An American buffet and the trouble with nostalgia

Do you remember when the original Dragon Buffet was in the plaza near “Gimme a Haircut”? I think that was the same plaza where the original Kmart stood in Medina, now a Giant Eagle, before moving north on Route 42 and becoming the first Super Kmart in America.

Feel free to write in if I got that wrong.

Like that little ’90s callback, mentioning an American-style buffet seems to spark a reaction – some good, some not so good. Medina has had its share. Chinese buffets. Golden Corral. Does Eat’n Park count? For me, there is deep nostalgia attached to them.

But can I trust those memories?

When I was 16, $10 bought abundance. Cheap food, good enough quality. Loud laughter. Nowhere else to be. It felt like the deal of a lifetime.

It seemed opulent. Fried chicken. Mac and cheese. General Tso’s chicken shining under heat lamps. An ice cream machine you could pull forever. It felt like abundance.

Recently, I’ve gone back. I’ve sought out versions of those dishes and places long shuttered in Ohio. I even drove six hours to taste a frozen yogurt flavor I hadn’t had in decades.

As a 40-year-old, the experiences have fallen short.

Where is the magic I remember? Did it really taste better? Were ingredients different? Were supply chains less strained? Were businesses under less pressure to trim margins and reformulate recipes? There is an argument that quality is not what it once was.

But at 16, you don’t audit the experience. You live inside it. Unlimited feels infinite. An ice cream machine is not a mechanism. It is a miracle. You are not thinking about overhead or sanitation. You are seeing possibility.

So how do we decide which memories to trust?

Physicists say an electron can exist in two places at once – one thing, two realities.

Or maybe it is simpler.

Stand six inches from a painting in a museum and you see only brushstrokes. Step back six feet and the image appears. Same canvas. Same paint. Two different experiences.

So which is true?

Maybe buffets and nostalgia work the same way. Maybe the question is not whether the memory is accurate.

Maybe it is which version we choose to keep.

If that is the case, I know my choice.

What’s yours?