I love playing poker and thus I’ve been to Turning Stone Casino in Oneida many, many times. When you play out there, if you put in for a Diamond Card, which is free, you earn points for every hour you play. You can use the same card for table games and slots to earn point also.

Then you can use your points for all sorts of things, such as hotel stays and food. It was in this vein that a recent trip to the casino took me to their Season’s Harvest Buffet, which I paid for with some of my points, and let me just say that it’s more than worth it, even if you have to pay.

I have rarely done the buffet because usually there’s a long line to get in. However, on this particular day, after some success (finally) at the poker table, I found myself able to walk right in and beat the crowd, which started to form about 35 minutes later as I was leaving. This made it easy for me to take the pictures that I’m sharing with you here.

Let me just say this up front. I have never been a big buffet guy outside of Chinese buffets, and even there I’m not one who has problems selecting what I’ll eat, no matter how many different choices of food they offer. And let’s be serious, outside of those buffets that also offer American foods, every buffet is pretty much the same, and we all have our favorites.

The Season’s Harvest buffet is something entirely different, as most casino buffets turn out to be. They literally had a multi-cultural group of foods one could choose from: Italian, Asian, Southern, and of course American cuisine. If you wanted comfort foods they had that in a separate place. If you wanted tacos or hot dogs they had that. If you wanted salads of any type, or fruits and other vegetables, they had that. Soups; they had that. And of course desserts; why wouldn’t I want to think about desserts?

I had to go at the buffet carefully because I knew I needed to save space for dessert. So I went the sample route, which means there are foods I had to turn down. It hurt my feelings not to be able to sample the chicken pot pie but they were too big. I also decided to pass on the strip steak, which they had in both cooked well and medium rare batches, because those were huge. I did go for a slice of turkey with mashed potatoes and gravy, as well as a nice sampling of fried shrimp, which not only didn’t have the sales but was as much as you wanted to eat.

I also sampled different types of meats and a few other things, but contrary to popular belief I’m not a really big eater, just someone who likes sampling. So on my second plate I sampled fewer things because I had a feeling it would take the edge off the desserts I wanted to try, and dessert is paramount to a good meal; don’t you agree?

When it was dessert time I went for their apple pie first, for which my only slight gripe is that it’s not kept warm, but I know how problematic that would be in the scope of things. It was still very tasty, especially once I added the ice cream (soft serve, and they have 3 choices) and whipped cream; I’d had this before so I knew I’d love it. Then I went back and grabbed the peanut butter pie and some more ice cream, this time adding hot chocolate sauce and whipped cream. The apple pie was wonderful again; I wasn’t crazy about the peanut butter pie because it had tons of mini chocolate chips in it and, the way I eat, that was way too much work. The ice cream was fine, but on my last visit they had regular chocolate, which I prefer because it doesn’t melt the ice cream, so I only ate a bit of it.

Overall the Season’s Harvest buffet is at the top of the list for me, and I’ve sampled buffets in Las Vegas and Fort Lauderdale, as well as buffets we have (Had? I think most are gone now) here in the Syracuse area. I’ll definitely be going again… after I work off the 5 pounds I had to have put on with this one meal. 🙂