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An American buffet leaves an impression on you. Sometimes good. Sometimes bad.
Maybe it was a Chinese Buffet with your high school friends. Maybe it was Ponderosa. Maybe it was a frozen yogurt flavor you’ve been chasing for decades.
But what happens when you go back?
In this 7 Minute Story, Aaron revisits a core memory from the 90s and begins to question something deeper: Can you trust nostalgia? Does memory tell the truth? Or does time change the taste of everything?
This is a story about abundance, aging, perspective, and the strange moment when the past doesn’t feel the way you remembered it.
And the uncomfortable question that follows...
Which version of the memory do you trust?
*Dive deeper into the 7MS Universe and connect with Aaron on...
The Team:
Story created & performed by: Aaron Calafato
Senior Audio Engineer: Ken Wendt
Additional vocals: Cori Calafato
Art: Pete Whitehead
Original Theme Music: thomas j. duke
Additional Soundscape Design: Isaac Gehring
TRANSCRIPT
An American Buffet and the Trouble with Nostalgia
“As amazingly nostalgic as it is to remember good things, I don’t want to live a lie.”
An American buffet-style restaurant leaves an impression on you. In fact, it might unlock a core memory. That could be a good one, or it could be a traumatic one. It leaves an impression, is what I’m saying. The question is whether the memory is good or bad. Can you trust it? And if you can’t, how come? Come with me on this seven-minute story journey and we’re going to try to get to the bottom of this.
Let me paint a picture for you. I’m 16 and I’m starving. My buddies and I, who I’m so happy to see, go to a place called Dragon Buffet. We’ve got $10 in our pockets from working our part-time jobs. We sit down. And in front of us is a miracle. Abundance. A cornucopia. I would even say it’s opulent.
What do I see? I see General Tso’s. I see sesame chicken. I see bourbon chicken. I see lo mein. Are those crab legs over there? Are you serious? I mean, the best of the best from American Chinese cuisine.
Look, I come from a pretty decent food culture. I have Italian American cuisine on my father’s side. I have farm-to-table on my mother’s side. I’m not a five-star chef, but I’ve been to a five-star restaurant. I have an appreciation for food. I’ve got a wide palate. I’m not stuck up. I like things for what they are. I try to keep the main thing the main thing — healthy food in the body — but I’ve got space for Taco Bell from time to time. I’ve got space for Dunkin’. And when I was this age, I had space for a buffet. Purely an economic thing.
I know this isn’t winning awards for authenticity, but this was pretty damn good food. There was something quality about it. It hit a perfect inflection point. Just high enough quality to feel like it was sustenance, and cheap enough to feel like you got a deal. And it didn’t stop. You’re still hungry? Load up another plate.
I’m laughing it up with my buddies. Some of the best memories ever. I can see them right now sitting around the table. Didn’t want those evenings to end. I’m sure the people who owned the restaurant did. But my point is this: this is a core memory for a lot of Americans — whether it’s a Chinese buffet or a country-style buffet. I viewed the buffet experience in a particular way.
But recently I’ve been challenged with the validity of those memories — in so far as what I experienced then might not be the thing that it actually is. And it’s tearing me apart.
Let me tell you how.
I told a story on this podcast years ago about TCBY frozen yogurt. My wife Cori and I drove out to Michigan because we didn’t have one in Ohio, but it was such an important part of our past and our memories. We went out there on one of our first dates. We get there — the frozen yogurt is meh — but the gift was that I fell in love with my wife.
Here’s the thing, though. They didn’t have the flavor I was truly coveting and remembered. The flavor was called Golden Vanilla.
Flash forward to this past summer. Now I’m married. Cori and I are doing our thing. We’ve got 175 kids. We’re on vacation. We’re driving to North Carolina, and somewhere in Pennsylvania I spot, out of the corner of my eye, a sign that says TCBY.
Yes, it was attached to a gas station. Probably a little suspect. But we run in there. I give the kids a preamble. Let them know what they’re getting into. And you won’t believe it — they freaking have Golden Vanilla.
Decades I’ve been coveting this.
I pour a big giant cup full of this frozen yogurt. Everyone’s watching me. I take a bite.
It was freaking awful.
Now, it probably was the franchise. No hate on TCBY. My point is, it probably was diluted a little bit. But it wasn’t the same. And I’m spinning. I’m going, was it ever that way?
Ken Went, the audio engineer of 7MS, inspired this whole thing. He called me up and said, “Do you remember Ponderosa, the buffet?”
I said, “Yeah.”
He goes, “It was magical, right?”
I said, “It was freaking magical. You walk in — you’ve got chicken wings and mac and cheese. You’ve got a damn ice cream machine on tap.”
I walk into a buffet now, and I’m looking at a Petri dish. Never thought about it that way when I was 15. I’m walking in now going, wait a second. We’re all locking ourselves in a room. We’re all touching the same serving spoons. We’re all coughing. You’ve got kids with snot in their noses running around. No one’s supervised. It’s the Wild West.
You don’t know how long the food has been out. You’re less than six inches from the guy eating sirloin steak, and he’s six inches away from the crab legs you’re about to devour.
We’re in a situation where we’re transmitting diseases very easily in this place. That’s how I see it now. I see it as unclean. I don’t want to be there. Didn’t feel this way back then.
And then when you eat the food — let’s say you get past the unclean part, the awkward part of the guy cutting the roast beef — you like hot fudge sundaes. But now, in 2026 compared to 1996, it’s not good.
But was it ever?
And this is my point: I think it was.
There’s data to show that quality of goods and ingredients have gone down as businesses cut costs. There was a time where the sirloin steak tasted pretty decent at Sizzler. There was a time where that General Tso’s chicken was a chunk of white meat glazed with spicy sweet sauce. Now it’s something I don’t even recognize.
And as amazingly nostalgic as it is to remember good things, I don’t want to live a lie.
So I’ve got these two separate experiences. These two separate memories. Many of us do. Both of which are valid.
But I don’t want to be someone who’s just telling myself a story. I want to live in truth. So how do we figure this out?
Maybe the trick is thinking about it like a piece of art.
You go to an art museum. You stand six inches from a painting. It looks a certain way. Brush strokes. Oil paint. Sometimes you can’t even recognize the image you came to see.
But you step five feet back, and it looks totally different. It looks like the painting as you think it should be.
But it’s the same painting.
So which vantage point makes it true?
In the same way quantum physicists say a single electron can exist in two places simultaneously, maybe that’s Chinese buffets and Ponderosa. Maybe that’s the buffet of my youth and the buffet now.
Two different things. Both valid. Both true.
Maybe the question isn’t whether we should trust those memories.
Maybe the question is: which one do I prefer?
I know my answer.
Do you?
I’ll talk to you next time.
