Ranch House Buffet

This restaurant is now closed. It has been replaced by Lozano’s Café & Tex Mex. They have a lunch buffet with a variety of Mexican and American food. A salad bar & iced is included for under $ 9.

This place is in the shopping center a few doors down from Tractor Supply on the HWY 71 Frontage.
They have been open as of 8÷18÷2013 about 5 weeks according to the young man who served me.
I think they still have some tweaking to do before they establish themselves in the community firmly.
The Good
For an all you can eat buffet the price was average to a bit lower than average. With the meal and ice tea I spent $ 10.04. $ 10 seems to be the sweet spot for lunch in Bastrop.
The chicken fried steak is possibly the best in Bastrop that I have eaten. Sorry Maxine’s, but this place is at least a tie with you. The good part is they fry it in small pieces so someone who can’t eat a huge CFS can feel like they didn’t waste food. They also were continually bringing out CFS so it would be hot and fresh.
Dinner rolls were extremely good and fresh.
Iced Tea was very good, served in Mason jars like everyone else around Bastrop seems to do. They must have used filtered water and a quality tea because it was very good.
Vegetables were good too. I suspect they were using canned corn but it wasn’t full of sodium so I don’t know. they may have been fresh. The corn did seem fresh. Both were lightly seasoned.
Needs improvement
The lettuce on their salad bar was a bit wilted. The dressing I had on my salad was good though. None of the dressings were labeled so I can’t tell you what dressing I used.
The rest of the salad bar was a bit skimpy.
They had two soups that weren’t labeled. I didn’t look at them but might have tried one or both of them if they had been labeled. Small paper tent cards would have been fine. Alternately the wait staff could have mentioned what the two choices were when you went in.
I will probably give this place another try because I do like CFS several times a year and I don’t eat big portions. If you aren’t a CFS eater you might be a little disappointed. They did have meatloaf on the buffet but I didn’t try it and it didn’t look like anyone else had either.

I stopped by today for a late lunch (around 2:30 pm) based on the reviews from July. The food they were featuring today was Pork Chops, Chicken Fried Steak, and Spaghetti. I tried the Pork Chops and the Chicken Fried Steak. The chops were very good, but were a little on the cool side. They had these on a steam table versus under heat lamps, always a plus. The green beans were good, but could use some seasoning. The Chicken Fried Steak was average, but not great. The white gravy that I put on the steak was very flavorful. The mashed potatoes were pretty good. I did not try the Spaghetti as I imagined that it had been there too long and might not taste too good off of a buffet.
Overall I think that it will be a good place for Bastrop. They were just joining the Chamber of Commerce while I was in there. I will go back again.

Everything looked and tasted old. Especially the lettuce was absolutely uneatable. Both servers seemed too busy messing with their phones by the cashier. I hope their food and service will get better. Otherwise, I don’t foresee this place lasting.

I hate to give a bad review, but they need to try really hard to do better. Food looked like it had been on the buffet since lunch (we were there at 6:30pm) they have fruit mixed in with the ingredients for the salad (strawberries right behind the jalapenos, I guess it is okay if you like spicy strawberries) the rolls that they brought to the table were burned to the point of being charcoal. When we left we advised the manager and she just wanted to make sure that the next set we got were okay, yeah they were fine expect they were brown and raw. It has no atmosphere at all and the staff sits in a booth against the wall, not too much interested in what is going on with the customers, who seemed to be walking in as fast as they are walking out. I wish them the best, but do not hold out hope that this place will last.