Shady Maple Smorgasbord

When we visited the Lancaster Central Market last week, there was a stand for Shady Maple Bakery -- and they had a sign advertising the Shady Maple Smorgasbord, said to be the largest in the US. Anyone who knows Carl knows that he loves buffets, and we figured this was something we were going to need to check out! After our visit to the Mennonite Life Visitors Center on Tuesday, we drove out to Shady Maple Smorgasbord in East Earl, Pennsylvania.

We were getting to the Smorgasbord at about 2:15pm... we were concerned whether the serving tables would have fresh food given that we'd be arriving between mealtimes... as we got close to the restaurant, we started seeing tour buses... surely they aren't heading there! But, they were!

Entry

Sign out front

We managed to get in just before 3 tour buses pulled up -- we were able to pay for our meals and head toward the area to get seated...

There was plenty of seating available = and LOTS of people there even though it was mid-afternoon!

Absolutely no concern over the buffet having fresh offerings!

Wow!

It just went on and on.

There was one long area that had the buffet tables -- and it was pretty much duplicated with salad in the middle and then veggies, meats, and desserts as you went out from the middle -- but it wasn't 100% the same on both sides, so it was worth taking a walk all the way down to the other end to make sure you weren't missing something.

Carl's second plate (I didn't get a picture of his first one before it was consumed!)

Third plate...

... and dessert!

Carl said that he was careful to watch everything that he ate as he was putting it in his mouth, thus accomplishing the goal of "watch what you eat" at the smorgasbord!

And, we talked with our table attendant about the buses - we think that they were coming from the Sight and Sound Theater -- the Moses production -- like we had seen last week!