It's been two and a half years since I reviewed this restaurant (which is now called Market Grill), so I thought an update was called for, particularly because my wife and I have eaten here quite a few times in the interim.
I have come to terms with the fact that the nice convenient tables that HyVee used to have are gone and you can't just order something from the hot case or Chinese or pizza stations and eat it in the grocery like I used to do on my Saturday shopping trips. But at least HyVee has now improved things a little by (no doubt after getting a ton of complaints) reinstating a lot of food in the hot case, including their pork tenderloins, so you can grab one to go without having to go through the restaurant experience.
The restaurant itself serves pretty decent meals, but is, especially at lunch and dinner, overpriced. Their burgers are quite good and their fries are excellent, but a typical burger and fries dish will cost between 12 and 15 dollars. Breakfast options are more reasonable: you can get a pretty good plate of eggs, potatoes and toast for five dollars, which is not bad, although 16 dollars for steak and eggs seems exorbitant.
What has still not changed, however, is the quality (or lack of it) of the Sunday buffet. In my previous review I mentioned that my wife and I left without eating it after being misinformed on two occasions about what is available. Today, however, we decided to try it out because we got a two-for-one coupon in the mail. Even with the coupon, the meal wasn't worth it; if I were reviewing just this restaurant solely on the Sunday buffet, I would likely give it just 1 star, for several reasons.
First, the service was lousy. The place was crowded, so we had to sit at one of those small tables where the seats are like high chairs. OK, that's not their fault. What is their fault, however, is the fact that our waitress never came by to remove our used plates and glasses, which quickly began to overtake the limited table room. Things were so bad that at one point I just took a stack of plates and glasses and moved them myself to the recently-vacated table adjacent to ours-- which, by the way, nobody came around to clear either. (I timed it on my watch: the table sat with a mound of stuff on it for fifteen minutes, at which point we left; for all I know, the dirty dishes are still there.) I asked for ketchup with my eggs and the waitress brought over a squeeze bottle; that would be fine, but for the fact that it was practically empty. I got about a table-spoon's worth of ketchup out of it and then it died, and I never did see our waitress to order some more.
There was only one item available for carving (ham, which I don't like); sometimes, I'm told, there is also turkey, but trying to find it on the buffet seems to be like playing a slot machine: sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don't. On my first pass through the buffet about one third of the items were gone, and many other items were nearly empty; clearly, nobody was paying much attention to refilling things. The scrambled eggs were poor, the cheesy potatoes so-so at best, and the bacon practically raw except for one or two pieces that were (sort of) adequately cooked. On my second pass through, some items had been replenished; the chicken tenders were actually fairly tasty, the only item on the buffet that I can say that about. My wife had something advertised as a "crab cake", but she said it tasted like some kind of fish patty rather than actual crab. She also had a build-your-own omelet which she said was poor, and wound up leaving half of it over. Charging 15 dollars for this buffet is a travesty. Even at half off, I could have gotten a cheaper and better meal off the menu. We won't ever order the buffet again. read more
