as the cardboard in the center of a roll of toilet paper. Actually, Captain John's clams weren't as good as that. But the toilet would be an excellent place for the clams. In addition to the clams the buffet offered some sort of greasing looking nugget of fish. I knew as soon as I saw those fish morsels that this was going to be a memorable buffet.
I also tried the steamed shrimp but they were so old and decayed that as I extracted the shelly tail, the shrimp just flaked apart in my hand.
I put a rib on my plate, thinking maybe the non-seafood offerings would be better. Think again. Actually, the rib was just that...a rib. I couldn't find any meat on it. There was a little sliver of fat and gristle but that's about all that one could suck off the rib, if one had the audacity to try and suck the rib.
After striking out in the fish and meat department, I figured I'd have some side dishes. The corn on the cob looked good...nice and yellowy. It was also tasteless. This is corn the pigs would throw back.
Despite the fact that I was striking out all along the buffet, I bravely tried the mashed potatoes. You can't mess those up, can you? Now, I'm not big on instant mashed potatoes, but these had slivers of what looked like potato skin mixed in with them. I'm not sure what the skin-like substance was, and I'd prefer not to figure it out, but the potatoes were much reminiscent of paper mache. You have tried paper mache before, haven't you?
My final attempt at finding something worth eating was with the pudding. It looked like it might be either lemon or a yellowish vanilla. I can't tell you which it was. Maybe it was just a sugar pudding, because it was sweet, but no identifiable taste was apparent.
Now, there were other items on the buffet that didn't look as good as the ones I tried. After discovering that the good looking stuff tasted horrible, I decided that the horrible looking stuff, rather than tasting good, probably tasted even horribler.
The bottom line, this $16.00 buffet had nothing on it worth eating. I mean nothing. The whole event was traumatic. My first impulse was to declare that I would never eat again. But, I've been thinking. They say that if a horse throws you, you have to get right back on. I believe that is true. So, I'm heading on over to the Golden Corral. I'm sure it's just what the doctor ordered.
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