I was surprised to learn about an old school, all you can eat, Pizza Hut not too far from where I live in Ipswich. Remember those? With the red and white checkered tablecloths and old school waitresses? So, we headed off to Browns Plains to see what was on offer.
After a short drive we pulled into the car park to discover that almost every space was taken. Except for my concern on where to find a park, I saw this a positive sign. Lots of people generally means that the food is good or at the very least it means value for money. Yes, there’s the sign I was looking for “All you can eat”. No, I’m not being gluttonous; I have my son on board (at least that the story I’m running with today). After a short wait in the entry we were greeted by a member of staff, escorted to the cash register and then taken to our seats. $99 for three adults including 3 alcoholic drinks.
The first thing I noticed! No table cloths! The second thing I noticed was the tables were not full of happy families enjoying a cheap easy feed. All those cars outside must have been for the other fast food restaurants stacked into the area like Tetris bricks. I really thought for a Thursday night that the place would be packed out - but hey, we’re here.
They brought the drinks to the table while I waited for the others to come back from making their first selections. When my family arrived back at the table I took my clean plate and headed on up. First round -pizza. There was a good selection of pizza on offer and it was hot and fresh. The staff kept the pizza shelf well stocked which I was pleased about. The down side was that the pizzas were not labeled. A couple of others made the same observation. Mind you it’s not really that difficult to tell the difference between Hawaiian and a meat lovers I suppose.
Next round salad and pasta. I’m going to suggest that, whilst the selections were better than I expected, it was pretty obvious that most of it comes out of a bag or a can. Now, if you were looking for a five star restaurant experience, this is not where you’d be, so let’s compare apples with apples. This is cheap and cheerful and my expectations were not set too high. When I got to the pasta, that’s kinda where the wheels fell off for me. Trying to reach under the glass with one arm while holding my plate in the other would have been remarkably easy, IF I had a couple of extra elbows to assist me in the contortion like stance that I had to take in order to get the pasta onto my plate with the tongs that were provided. Add to that, another level of difficulty provided by kids in the line nudging me out of position in order to get at the trough. But hey, I got done. Pasta and salad. Nothing to sing about that’s for sure, but it was ok I guess. Perhaps I’m a little bit spoiled.
As we all had our fill the masses started to roll in. Large families taking up long tables of loud and impatient children - the noisiest of whom were not the little ones. There was not a single visit from the staff during our entire seating except for the delivery of our first and only round of drinks. Still, even as we left, the large dining room failed to reach even half of its’ capacity - but I guess that’s a sign of the times.
How do I rate this experience?
The pizza was okay and plentiful but, it’s still a fast food chain. Nothing beats a family owned pizza restaurant. $30 a head for all you can eat pizza, pasta, salad and dessert - yeah that’s pretty good value.
The pasta and salad was okay, but not awesome.
From the point of view of busy people, we were in and out pretty quickly, but, to be honest, that probably had more to do with me being a grumpy old man with low tolerance for noisy pre-adolescent children, rather than any time restraints!
The main question that I had in mind when I decided to drive out to Browns Plains was “why doesn’t Ipswich have one of these”? The question I left with was, “do we really want one”?
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