I'm winning this buffet derail right now!
Right down the street was a restaurant called Duff's Smorgasboard. It was a big rotating wheel filled with glorious food. The 'spokes' of the wheel were metal containers about 12" x 36" each filled with a different type of food. As it rotated, 25% of the wheel would go behind a wall into the kitchen where workers could see empty food containers and swap them out with full ones before it reappeared, magically filled again.
You would walk up and stand in your wooden 'box' waiting for your favorite food to finally make it in front of you. Because the wheel never stopped you'd have like 5 seconds to get your serving out of that metal container. If you failed, you had to sit and wait for the wheel to rotate all the way around and hope it was still full when you had your second chance. Honestly, it was amazing as a kid. Get up to the wheel and wait for a full rotation to see what was available and try to remember what you wanted. Scared to death you'd miss your food when it came around. If the tater tots bin was empty you'd wait a few rotations hoping like hell someone in the back would fill it up with fresh ones. The golden location was all the way to the left because that's where the new food bin would make it's appearance filled to the brim. Hurry, grab some! Now go sit down and stuff your face.
It was great living in a high trust society back in the day. Can't believe I found a photo! But pretty sure the one I recall as a kid was 50% bigger than this allowing for more people to stand around it.
Look at this bad ass way of filling your plate with endless food......
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