I went to Pikes with a group of friends for Sunday brunch which was a buffet. Having worked in restaurants before I tend to pay attention to the cleanliness of a restaurant and especially on a buffet I'm cautious about how safe the food appears to be to eat.
There were items I stayed away from because I didn't feel they were safe. For example, the cold salads that were sitting on top of an ice well. They should have been sunk into the ice to cover most of the container. I touched the outside of one of the containers and it was room temperature. No thanks I'll pass.
And then there was the sneeze guard over the lunch items (sort of off to the side) it looked like a relic from the 1920s complete with a plexiglass cover that you could barely see through it was so scratched and smudged. I couldn't bring myself to eat anything from underneath that relic of the past.
But the worst thing was the uncovered pan of (I hope!) discarded meat from the roast beef sitting on the floor behind the buffet. Disgusting! No wonder I had to shoo flys away from our table.
The items that I did have were:
Bacon -- it was bits and pieces of bacon not strips. Very greasy.
Biscuit and gravy - biscuit was good. Gravy was blah
Hash brown casserole - good. Best thing I had.
Eggs Benedict - OK "A" for effort here but honestly don't serve Eggs Benedict on a buffet. Just don't.
Chocolate cake - I take it back THIS was the best thing I had.
To be fair my friends said they enjoyed the food and thought it was a pretty good buffet.