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\n After a summer of delays, Good Time Country Buffet is set to open in September.
\n Photo: Scott Semler\n <\/p>\n
A restaurant that celebrates the American South might seem like an unexpected follow-up from the restaurateurs behind C As in Charlie<\/a> (a fusion of southern tapas and Korean bar food with \u201cSeoul\u2019sbury steak\u201d and galbi jus) and Kisa<\/a> (a perfect facsimile of a taxi-driver restaurant, or kisa sikdang, that flourished in Seoul in the 1980s), but all of the businesses are rooted in the owners\u2019 collective biography. David Yun and Steve Choi met at Bethany Presbyterian Church in Georgia shortly after their families moved from Korea. \u201cWe wanted to really represent who we were, our own unique identity as Korean Americans who grew up in Atlanta,\u201d Yun says. \u201cKisa was all about going back to our roots, to our childhood memories of local restaurants that we went to as young children in Seoul with our dads.\u201d Now, with Good Time Country Buffet<\/a> \u2014 which they\u2019re opening with a third partner, Yong Min Kim \u2014\u00a0the group is revisiting their teenage years in early-aughts Atlanta, the era of Lil Jon, the Ying Yang Twins, and southern country buffets.<\/p>\n A country buffet \u2014 unlike a cafeteria, another southern institution \u2014 is a true serve-yourself, all-you-can-eat affair with a fixed price. At the time, in the late \u201990s and early 2000s, the city was full of not only chains like Old Country Buffet, Hometown Buffet, Shoney\u2019s, Golden Corral, and Sizzler, which enticed customers with endlessly replenishable chafing trays of fried chicken, collard greens, baked mushrooms, grilled salmon, and hush puppies, but \u2014 more saliently \u2014 smaller, independently owned buffets. Many of these were owned by Korean immigrants. \u201cIt\u2019s one of those Korean businesses, like dry cleaners, deli, those kinds of things,\u201d explains Yun. \u201cWe very naturally grew up on that concept.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCountry buffet was a shocking experience just because you could eat chicken \u2014 as much as you wanted,\u201d says Choi. \u201cI used to overdo everything: grab four plates even though I already have two plates on the table.\u201d When it opens in mid-September, after a summer of delays, Yun stresses, Good Time won\u2019t be an homage to the country buffet. It will be a country buffet. \u201cWe just thought about what\u2019s missing in New York,\u201d he says. \u201cFirst, something affordable is missing. Second, all you can eat is missing.\u201d<\/p>\n For Yun, that nostalgia runs deep. He celebrated his birthdays with plates of fried chicken at places like Johnboy\u2019s Home Cooking and Journey\u2019s End. His father,\u00a0an office worker in Seoul, had taken a job delivering vegetables to area buffets, so he spent his weekends tooling the country roads, familiarizing himself with load-in docks from Alpharetta to Marietta. When he got a little older, in fact, his first job was at a country buffet called Donnie\u2019s Country Cookin\u2019, run by a friend\u2019s father. \u201cHe gave me this cashier job when I was, like, a sophomore in high school.\u201d<\/p>\n \n A perfect buffet plate; partners (from left) Yong Min Kim, David Yun, and Steve Choi. Scott Semler.\n <\/p>\n \n A perfect buffet plate; partners (from left) Yong Min Kim, David Yun, and Steve Choi. Scott Semler.\n <\/p>\n To that end, the new space has been made as painstakingly authentic as Kisa. \u201cOne thing that I\u2019m very proud of is we\u2019re going to use carpet here,\u201d Yun says. \u201cI don\u2019t remember the last time I went to a restaurant that used carpet in New York, but when you step on carpet, it feels good.\u201d Further, there is no wallpaper; there are wallpapers, multiple, as though an owner has had to replace sections piecemeal. Though the previous tenant, Ferns, boasted an elegant wooden ceiling, Yun and his partners have replaced it with the anodyne drop-ceiling tiles familiar from offices worldwide. \u201cWe went backwards,\u201d he says, laughing.<\/p>\n But of course, the appeal of the buffet is the buffet itself, and the titular buffet at Good Time occupies a large back room, about a third of the overall space. \u201cTechnically,\u201d Yun explains, \u201cwe could feed 90 people, but we want it to keep the seating small and the food fresh.\u201d The spread adheres to the mores of southern country-buffet tradition. From a subterranean kitchen, double-fried chicken, brined in buttermilk, emerges with its shatter skin. Rib tips, slowly simmered for three hours and tossed in homemade barbecue sauce, come out sticky and sweet. Collard greens braised in bacon-fortified chicken stock sit next to a golden tray of mac and cheese, a combination of cheddar, mozzarella, and American cheeses, folded in with heavy cream.<\/p>\n As in true southern-buffet fashion, specials will rotate on a regular basis. (Yun remembers how superannuated buffet aficionados planned their weekly circuits based on daily specials.)\u00a0Monday might be for meatloaf and rib tips, fried green tomatoes, stuffing casserole, French fries, and chicken noodle soup. Thursdays could bring meatballs and fried shrimp, fried okra, green beans, hash browns, and chowder, with Saturdays and Sundays reserved for country ham and fried catfish, onion rings and hush puppies, grits and tomato soup.<\/p>\n For all of this, and all you can eat, they will charge $26.99 for adults and $13.99 for kids. Per buffet tradition, there will be a 10 percent discount for seniors. \u201cWe could charge more,\u201d admits Yun, \u201cbut we want to keep this affordable.\u201d Yet that simple goal \u2014 an affordable restaurant serving limitless food of reputable quality \u2014 seems, within New York\u2019s current restaurant landscape, dicey. The profitability of flat-rate pricing, says Eric Chiang, a professor at University of Nevada Las Vegas who has studied the economics of all-you-can-eat buffets, depends on a subsect of users maximizing the system and some underutilizing it. \u201cBuffets tend to be profitable,\u201d Chiang says, \u201cbecause though some people do try to get their money\u2019s worth, usually when you go to a buffet, you go in a group, and not everyone is hungry.\u201d<\/p>\n How will that play out in downtown Manhattan? Nobody\u2019s quite sure. \u201cIt\u2019s a risk,\u201d Yun admits. \u201cOur confidence comes from operating Kisa, which has a fixed menu and an affordable price. Here, once you\u2019re seated, you don\u2019t have to look at the menu. You don\u2019t have to decide what you want to order. You just go grab a plate and get your food, and that\u2019s it.\u201d The model relies on endless food and quick turns. \u201cWe think this will be, maximum, about 75 minutes,\u201d says Yun. That sounds nice, but then again, who would ever want to leave if they\u2019re having a good time?<\/p>\n EAT LIKE THE EXPERTS.<\/p>\n Sign up for the Grub Street newsletter.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1337c709a169fd759c448f068cebe8ad22-20260505-GoodTimeCountryDiner1242.rsquare.w570.jpg\")
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