clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile
A rice cakes bar with different colored rice cakes.
Flushing’s AYCE tteokbokki restaurant, Witch Toppoki.
Caroline Shin/Eater NY

Where to Find All-You-Can-Eat Restaurants

Korean barbecue, Sri Lankan buffet, Chinese hot pot, and other foods defying inflation

View as Map
Flushing’s AYCE tteokbokki restaurant, Witch Toppoki.
| Caroline Shin/Eater NY

A decade ago the city’s dining landscape was littered with all-you-can-eat places. Usually couched as buffets, they allowed patrons to line up and pass by a dozen or more heated tubs, piling their plates with food to teetering heights, after which they’d seek out a table and begin shoveling. Then they’d do the same thing again.

But COVID threw a wrench into the whole AYCE system. Buffets, even with sneeze guards, were deemed unsanitary. South Asian restaurants especially suffered, and famous establishments like Jackson Diner, Utsav, and Haandi dismantled their luscious displays of food forever.

But a few buffets remain. They’ve been joined by Korean barbecues that offer unlimited servings of dozens of cook-it-yourself meats; Chinese hot pots that renew your supply of dippable ingredients; and Brazilian churrascarias, where you grab gauchos as they pass with skewers of charcoal-grilled meats until you can eat no more. Here is a choice selection of AYCE restaurants.

Health experts consider dining out to be a high-risk activity for the unvaccinated; it may pose a risk for the vaccinated, especially in areas with substantial COVID transmission.

Read More
Eater maps are curated by editors and aim to reflect a diversity of neighborhoods, cuisines, and prices. Learn more about our editorial process.

Witch Topokki

Copy Link

This all-you-can-eat in Flushing, Queens, specializes in the Korean dish tteokbokki — rice cakes in a variety of shapes and flavors, but noodles also available. These are combined with a choice of broths and sauces — including curry and carbonara —along with other throw-ins that run to lobster balls, sausage, and mushrooms to create a hot pot of unlimited renewability. A fun time for experimental eaters.

A dining room with multi-colored lights and a few tables filled with people.
Witch Topokki in Flushing.
Caroline Shin/Eater NY

Churrascaria Plataforma

Copy Link

Plataforma is a real Brazilian churrascaria, where meats are grilled then borne around the room by black-clad servers. When you see something you like, stop them and they’ll slice freshly grilled meat onto your plate. At dinner meat choices include 13 varieties of beef, chicken, pork, and lamb, but you also get to visit a sprawling buffet of vegetable and salad sides in a Brazilian vein, and free dessert is also part of one all-in price.

Wonder Pig K-BBQ

Copy Link

This wonderfully named spot in the shadow of the 7 train in Sunnyside looks like a factory pilot plant inside, with concrete floors, high ceilings, and exhaust pipes rising skyward. One all-in price gets you all-you-can-eat meat from over two dozen choices (our favorites: beef brisket and pork bulgogi), plus all sorts of soups, porridges, and side dishes, plus the banchan — request a refill when original servings of kimchi and others run out.

A sausage, heap of shaved brisket, and red-sauced pork on a concave griddle.
The view from the barbecue hot seat.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Golconda Chimney

Copy Link

Named after a fort on the outskirts of Hyderabad, Golconda Chimney — once center of the city’s diamond trade — must be Jersey City’s most elegant South Indian restaurant. It mounts an impressive buffet on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, consisting of 10 or so main dishes, some meaty, others vegetarian. Watch for chicken chettinad, in a sauce of tomatoes and poppy seeds; and kohlhapuri, a colorful vegetarian melange sprinkled with toasted coconut.

Two roll top tubs of brownish and reddish meat stews.
Some of the meatier dishes on the Golconda Chimney weekend buffet.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Kikoo Sushi

Copy Link

East Villager Kikoo offers sushi and sashimi in all-you-can-eat portions, the former including hand rolls and all sorts of fanciful cut-up maki rolls. Tempura is another specialty and it poses the question, how many fried shrimp could you eat? Other Japanese dishes like udon, teriyaki, salads and appetizers also available.

Three hand rolls in a wooden holder.
Unlimited hand rolls are part of the deal...
Kikoo Sushi

99 Favor Taste

Copy Link

This grand two-level space dramatically lit like a Broadway show offers all-you-can eat barbecue, hot pot, or a combination of the two. For hot pot, there are a choice of eight bubbling broths, some spicy, some herbal (you can pick three at once), into which can be swished the usual wide selection of vegetables, meats, tofus, noodles, fish balls, sausages, dumplings, etc., etc. The meat selection for the barbecue is similarly broad ranging

A dramatic space in red and black with deep shadows.
The original bilevel 99 Favor Taste on Grand Street.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Lakruwana Restaurant

Copy Link

Most South Asian restaurants are no longer offering the all-you-can-eat lunchtime deals that were once a hallmark, but Sri Lankan and Staten Islander Lakruwana is a holdout. The buffet, deposited in a series of ceramic and wooden pots that snake around the walls of the charmingly decorated space, includes at least 20 dishes, breads, and condiments, and is served Saturday and Sunday afternoons and evenings.

Pots along a shelf with green, yellow, and reddish brown dishes on it.
A few of the offerings at the Lakruwana weekend buffet.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Crab House Brooklyn

Copy Link

Though this place in Coney Island, right across the street from Luna Park, bills itself as a seafood buffet, that buffet is a virtual, contactless one. As you request dishes, they are brought fresh to the table, which makes a very long sequential meal possible. You might start out with spicy shrimp, then move onto raw clams (a Coney Island favorite), blue crabs with Cajun butter sauce, fried sea bass, and finally mussels in black beans sauce.

Witch Topokki

This all-you-can-eat in Flushing, Queens, specializes in the Korean dish tteokbokki — rice cakes in a variety of shapes and flavors, but noodles also available. These are combined with a choice of broths and sauces — including curry and carbonara —along with other throw-ins that run to lobster balls, sausage, and mushrooms to create a hot pot of unlimited renewability. A fun time for experimental eaters.

A dining room with multi-colored lights and a few tables filled with people.
Witch Topokki in Flushing.
Caroline Shin/Eater NY

Churrascaria Plataforma

Plataforma is a real Brazilian churrascaria, where meats are grilled then borne around the room by black-clad servers. When you see something you like, stop them and they’ll slice freshly grilled meat onto your plate. At dinner meat choices include 13 varieties of beef, chicken, pork, and lamb, but you also get to visit a sprawling buffet of vegetable and salad sides in a Brazilian vein, and free dessert is also part of one all-in price.

Wonder Pig K-BBQ

This wonderfully named spot in the shadow of the 7 train in Sunnyside looks like a factory pilot plant inside, with concrete floors, high ceilings, and exhaust pipes rising skyward. One all-in price gets you all-you-can-eat meat from over two dozen choices (our favorites: beef brisket and pork bulgogi), plus all sorts of soups, porridges, and side dishes, plus the banchan — request a refill when original servings of kimchi and others run out.

A sausage, heap of shaved brisket, and red-sauced pork on a concave griddle.
The view from the barbecue hot seat.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Golconda Chimney

Named after a fort on the outskirts of Hyderabad, Golconda Chimney — once center of the city’s diamond trade — must be Jersey City’s most elegant South Indian restaurant. It mounts an impressive buffet on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, consisting of 10 or so main dishes, some meaty, others vegetarian. Watch for chicken chettinad, in a sauce of tomatoes and poppy seeds; and kohlhapuri, a colorful vegetarian melange sprinkled with toasted coconut.

Two roll top tubs of brownish and reddish meat stews.
Some of the meatier dishes on the Golconda Chimney weekend buffet.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Kikoo Sushi

East Villager Kikoo offers sushi and sashimi in all-you-can-eat portions, the former including hand rolls and all sorts of fanciful cut-up maki rolls. Tempura is another specialty and it poses the question, how many fried shrimp could you eat? Other Japanese dishes like udon, teriyaki, salads and appetizers also available.

Three hand rolls in a wooden holder.
Unlimited hand rolls are part of the deal...
Kikoo Sushi

99 Favor Taste

This grand two-level space dramatically lit like a Broadway show offers all-you-can eat barbecue, hot pot, or a combination of the two. For hot pot, there are a choice of eight bubbling broths, some spicy, some herbal (you can pick three at once), into which can be swished the usual wide selection of vegetables, meats, tofus, noodles, fish balls, sausages, dumplings, etc., etc. The meat selection for the barbecue is similarly broad ranging

A dramatic space in red and black with deep shadows.
The original bilevel 99 Favor Taste on Grand Street.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Lakruwana Restaurant

Most South Asian restaurants are no longer offering the all-you-can-eat lunchtime deals that were once a hallmark, but Sri Lankan and Staten Islander Lakruwana is a holdout. The buffet, deposited in a series of ceramic and wooden pots that snake around the walls of the charmingly decorated space, includes at least 20 dishes, breads, and condiments, and is served Saturday and Sunday afternoons and evenings.

Pots along a shelf with green, yellow, and reddish brown dishes on it.
A few of the offerings at the Lakruwana weekend buffet.
Robert Sietsema/Eater NY

Crab House Brooklyn

Though this place in Coney Island, right across the street from Luna Park, bills itself as a seafood buffet, that buffet is a virtual, contactless one. As you request dishes, they are brought fresh to the table, which makes a very long sequential meal possible. You might start out with spicy shrimp, then move onto raw clams (a Coney Island favorite), blue crabs with Cajun butter sauce, fried sea bass, and finally mussels in black beans sauce.

Related Maps