HomeTown Buffet

I am glad that this place is closed. I used to eat here growing up and it was getting worse and worse. The last time I ate here (several months ago) I was blown away at the filth. I had complained to the manager too, which is not what I like to do. Little kids were unsupervised, leaving half eaten food on the buffet line. The staff didn’t care. I felt like I was in another country when eating here and I apologize that I have to say that. This place closing did a favor to San Marcos

CLOSED ****** !!! ****** CLOSED
UPDATE: FEBRUARY 11, 2016 CLOSED!!!
NOOoooooo! Tell me its NOT TRUE!
This place is yummy!
Friendly employees and the customers are nice too. This is a tough market to compete in… everybody’s a expert eating here comparing the food to home cooked is hard to do… I give them bonus points for working hard for my business. I love eating here and I know if I ate here as much as want «I would become obese!!!» (This is a positive comment)
I am always quick to complain… if warrented, so I must give praise when I experience quality, nutrition and simply enjoying my dining experience too!
Thanks Hometown Buffet for being 5 minutes away from my house!!!
Michael Romine

We arrived for dinner birthday get one dinner free. I noticed hardly any customers-​is that a warning? Once we paid our dinner price (seemed kind of high) we located a table.
Next, selected dinner food, patties were cold as well as the brown gravy. Mac and cheese had loose strings of «something» in it so I bypassed that. The chicken pot pie was good and dessert was okay. The salad selection was not huge, lettuce was soggy. The roast beef was very tough. Next birthday celebration will not be here.

Went into the restaurant on a Sunday and there was no wait, the food was fresh and hot. Food was great! They accidentally charged us twice but other than that everything was fine. The service was decent but it’s a serve your self place already. Giving them a 4 because it could have been much cleaner.

4 stars in my book. It’s the motel 6 of buffets, cheap, convenient and always there. I go here definitely for the quantity versus quality. Don’t get me wrong the food isn’t bad, but it’s definitely not a 5 star restaurant. I come hungry and leave happy and stuffed. They’ve drastically changed this spot from a couple years ago, I love their individual pot pies and their salad bar is pretty good too.

I use their coupon which is a great save. Two can eat $ 18 or kids for $ 1.99. I always get meatloaf which is always good. One of my children is vegetarian and there is plenty of food choices to choose from

Came here for dinner on 7÷29÷15. No wait, seat yourself is a nice concept for buffet. The salad bar is awesome, soup choices were broccoli cheddar (amazing!) and chicken noodle. The taco bar is great. Lots of comfort food, the hand carved turkey breast was better than Thanksgiving dinner.
The real treat is the drink station, with a chocolate milk dispensor, ICEE machine, and many kinds of iced tea and cold sodas.
Used «Dinner for Two» coupon for $ 17.99, with purchase of 2 drinks. Total $ 24.xx
Iris was our server and she was super friendly and helpful. Keep up the good work!

Hometown buffet was great when I was a kid. It’s gone downhill over the past 15 or so years. I cannot stomach it anymore. I always get terrible stomach aches after eating here.

Very nice and clean! The food is so fresh and seasoned just right! I will bring my family here when they visit this summer from the east coast!

I’ve never been to a Hometown Buffet so I wasn’t sure what to expect. We came here on a Friday night after other local restaurants had quite a wait and I have to say I’m glad we did!
We walked in and were greeted by a friendly cashier. For the buffet and drinks for 2 adults and one 10 year old it was $ 38. They have EVERYTHING to eat here: Italian, Mexican, country cooking (i.e. chicken and dumplings, country fried chicken), soup, salad and fruit bar, veggies, fish, carving station, pasta, and dessert (cake, cookies, pudding, ice cream). My kids were loving it since they could have whatever they wanted and didn’t have to wait to have it prepared. I highly recommend the chicken breast, broccoli, green beans, baked sweet potato, and salad bar if you are wanting to eat on the healthier side.
They had a great selection of beverages including milk and chocolate milk and slurpees. The cakes were a little dry so I would stick with the brownie, cookies, or ice cream. The employees were friendly and cleared our plates quickly.
Overall a good experience and we’ll totally go back. My boys can’t stop talking about it.

Dirty Dirty I wanted milk but there was soured milk crusted on the hose where the milk can out and
nasty milk on the counter
We went to get some silverware and food was dried in the tangs of the forks
kids who came with parents they let there children get their own icecream there was globs and globs of icecream on the machine dripping down the front to the floor food was dried up never going there again told the Manager walked her thru the mess and she said I will get the night people get this cleaned it needs to be clean ASAP

I don’t know what’s up with the Unilocal reviews on this spot. My friend and I came here for dinner approximately 4pm. We were greeted by a pretty Hostess named Cynthia who was cheerful and welcoming. She explained to us where everything was in the restaurant and her favorite items. When we sat down in a booth, the server Victoria immediately stopped by and said hello. She was consistently nice throughout our meal. During our meal, Cynthia the hostess stopped by as well to make sure all went well. Overall, although Victoria was a great server, Cynthia was the one that truly went above and beyond in both her job duties and all other areas of front of house operations (cleaning tables, sweeping the floor, replacing dishes that were done with new dishes from the kitchen, food suggestions, etc.)
Kudos to Cynthia!!!
MANAGEMENT: give her a raise!!!

Don’t eat here. Gross.
Walk in and it’s about 90 degrees inside the restaurant, all I could think about was the germs flourishing in such an unsanitary environment. Floors were filthy, covered in food. Buffet trays on the ground. Picked over food which was all over the counters. Nasty. Not sanitary at ALL.
Trying not to be rude as I was with a group of people, I put some fried chicken on my plate. Took one bite and chicken blood came spewing out (gag).
I immediately lost my appetite.
Never again and I like buffets!

Their food is decent and very affordable. This location has tons of older clientele. I noticed everyone was paying with a coupon or certificate so there must be something online. Great salads and entrees both for lunch and dinner but sometimes plates get stacked up and tables go unattended for a while as they appear to be understaffed. I enjoy their chicken pot pies and fried chicken… They do have a great layout though.

Lunch time. Seriously great if you like rock solid pizza and rolls, spaghetti noodles that look like they’ve been sitting out since last week, and don’t get me started on the nacho cheese sauce that looked like yellow piss water. Worst hometown buffet EVER. They are super busy, but the place is chock full of senior citizens whose eye site is dwindling, taste buds are shot and wallets are pinched which makes this «buffet» a gold mine to them. The lemonade was good though. Smh.
Never again.

It’s pretty dang alright.
I mean seriously, what do you expect from a buffet? You have a handful of people whipping up dozens of different entrees, side-​dishes, desserts, etc. of COURSE it’s not going to be gourmet eats. You go here when you want to eat and eat A LOT!!! It’s all about quantity and not necessarily quality. Having said that, if you lower your expectations a tad, you can find a way to enjoy yourself here. No, it isn’t fancy. Yes, it gets crowded and noisy. No, the food isn’t great. It’s pretty ok though.
For someone on a tight budget, HTB is a pretty good deal. I can feed 4 people for under 40 bucks (two are kids). There are not many places where you can get unlimited salad, entrees, dessert, side-​dishes and drinks for that price.
Now again, it’s not filet mignon and lobster, but… it’s decent food at a decent price. In this economy it works for us blue-​collar, poor, hard-​working type folks.

Went for lunch and salad bar depleted of lettuce and the most popular dressing, ranch & several other salads like potato and cole slaw empty. Girl was filling the unempty things so had to ask and wait a bit for her to leave and come back with ranch & salads.
The featured salad apple walnut wasn’t even available since there was only one out and someone nabbed it. Table attendant told US to just ask for more.
Took a long time for attendants to get our empty used plates off table so we kept putting them on next table.
Mgr was attentive and very nice though.
All in all the lunch food was tasty and fresh. Just not a big selection, but it was lunch.

Let’s just say if Anthony Wedo (CEO from the TV commercials) came thru while he was on «Undercover CEO» heads would likely ROLL at this location.
As a single mom, I choose to sponsor an under-​served family in the Escondido area who really wanted to go to this restaurant for dinner tonight ESPECIALLY because they had a coupon they were proud I could use in their behalf. Unfortunately, we arrived there only to find they had inadvertently forgotten the coupon at home. No problem, I assured them. I’m certain HTB will understand and do the right thing.
Mayra (the cashier) greeted us with a stack of unmarked coupons sitting right in front of her. I kindly said hello and asked her if because we had forgotten ours if perhaps she could share one of those she was holding with our small group. «Oh no, they count coupons here and one girl just got fired for doing that… I’m not willing to risk my job» Nice. Must be a friendly place to work, not. So I plunked down $ 47.56 for 3 adult dinners (really 2 adults and one tiny 12 yo girl) and 3 dinner beverages. Now my group is all ready to see «what’s new» since they’ve seen the Anthony Wedo commercials. The answer? Pretty much nothing. The overall consensus was most of the changes were cosmetic; whatever.
The food? Definitely less than last time we visited both in terms of quantity and quality. An entire salad bar tray sat all but empty with one bowl of fruit (no ice) sitting alone in the center. No one working the carving station; are we supposed to grab a knife and carve our own? No bread. No butter. The dessert station looked like it’s was ¼ full of whatever was supposed to be there in the first place. In the end, we each had one small plate of food and a few cookies.
As for the unlimited dinner beverages? Well most of the machines had «out of order» scribbled across them in pen. Meanwhile, the GM «James Brown» was running around with a mop and yellow cones soaking (I mean mopping) the floor during prime time (6 PM) around the beverage station and then around the food stands. While I can understand his interest (the floors were definitely gross) if I were managing the place I would suggest they either mop before the crowd arrives or mop a foot and then dry a foot before risking slips/​falls for the sake of checking some box that the floors were attended to on the hour… oh, and the bathroom. No soap. Lovely. The docking areas for dirty dishes were beyond overflowing and quite frankly disgusting as we walked past them to our booth on two occasions.
I would not come back to this restaurant if they offered to PAY ME to try another meal; it’s just that bad. Oh, and I left Manuel a $ 5 tip even though he only had to pick up one set of plates from us. I figured he probably needed the pick-​me-​up given what appears to be a very unhealthy environment both in terms of leadership and product. Gross.

We had a dinner for 2 coupon that required the purchase of drinks. Not too bad, so we stopped in for dinner. We didn’t have high expectations but we were truly disappointed with our dining experience. It was bad! The «steak» was very fatty but tasted ok. The veggies tasted like they had been under a heating lamp for some time and the desserts my wife had were dried out and bland tasting. The vast majority of the «serve yourself» drinks were out of order or just plain empty. I overheard several youngsters complaining to each other that both the regular and chocolate milk dispensers were empty.
The raspberry ice tea machine dispensed a light brown liquid missing any raspberry or tea-​like flavor. My wife’s French vanilla coffee was watery and tasteless. I was so turned off at this point that I decided to get some of the soft-​serve orange ice cream or sorbet I fondly remembered from our last visit. How could they screw that up, I thought to myself? Yep… they found a way! They replaced it with a generic chocolate.
Time to go… I know when I’m a beaten man! Bottom line, a whole lot of food with nothing good to eat. At least for tonight!
Just a last comment to the management team or person overseeing operations. Pay attention to what’s going on and either fix it, replace it or fill it up. At least your customers can get something to drink without a complaint. Really, how can you not know?

Hahahahaha!!! The dinner was quite a social experience more than a food experience! So we sometimes go to Souplantation for salad, soup, some generic American food for a weekday too-​lazy-​to-​cook dinner. Then we suddenly had a thought to check out Hometown Buffet and see how it compares to Souplantation. For both of us, the last time we went to a Hometown Buffet was about 10 years ago, so as adventurous and curious as we have always been, we decided to go there and check it out again…
Man, we haven’t been feeling so out of place in a restaurant as tonight… we were surrounded by big Mexican families. The crowd here was completely different from Souplantation’s where there are young and old couples and small families. We just wanted to finish the food ASAP before a kid ran into us in the buffet area. (not being racist, just stating the fact. Literally all the tables were filled by big Mexican families.)
The worst part was the pricing… $ 12 for adults for subpar food, WTF? If it’s $ 7 each, I can understand. $ 12? Why do people even come here? The pizza looked pathetic — worse than any frozen pizza I’ve seen, the pasta looked sad, the sugary desserts were not appetizing at all, there were some small flies over at the salad bar… but we managed to find something we liked! Chicken pot pie was very delicious! Hot, fresh and well seasoned with a crispy, buttery pastry on top.
On top of sub-​par food, the price came with dirty floors, dirty buffet tables and ripped booth seats. The whole place just looked so run-​down. You charge people $ 12 per head. Can you clean this place up?
Best of all, our server was very attentive and friendly, better than service in Souplantation that we experienced.
2 stars: 1 for the pot pie, 1 for the server… well Unilocal doesn’t let me give 1.5 stars…
Hometown Buffet is definitely different from how it used to be 10 years ago… Never coming back again. We felt so out of place, so weird… and prices are not considered as cheap because it is NOT below $ 10 per head!!! There are so many low-​budget places out there for dinner…