If Your Budget's Tight, King's Table Is Fulfilling

Oct 16, 1992

John Hinterberger

King's Table Buffet, multiple locations: West Seattle, Ballard, Lake City, Burien, Kent, Lynnwood and Kirkland. American. --------------------------------------------------------------- Height of the electoral silly season; anxious over where to eat.

Will the dollar weaken? Unemployment rise or fall? Is the recession receding? Depression impending? Splurge liberally or conserve tightly?

Then I heard the president say in a debate that we were all better off than we thought we were. We just didn't know it. We are the envy of the world. We couldn't be in economic hard times, he said, because we were . . . the United States of America. Oh.

Went to King's Table.

I should go there more often; so should most of the nation's restaurant writers.

The King's Table may not be princely; but neither is it plebeian. For about $7 you can eat everything in sight, and when that is gone you can ask for more. No, that's not quite right. You don't even have to ask. You just go get.

No one will elevate an eyebrow if you want another slice of roast beef (it's pretty dry; chances are you won't). Finish off with three chocolate sundaes and nobody will care. Or notice.

This is not food as art. It may not even aspire to be food as pleasure. It is food as sustenance - calories as fuel. And some of it tastes good.

For openers, the King's Table I wandered into on a drizzly, cool weekday night was spotless. Two men were cleaning up after the early dinner rush. They worked fast and well.

A dozen or so tables were still occupied. All of the disabled parking spots near the front door were filled.

The clientele was mostly old, but not exclusively so. Some families with children were scattered among the gray heads, most of the latter eating slowly, methodically. I didn't hear much conversation. A few singles sat not only by themselves, but within themselves.

You pay at a cash register ($6.79 plus tax, on most nights, for all you can possibly consume; $6.99 on Friday and Saturday nights). You pick up a tray and couple of dishes and head for the buffet. It's about 35 feet long.

You start with salads: lettuce, quite fresh and crisp, chops of iceberg and romaine; spinach (dotted through with a few tough, yellow outer leaves) and about a dozen sprinkle-ons: peas, bacon bits, croutons and so forth.

Stop at the pickled beets; they are quite good. So was a surprisingly tasty potato salad. Coleslaw was bland and weepy.

The rolls are OK. The corn bread was warm.

A middle-aged Asian man sat deeply engrossed in a couple of newspapers and a magazine.

It may seem like heresy, but skip the mashed potatoes. If they were real (i.e., not instant) they didn't taste like it. Too bad. Really good mashed potatoes would elevate the Table considerably. The rice tastes a little better. Vegetables: large, sliced carrots overcooked but still orange. Cabbage, much the same but no longer still green. Canned corn.

I wonder how a bowl of chicken soup with so many pieces of shredded chicken can taste so little like chicken. Yet, it is filling and, if unbirdlike, vaguely, indefinably tasty.

A child goes back for more apple crisp. The apple crisp, in fact, is pretty good, too. The bread pudding with raisins is less so.

The chili appears to be popular; the serving pot is seriously depleted. But it is thin, dominated by beans and tomato flecks, with more of a suggestion than a presence of beef. Maybe that got depleted first.

I didn't like eating there alone. I wished I had a book.

Teriyaki chicken wings are passable. The chicken livers are to be avoided. I mean, give them a wide berth. Some foods do not enjoy prolonged residence over warming tables.

I have to say the same for the fish fillets. I am not really sure what kind of fish they once were. White-fleshed, certainly. Well, maybe. The tartar sauce helps. But not enough.

Fried chicken was an enigma. There's a considerable mound of it. It look quite good. But like many of the cuts at Kentucky Fried Chicken, they defy anatomical definition. That is, you don't know where (on the bird) they came from.

I selected what I thought was a piece of the upper thorax, nibbled speculative on dark meat and, turning a corner, found myself nose to bishop's nose with a half of an . . . a triangle of tail.

I was not alone in my speculations. An older woman with a two-tined fork, was spearing through the pile, looking for something recognizable. By the way, peel off the skin. Not for health's sake, but for aesthetics. It's spicy but leathery.

The stuffing was filling. The filling, if out of hand, is stuffing.

A lot of people eat here. The King's Table was rated the No. 1 "Restaurant Value in America" by Restaurants & Institutions Magazine on the basis of a recent ('92) consumer survey.

The roast beef could have been more rare - a little more rare, at least. But the roast, I think it was a bottom round, was flavorful and almost tender. The baked ham was acceptable.

Oodles of soft ice cream.

I wondered if, in four more years, I might be back - by necessity, instead of occupational choice.