The "Enough is Enough!" Story

The Atlantic Restaurant

It was an ordinary day.  Looking over the stories I have written about the last vacation that Carol and I, along with our friends Jerry and Just Sue, had taken.  Stories about our snorkel trip, zoo trip, touring trips, and a trip to The Atlantis Resort's water park are all documented, but no where did I find any stories about our trips to the RIU's Atlantic Restaurant.  And, we made plenty of them.  

Entrance to the Atlantic Restaurant which is a buffet.

The RIU Resort is All-inclusive, meaning that not only is our room included in the price we paid, but our enter- tainment, beach chairs, and all food and drinks are included.  Tend to eat way too much in a resort such as that, but it was the best buy that we found for our annual trip to the Caribbean.  

The Aqua colored drinks.

I'm not much of a drinker of alcoholic beverages, but I found that the daytime trips to the pool bar for a blue colored drink, green colored drink, or the red colored drink became more frequent as vacation progressed.  Oh yeah, the BBCs and the Pina Colada can be added to the colored drinks! I believe I even may have had a drink of amazing colors at lunch everyday.  And …… even dinner!  What the heck, they're FREE and they're colorful.  The main restaurant, which was a buffet, was called the "Atlantic" dining room.  Unbelievable food spread across one entire end of the restaurant.  Every evening had a different theme for the food from Italian to Greek to Mexican and so on.  Some foods were on the buffet every evening, but specialty foods based on the theme were only on the buffet on that particular evening.  

Salad Bar

My favorite ……. all of them.  The dessert buffet was probably my favorite with bread pudding, creme brulee, cream puffs, chocolate cake, chocolate covered strawberries, ice cream …….. the list goes on and on.  A salad bar carried just about any vegetable along with cheeses, fruits, pre-made salads such as potato salad, and a variety of dressings you had to sample to decide which one was the best.  

Italian Night buffet directly inside the entrance.

After arriving we were seated and a waiter took our drink order.  Then, it's off to the buffet.  As soon as your plate is empty, the waiter removes it and you head back to the buffet for another one.  Just seems too easy, doesn't it.  

One of the many offerings at the dessert bar.

Not only is there the Atlantic Restaurant, but there are four speciality restaurants that are full service restaurants where a waiter takes your order and the food is brought to your table.  Carol and I visited Krystal Restaurant where we started with a shrimp and ravioli appetizer, main course of  Chilean Sea Bass and dessert of warm chocolate coulant with vanilla ice cream.  A meal to die for, and we enjoyed it so much we went back a second time for the same thing.  

Entrance to the Krystal Restaurant.

There were many other choices, but I have just listed what we chose.  A second restaurant call Gourmet featured onion soup with caramelised onion and chives for the starter, Duck a l'orange as the main dish and Creme brulee for dessert.  Then one evening we headed to the Steak House where we were treated to an appetizer of crab legs, salmon, and mussells along with a Ceasar salad, a main dish of Surf and Turf with vegetable medley than another chocolate dessert with vanilla ice cream.  The final restaurant was Japanese choices …. no way!  Jerry and Just Sue did go there for a meal, but couldn't convince me to give it a try.  For breakfast they had almost anything imaginable that looked like you could eat it to start the morning along with fresh squeezed juices as well as whipped fruit drinks.  

Part of the lunch buffet.

Lunch was salads, sandwiches, pizza, pasta, mac and cheese, etc. and again a buffet of desserts.  Come the 11th or 12th day of vacation we began to say …. "I guess we have to go eat again!"  It was beginning to get to be too much.  The pants were getting tighter, the food started looking bland and the stray cat that frequented the restaurant was eating more from our plate than we were.  

Oh yeah!  Another dessert buffet!!

Enough is enough!!  Oh yeah, they also had a fridge stocked with beer, wine, and soda in our room and Room Service was available 24/7, all included in the price.  I must say we did have wonderful meals, but probably ate way too much.  At least I did.  Needed to head home and have to pay for the food I consumed in order to be more reasonable.  Would I do an all-inclusive again?  Don't know!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.