Seasons Restaurant at Avon Old Farms

Our dinner group went to Seasons Restaurant at Avon Old Farms today for their Sunday buffet. This was kind of a mixed bag as far as buffets go. The location is nice and has a little elegance to it. There was a piano player, which was a nice touch. My introduction to the place was that they did not have our reservations, not a good sign. However, they were able to accommodate our party despite the loss of our reservation. Actually in hindsight that was probably also not a good sign. The loss of reservation was a foreshadowing of the spotty service, which I will get into more later. As far as buffets go, this is very small. In fact outside of Indian buffets, which always seem small in this area and hotel breakfast buffets, this may be the smallest buffet that I have seen. I have a video of all the items that I will include below. Now that might have sunk many a buffet, but I will say that although the buffet was small, many of the items were good quality, which was the redeeming grace for this place. The highlights were the omelette station, a carving station with very good prime rib and turkey, some excellent mini waffles with sides of maple syrup, strawberries and creme, and large delicious cocktail shrimp. In addition the sausage and bacon was very good, home fries were decent, eggs Benedict were dried out but tasty, which can happen when kept to long in a heating tray. The berry blintzes were also dry and looked better than they tasted. I thought the lunch items, beyond the carving station left a lot to be desired. The chicken masala and rice did not look all that appealing to me, although to be fair. a friend had it and said that it was good. The mixed vegetables turned out to be stringed beans. There was a pretty bland pasta du jour, which earned its nondescript name. and baked cod. There were also the usual breakfast cereals, rolls, bagels, and cream cheese. Salads included Tomato and Cucumber, garbanzo beans, chicken, fruit and a tossed salad.There was smoked salmon, deviled eggs and a few cheeses. Dessert was very disappointing for a buffet and the only saving of it was the waffles. Besides that there were a few types of cookies, two types of bars labelled as assorted bites, and 4 different bite size cake bits, that were labelled as cheesecake. However, the two I tried definitely were not cheesecake.The one other thing that was negative was the spotty service. Plates were left on our table too long, even though it wasn’t busy. And the thing that I didn’t find out until later that really irritated me, is that we had two people come in late, actually they were pretty much on time, the rest of us were early. But we had all got our drinks and everyone including the final two arrivals had gone up to get food. I told the waiter to make sure that they got their drinks to which he informed me he had checked with them and they were all set. Now the meal comes with mimosas, and talking with our friend later she not only wasn’t asked, she wasn’t even aware they were available. That was a major oversight in my mind, and I felt that our friend was not shortchanged by this. So keep that in mind if you go there, especially with a group. There is enough here to enjoy as long as you like the highlights I mentioned and are happy with those, nibbling at the other things enough to make you feel it’s truly a buffet. The quality of the food, especially the big ticket items matched with the $35 fee (make sure you get your mimosa thought), and the atmosphere makes it worth consideration.