Chuck-A-Rama Buffet

NEVER AGAIN… EVER!!!
1. RAW FRIED CHICKEN!!! (Do I really need to go any further?)
Seriously, just because it’s a buffet doesn’t mean it has to suck sooooo bad. Selection-​poor quality-​poor. The salad was ok, but really, how do you mess up salad. The baked chicken was as dry as a popcorn fart, and the fried chicken was still bleeding. The carved meats had no flavor. The vegetables were… bland as they could be.

It’s all about the Chuck! Golden Corral set its sails down for this new and adventurous coronary venture into the flavorful new world of high class buffet, but if I own the place I wouldn’t call it the Chuck o Rama. I mean when you think of a place called Chuck o Rama would you think of hand sliced meats and flavorful delights? No! You would think of hot, brown, and lots of it… with peas!!! Come on Boise, get some ordinance name change law for this place because it deserves better than the Chuck o freaking rama!

Guide of the Best that the Rama has to offer
Another visit means another update! Solid 3 star experience, I am doing this review a bit differently than the other. I tried pretty much EVERYTHING they had that was worth trying, just so I could make you the guide of all the best food. Though it seems like an oxymoron this buffet does has some good HOMEMADE food that is worth a taste.
First the salad bar is very green and yada yada, but let’s be real your not paying $ 10 – 15 a person to eat salad.
**1^st plate (as pictured)
Ham– salty and pretty dry
Garlic Bread– Cold, wet, and hard edges
Sour cream potatoes– Top was rubbery and overcooked, tasted of heavy sourcream
Mashed pot– Real redskin mashed made fresh AWESOME!
Mac n cheese– Must use KFC’S left overs, have that same pasty liquid cheese from a bag, soo bland
Fried Chicken– Juicy, crunchy, and tasted better than KFC. it’s meh at its finest
2^nd plate
BBQ chicken– Light bbq sauce glaze, flavorful, tender, sauce builds with spice and sweetness. Great
Rotisserie Chick– Slow roasted, juicy, crispy skin well flavored, Great
Grilled cod– Seasoned well with paprika and black sesame seeds, overcooked and super dry.
Beef Stroganoff– Salty beef sauce, with very tough cuts of beef, super bland.
3^rd Plate (Super Flavor Plate) If you don’t want to play games get these items!
Roll w cinnamon butter– fresh baked, light, airy, hot and taste amazing with the creamy butter.
Mash– Once again fresh homade REAL potatoes
Turkey Breast– fresh cooked, lean, succulent, turkey Breast carved right in front of you.
Rotisserie Chick– All about slow roasted flavor
Kettle Roasted Turkey– Truly a signature dish filled with flavor and hearty pieces of carrots and potatoes.
Ham– Depending on if they are cutting it hot, this is really hit and miss. I like the roast beef but tends to have lots of gristle. (Fat)
Desserts– I tried the best looking ones
Oreo Cake! — Light sponge, Oreo crunch, chocolate and all around a winner.
Brownie Lava– This was hot, chocolatey, and a bit overcooked.
Rice pudding– It was bland with no taste
bread pudding– Meh
Cookie– Hard and burnt, look out for the lemon icing cookies they are the best.
triple berry cream cheese cake– This had a light frosting, dense sponge, and not much flavor.
Their you have an extensive run down of my experience plate by plate, yes I ate a lot all in the name of Unilocaling lol.

They have good food, for the most part, but the selection is not even close to comparison to other buffets. It was nice to come by and try, and it’s nice that the drinks are included; but it isn’t enough to get me to come back again.

Ok. .my elderly inlaws always give this place 5 stars… their type of comfort food. Mushroom gravy, sliced ham, turkey & roast beef and they do have the fried chicken & fries down! Salad bar is pretty clean & fresh. Standard, sliced eggs, peas, multi lettuces and some already prepared standards (krab salad, carrot shredded something etc. All that is fine. Service good, typical nice staff.
If you’re a foodie that loves designer food, this isn’t the place but if old fashioned, stick to your ribs food is, you’ve got it here!

This place is so nice and clean and bright and pretty! The food in the buffet tables looks beautiful and well prepared, tge place is spotless, except there were a lot of dirty tables and the hot food could have been hotter. That is why I markred down, but the food tasted great! We’ll definitely be back and maybe raise our score next time! Yay!

The food is really good, and the service was decent. I feel they would be better if they had a bit more selection, though.

I enjoy eating at this place every time we go. The service is always good and the food is delicious. How can you go wrong with an all you can eat buffet. Also any business that donates to veteran events like this one has are a 5 star in my book! I appreciate any businesses who supports and continues to support our veterans who have served our country. I would recommend this place and will keep returning.

This place was incredible all the way around! Clean & the employees where friendly! The food was delicious couldn’t believe it was a buffet tasted home cooked!

I was very disappointed after reading such good reviews. I now know that the people her in Idaho review restaurants as awful as they drive. You people wouldn’t know good food if I threw it at you. The menu is limited the food is over seasoned way to salty. The guy at the meat carving station can’t cut that way over cooked roast beef to save his life. The fried chicken wasn’t hot but still managed to drip pure grease when cut. The place should be called Chuck A Rama Choke and Puke. Worst dining experience I had since moving to this lovely state.

My husband and i visited Chuck o Rama for the first time and loved it! We arrived about thirty minutes before closing and there was still a lot of food left out. The waiters were great. The food was very good compared to other buffets we’ve been to. The waiters and staff were great!

Ok. I like food just like everyone else. Yesterday I went to JJ Norths and today I thought I would try here. The difference? Steak at the other place but an awesome salad bar here. Both are close in price. Here the drink is included where there you pay more. Each place has pros and cons… I like them both!

The best buffet in town! The meats and fries are awesome but what attracts me are the brownies and rolls. I would recommend anyone who likes buffets to try this place place out.

The «all you can eat» buffet. The guilty culinary pleasure that many of us try to deny. But there are times when you just don’t want to listen to your head, that screams you don’t need to eat so much… nor do you really listen to your gut either, that screams you really should eat something better. No, sometimes nothing else will satisfy except to load up plate after plate with «lowest common denominator» comfort food and eat yourself into a stupor. We all have days like that, let’s just admit it. So when those moods strike, you need to know where to go. With that confession out of the way, let’s review my favorite «guilty pleasure,» the Chuck-​A-​Rama buffet.
One big thing for me in writing reviews is understanding the kind of place a restaurant is when you walk in the door, and holding your expectations in line with that. You don’t walk into a sushi bar looking for a great steak, nor should you walk into an «AYCE» buffet expecting five-​star quality food (ok, maybe if you’re in Las Vegas or on a cruise ship.) So let’s just start with the food. For what this place is, the food is above average. The salad bar is varied and well stocked. The hot food is of a slightly higher quality than that of other buffet type restaurants. I am particularly fond of the carved roast beef. The sides are fairly standard but never disappoint. For the type of place Chuck-​A-​Rama is… the food is better than good. I won’t call it great, but you don’t go to a place like this looking for GREAT food.
Another reason Chuck-​A-​Rama gets high marks from me is that it addresses a pet peeve I have with the vast majority of other «AYCE» restaurants. The food may be all you can eat, but they still require you to go through a «server» to get drinks. I have NEVER understood the logic of this. Is it just to give people more to do? To justify the already meager salaries such employees get? It’s just silly to me. Thankfully Chuck-​A-​Rama dispenses with that silliness. All the drinks are available in the buffer area and you can fill and refill to your heart’s content without ever having to «bother» a server. I find this absolutely wonderful as it is very convenient, not to mention Chuck-​A-​Rama offers a very good variety of drinks including slushies and various coffee drinks.
All that being said, Chuck-​A-​Rama will run you a bit more than other comparable buffets, and drinks are included in the buffet price. So in a sense that extra cost is «priced in» to the meal itself, but you lose the option of not wanting to pay for drinks if you so choose. This may or may not bother you depending on your preferences, but it is valuable to know before you walk in the door. The customer service is fairly par for the course, nothing terrible or outstanding. Dirty plates disappear from your table in fairly quick order, and the buffet stations are kept mostly clean and well stocked. Fairly popular items can come and go quickly on busy nights, but that’s pretty much standard for any place like this.
Bottom line, when those silly cravings for massive amounts of food hit, Chuck-​A-​Rama should be near the top of your list of places to go to fulfill it. You won’t walk away disappointed… except maybe in yourself. ;)

Stopped going when I learned that all their salad dressings are made from GMO (transgenic) soy bean oils, even their «olive» oil is a soy bean and olive mix. They don’t serve one juice drink that is 100% juice, they are all either artificially sweetened or made with GMO sugar/​corn syrup… and you can’t opt out of paying for drinks… so unless I want to drink coffee, tea or milk, I settle for an expensive glass of water. Over the last couple of years, seems every time I went to Chuck-​A-​Rama, they eliminate quality ingredients on the buffet, turning to cheaper and less expensive foods. They use to have a feta cheese or blue cheese crumbles on their salad bar, but no more. They use to serve coconut butterfly fried shrimp on their Friday lunch buffet, but no more. They use to have a fresh mixed fruit salad on their salad bar made with pineapple and grapes and citrus, but not any more, it was replaced with inexpensive melon chunks. I use to enjoy their steamed/​cooked fresh veggies, but all they seem to serve now is boring canned green beans, canned corn, and canned peas. Most of their baked deserts like pies and cakes and brownies are dry and I am sure come in frozen and/​or pre-​made. Chuck-​A-​Rama Buffet use to be one of the best «American Food» buffet in Boise, but not any longer.

For some odd reason, my hosts in Boise love to take me to this place. Thankfully, it was on my first day, and not my last.
The food really hasn’t changed, and the service is still friendly and nice. The salad seems fresher than what I remember. I’m still passing on certain proteins they are serving.
Larger selection than Sizzler, but fresher than going to Hometown Buffet.

Wow! After reading some of the other reviews I seriously wondered if they went to the same place as my wife and I have been enjoying for years!
While the set up is surely different from other buffets, after you get used to it, the set up makes tons of sense. It’s arranged so that masses of people don’t all crowd around one section. There are the sweet salads etc on one side and the green salad items on the other. The main dishes are done the same with the turkey, roast beef, ham etc in one area and the other mains scattered somewhat. We really like the «island» setup once we got used to it.
When my wife and I «rate» an eatery our base critique is, «is it at least as good as we cook at home»? Not to brag but I consider both of us as much above average in our cooking skills and Chucks more than passes that standard.
It IS very much a grandma’s/home cooking type of place and the décor reflects that ideal. It’s like a box canyon full of your childhood favorites but nothing too fancy or hard to pronounce.
We have NEVER been disappointed when we choose to go there and heartily recommend it to all our friends and family.

For a buffet, it’s OK I guess. Been there a few times. I will return if I get bored with any other places we have been. Not a huge selection, but for the most part it’s ok. Didn’t care for the iced tea though.

Its a buffet with a lot of comfort food. Enough said.
It’s not fancy, it is what it is. You always know what to expect here and I like that. Sometimes you just want to go out for food like grandma used to make. Our favorites include the mac and cheese and the turkey pot roast.

Unlike Spencer N. I *like* buffets. Before I came to Boise I was in food love with a place called «Old Country Buffet». Chuck-​A-​Rama was the first buffet I ever visited in Boise and my initial opinion of it still holds. MEH. Other than in drinks there is not a whole lot of variety, and they layout is odd, the food area is cramped and far too small.
I thought I was doomed to a lifetime of mediocre buffet until my husband (then boyfriend) took me to Golden Corral. the HOLY GRAIL of buffets. but that is for another post.
In closing if a wide selection of beverages is what turns you on about a buffet then by all means go to Chuck A Rama. but if it’s a variety of foods in a pleasingly navigable atmosphere, look elsewhere.
PS: I agree with Glenn M. The first poster was not into buffets and IMHO this invalidates their review. Plus. restrooms are FOR bodily elimination, so don’t go complaining about someone having to do their business there or do you go in a bag and bury yours in the woods?