The other night my friend Aaron asked our baseball WhatsApp thread a simple question: “You guys ever Sizzler?” And from those four words arose a rhapsodic cacophony.
“Dream come true.”
“Bro, don’t even ask me about Sizzler bread and all-you-can-eat shrimp. They take that toasty bread in the back and spray some cheese-flavored spray paint on it and it’s glorious.”
“Sizzler was all the things I never got to eat at home. It was dizzying.”
“At 10, I wasn’t sure which sanctuary I preferred: Immanuel Lutheran or Sizzler.”
“That baked potato bar was my communion.”
To any kid with a passion for eating, Sizzler was a wonderland. I told Lana about it later, the magical place where you could have as much cheese bread, or shrimp scampi, or Malibu chicken, or tacos as you pleased. Her eyes grew wide as an empty Sizzler plate. “Can we go there, Papa? Can we?” she asked as she danced and clapped her hands in delight.
The answer is yes…and no. Yes, because there’s an open Sizzler in Longview and another in Albany, and many others up and down the I-5 corridor. But also, no, because I’m not driving an hour for a Sizzler with 3.4 stars on Google Maps.
As to Sizzler’s halcyon days, I have something to show you. First, some context: Sizzler Family Steakhouse was founded in Culver City, California, in 1958 by Del and Helen Johnson. In the mid-’80s, after trial runs with all-you-can-eat fried shrimp, the restaurant pivoted toward a vast and varied buffet, even employing their own butchers to save costs and fend off competitors.
From there, Sizzler blew up across Asia, Australia, and North America and became a global icon. In 1991, the following film was made. I say “film” rather than “commercial” because it’s over four minutes long and quite epic. I understand if you don’t have that sort of time right now, but it’s worth watching if you want a glimpse into American optimism around the time the Soviet bloc was shattering.
The film opens with a series of typically American tableaus: a man tossing a frisbee to a dog, a middle-aged man with a hardhat on a work site, a young version of my aunt Coleen sitting in a tree with a baseball bat, and an old fishing guy. The first strains of an anthem begin:
All across America the song of freedom rings
A song that’s growing stronger everyday
It tells us when we listen to the message that it sings
Let us lift our voices
We can make the choices
We will make the most of all the best that freedom briiiiiings”
What can I say? It does describe a lot of the American way! Then the chorus:
Sizzler is the one that brings us choices!
Reaching out across the USA!
Each and everyday
Get a little freedom in yooouuur liiiiiiiiiiiiiiife!
The camera passes over a suburban bacchanalia full of the smiliest faces this side of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun.” Then a voiceover kicks in basically describing the Sizzler’s mission statement: Americans are busier than ever but they still want quality home cooking. They also want tons of choices, and maybe just a dash of whatever this lady’s craving.
The whole Sizzler World is revealed in these four minutes. There are copious and lingering shots of: super-happy customers; fruit cornucopias; odd PDA; shrimp scampi; a boy having the best watermelon bite of his life; a wholesomely pretty waitstaff; that final “Sizzler,” sensually whispered. Truly, a restaurant within a restaurant within a life.
The thesis is basically true in that Sizzler was one of the ultimate places most of us could ever hope to go in 1991. Still, The Sizzler Film missteps. First, the cast is unfairly monochromatic for our awoken age. In actuality, Sizzler appealed to everyone except perhaps food snobs. Case in point: when Anthony Bourdain visited Los Angeles for Parts Unknown and asked for the best restaurant in Koreatown, artist David Choe took him to Sizzler and it was Bourdain’s first visit.
Then there’s the way Sizzler epitomizes a particularly American dilemma that I’ll call an “inundation of variety.” I experienced it up returning to the US after living outside the country for seven months, and heard other travelers describe it as a paralysis of choice, the feeling of standing inside a grocery store, frozen at the sheer variety of brands and logos and options, when all you really want is a box of cereal. Some Americans crave those options, some are used to blocking out the visual noise but that’s not necessarily a positive turn. Maybe Sizzler was too much for some.
Since the film, Sizzler’s seen hard times. There was a bankruptcy filing in 1996 which slowed expansion, then an E. coli outbreak in Wisconsin in 2000 which lead to shutting down locations across the Midwest. The casual dining sector has stalled generally and COVID shutdowns brought about another bankruptcy filing last September.
Still, there are surely many of us who still yearn for choices, and we mourn as the buffet era declines. I remain hopeful, though. Maybe a global epidemic isn’t the right time to ask, but has the buffet/potluck concept truly seen its doom? I say “nay!” In the future, when restaurants are safer, let us reimagine the buffet and aspire to a future of cheesy bread and quality choices. A future already realized in the beloved and mighty island nation of Puerto Rico, where there are 13 Sizzlers.