At a buffet, when there are multiple trays full of food, there should be multiple utensils for serving as well. The only way to keep utensils sanitary is to wash them often and thoroughly. Washing should happen after a utensil is set on an unclean surface. An unclean surface might be the buffet itself or a kitchen counter when a utensil is brought back to the kitchen from the buffet.
It seems obvious, right? Cold foods should be cold and hot foods should be hot. However, at a buffet, temperatures are a lot to manage. It's not that customers just want their pasta warm, their soup at the perfect temperature, and their salad chilled
Thankfully, if the sneeze guard is missing, it's easy to catch as soon as you walk in the door. No sneeze guard is one of the quickest signs that you are at an unhealthy buffet. According to Safely6feet.com, sneeze guards are usually made of acrylic material designed to keep human germs from things like food.
When at a buffet, the stacks of clean plates should be plentiful. If a restaurant is careless in this area, customers may return with the same plate to add more food, and that's not safe. Table Agent writes that many states have laws about plates and buffets.
When we think of buffets, it's easy to forget the need for servers. Buffets are basically self-serve, so why would you need a wait staff? Well, the reality is that its servers who are refilling the food trays, sometimes bringing customers their drinks, clearing away dirty dishes from the tables, and hopefully, just checking in to see how each customer is doing.
Bigger isn't always better. Certainly, buffets have a selection of quite a few items, and if they are serving a large crowd, it's understandable that they want to set out a lot of food. However, setting it all out at once in giant trays isn't the safest answer.
Weekends are a great time to eat out. The workweek is done, and it's time to let someone else do the cooking. The thing is, you need to be leery of a restaurant that is a regular restaurant during the week but turns into an all-you-can-eat buffet on the weekends.