ALL YOU CAN EAT @ RIBBETTS

$$$: $22.00

The Scene:
40 seats. 38 Asians. 1 birthday boy. All-you-can-eat.

The Meal:
The all-you-can-eat menu at Ribbetts is a stripped-down version of the regular menu. On offer is entrée-level garlic bread, a variety of pastas and pizzas, and the star of the show, ribs! Curiously the ribs are only available in pork; the kitchen also does beef and lamb but these are not offered as part of the all-you-can-eat menu.

Before ordering, each table is presented with a small tray of garlic bread. Unlike the regular, heat-n-serve rolls found commonly elsewhere, Ribbetts garlic bread is a flat pan bread that has been buttered up and folded in two, then cut into convenient slices.

After an easy victory over the bread, we were given a chance to pick out our main game. From the limited menu, our booth of four value-loving Asians ordered two servings of ribs (one serving feeds two people), one seafood pizza and one Cajun chicken pizza (the latter at my adamant insistence, partially in disgusted response to the seafood pizza order). The pasta choices, although tempting, were avoided as pasta sits squarely at the the “no-no” tip of the all-you-can-eat food pyramid alongside breads, potatoes and all fried foods.

The ribs arrived first. On a dazzling white plate was stacked a mountain of pork ribs, averaging three per rack, all hot and all individually smothered with barbecue sauce. A sparse sprinkling of spring onions at the summit counted as the dish’s only vegetable representation.

Shortly following the ribs were the pizzas. Or, should I say, pizza – instead of two separate pizzas as ordered, the seafood and Cajun chicken were combined onto one large “half-half” pizza (8 slices). Fitting comfortably onto an average sized dinner plate, the pizza wasn’t “large” if you’ve grown up on “large” pizzas from Pizza Hut and Dominoes, but pizza sizes is just one of those things that varies wildly from restaurant to restaurant, and being in an all-you-can-eat environment, we could have ordered more if we wanted. The seafood pizza, apart from the requisite tomato base and cheese topping found on all the pizzas, featured prawns, calamari, fish, mussels and clams. The Cajun chicken pizza highlighted a far simpler selection of onions, capsicum, chicken and Cajun spices.

As is the case at such group events, food ordered at one table gets shared around for others to sample, and somewhere along the way I got my hands on a slice of chicken, bacon and banana pizza, which, funnily enough, describes it completely.

The Verdict:
The pan-style garlic bread was a welcome change from the norm, but garlic bread is garlic bread and typically does no more than adequately fulfil its duties as an entrée dish. No exceptions here.

The pizzas could have benefited from a bit more generosity in their toppings. Having said that, they did have a nice home-cooked feel to them, and served well to add texture to a meal which would have otherwise consisted entirely of ribs. The Cajun chicken had a mild level of spice to it, something I didn’t really notice until someone at my booth with low spice tolerance mentioned that it was hot. I didn’t try the seafood pizza because… well, it’s a seafood pizza. The entire concept is fundamentally flawed, like the concept of, say, a curry donut. The chicken, bacon and banana pizza tasted exactly as you’d imagine it would. The little deposits of sweet banana, when you could find them, complemented the chicken and bacon surprisingly well… even if it’s something you couldn’t really imagine working on paper.

But enough with the side-shows, you don’t go to a place called “Ribbetts” without savouring their near-eponymous signature fare! The ribs were good – not mind blowing, but not terrible either. Not too dry, not too juicy. Most racks had as much meat as you’d expect on them, some more, some less, though such is the nature of ribs. Sometimes you feel like you’re chomping through a fat drumstick but other times you’re merely sucking sauce off the bone. Speaking of which, the sauce was quite tasty and thankfully was not lashed on in absurd amounts as to drown the meat (and your hands) entirely.

A quick note on the service. All-you-can-eat veterans will know the importance of quick service at non-buffet style restaurants. To ensure you get to cram as much food down the hatch before your brain realises your stomach is full (around 20 minutes if popular thinking is to be believed), you want your orders coming in thick and fast. Fortunately, Ribbetts handled what was essentially a full house in a highly commendable manner. Hot ribs flowed from the kitchen’s tiny service window at a good clip and other dishes joined them in a similarly steady fashion. You were never inconveniently swamped, and despite only having two wait staff on the ground, you were never left waiting very long either.

Overall, all-you-can-eat at Ribbets was a good experience. Being one of those “local favourite” places that everyone you know has seemingly been to before (that is, until you go there with a group of friends who all end up confessing to never having been there before either), I was glad to have the opportunity to finally cross it off the list. I haven’t ordered anything from them in the past so I can’t comment on whether the all-you-can-eat food suffers from a compromise in quality compared to the separate full-price fare (a common all-you-can-eat restaurant trick) but this did not obviously appear to be the case except with the pizzas and their modest toppings. The limited menu may irk those who enjoy plentiful variety in their all-you-can-eat adventures, but it does make ordering easier and is excusable for a small place like this that’s built its reputation upon the perfection of one type of food. After all, you wouldn’t go to Pizza Hut if you weren’t intent on eating pizza, would you? You go to Ribbetts for ribs, which by nature are wonderfully fun and messy and by this particular circumstance quite tasty to boot. Couple that with the cheap thrills of all-you-can-eat, and you’ve got a combination that’s hard to beat, especially when you’ve got the numbers to make a party out of it.

Random Fact:
Ribbetts has been around since the early ’80s and is still in the hands of its original owner.

Ribbetts
167 Annerley Rd.
Dutton Park, Queensland 4102

Hours: 7 days a week, 4pm – late