Kevin and Joel's Meal of the Week: Sweetwater

Kevin and Joel's Meal of the Week: Allen's

Right now, the fans have already made their decision about the Permian beat team's pregame meal destination tomorrow, but tonight is an area matchup.

And that means we get to make our own pregame meal decisions.

Starving after a round of disc golf at a heck of a course in Big Spring -- next time you get a chance to hang out at Comanche Trail Park, take the kids -- Kevin and I pulled into Sweetwater just in time to catch the opening of Allen's Buffet, an offshoot of the Allen's Family Style Meals that is open every night, Monday through Friday, from 5 p.m.-8 p.m.

Now, this isn't the kind of buffet that offers 27 different entree options. Allen's Buffet served up fried chicken, Swedish meatballs and meatloaf this Friday night.

But here's the thing.

Allen's doesn't need to make any more food than they did. When you make fried chicken, Swedish meatballs and meatloaf as spectacularly as the staff at Allen's, there's no reason to worry about options.

For the record, I love fried chicken in almost any form. And Allen's has it very nearly perfected. Crispy and flavorful on the outside, juicy and tasty on the inside. Normally, I'd try to limit myself to just one plate -- gotta watch the waistline heading into the holiday season -- but for that chicken, I practically raced back up to the buffet line.

A quick note on the proper method for eating fried chicken. Halfway through my second chicken breast, Kevin came up with an observation. "You don't eat fried chicken," Kevin said. "You destroy it." To be perfectly honest, that doesn't bother me at all. Fried chicken wasn't made to be picked at nicely. It was meant to be devoured.

As for the Swedish meatballs, I offer the following statistic. In addition to chicken and meatloaf, Kevin ate 20 Swedish meatballs. That's right. Twenty. And he was justified. Soft, tender, the gravy drowning those meatballs was present throughout every bite, leaving an almost explosion of flavor and juices with every forkful. "I can't believe how good these are," Kevin said. "And they're even made so that they're a bunch of perfectly rounded little balls."

Kevin opted for some meatloaf, although I decided to hold off the meatloaf in order to save room for the chicken. Kevin didn't say much about the meatloaf. Probably because he liked it so much that he polished it off in minutes. That might have had something to do with it.

And the sides matched right up with the entrees.

Rather than serve traditional mashed potatoes, Allen's served up halves of potatoes, baked, peeled and absolutely drenched in butter. So soft. So much taste. At no point did I wish I had traditional mashed potatoes. But the cooked potatoes weren't the only starchy side available. On the other side of things, Allen's served up smooth, creamy potato salad, so creamy that you almost couldn't taste the individual potato, and the mix served up exactly the correct combination of sweet and tangy.

Even the cole slaw was top-notch. At times, cole slaw can get bogged down in sauce, making the vegetables soggy. Especially at a buffet, where the slaw sits out for a long period of time. Not at Allen's. At Allen's, the cole slaw tastes as crisp as if the vegetables had just been pulled out of the garden.

We did have one complaint.

Our table was wobbly. But when the food tastes as good as the Allen's cooks make it, a wobbly table really doesn't seem like that big of a deal. More like a funny little quirk.

Kevin's Dessert of the Week

Once again, Allen's didn't offer a whole lot of options.

Because they didn't need to. Given the choice of a brownie or peach cobbler, Kevin and I made the split. I headed straight for the brownie. Kevin hit up the peach cobbler, even though he probably would have liked a little apple in the mix.

And the cobbler was great. Despite the fact that the man had just eaten three full plates of food, Kevin polished off the entire cobbler in just a few minutes, even though I thought he was full. "I said I was full," Kevin said. "I didn't say I was finished."

For my part, the brownie was exceptional as well, with solid, thick icing, chopped nuts throughout, and a brownie mix that almost reminded me of fudge.

Final Analysis

A buffet can go two ways. Lots of food that doesn't stand out, or a buffet that makes its patrons keep coming back for seconds again and again.

Allen's Buffet is one of the better ones.

Don't know how much time you spend in Sweetwater, but the next time you're looking for a meal and in the vicinity of the Mustang Bowl, you couldn't find a better place than Allen's.

Expect to go back for seconds.