Self Serve

In America buffet style restaurants are quite common, but here in the Netherlands you don't see them so often.  This weekend we stumbled upon an interesting new restaurant with this self serve idea behind it.  It's called Lundi, and it is here in Eindhoven.

At first we were all a bit taken back because the restaurant had rules, a lot of them, but once we were used to the system it was an enjoyable dinner.  Rules, you're wondering... one of which, you have to chose up front whether you'll be dining for 2 or 3 hours.  Another, you pay upfront.  And the one that took us by surprise was the alcohol card, if you want to drink you have to put money on a card and use this at the drink station.  The buffet was not strange, it was the self serve alcohol that caused a good laugh.  You place your card on a scanner and tap your own beer (there's also wine) and the amount of alcohol gets deducted from the card.  The first few beers splattered everywhere, wasting money, but we did eventually get the hang of it.  Since we had to get our own drinks, we joked about possibly having to cook our own food too!  Surprisingly the food was good, you never know with a buffet.  The food was fresh and was often cooked or prepared at a station directly in front of you.  It's called a world-kitchen, so they had everything from sushi to chicken nuggets.  By the end of the night we were stuffed and they even had to kick us out because the 6 of us stayed until well after the restaurant had closed.  Over all it was a fun experience.  The downside is the location, sure it's close for us, but most people will not bother to go because it's outside of the center and the surrounding block 'has not been kept up so well.  The upside, it's huge and decorated nicely, and it's definitely family friendly and can host large groups of people.  I hope for them they stay in business and manage to market themselves properly (maybe my blog will help, ha-ha)!