Hot Dog Cart - Burlington

Great abundance of food and wonderful variety! Been here at least four times and never disappointed. A little pricey but if you go on your b-day you eat free, which definately helps on the wallet :

I've been going to the Tucker's location near the airport a couple times a year now for the past few years. The free birthday meal with no conditions is still one of the best out there. I'm less enamoured with buffets as I get older, but I have to credit Tucker's with putting out pretty good, fresh food. Everything held up in my personal experience compared to the airport location, which I awarded 4 stars. I have to dock at least a star for this location however since *trigger warning* the other three members of my family had the runs within a couple hours. I'd never want to assume a particular meal at a restaurant caused that issue since it could have other possible causes but when 3 out of 4 from the group have identical symptoms, it's hard to avoid placing blame. Either I have a harder stomach, or it was the ham since that's the one thing in common that they ate which I didn't. I'll still leave a generous 3 however, since I still have to say that my personal experience was still quite positive.

Probably my 3rd time coming to this location. Once for a birthday and twice for our annual extended family gathering. We had a reservation and only had to wait 5 minutes, so that was a good start. I started out with my favourite of all, caesar salad. In terms of dressing, it was leaning on the creamy boring side, lacking in mozzarella, garlic and lemon. Still it wasn't bad. I also got a small thin pork chop, with a sweet BBQ sauce. That was honestly fantastic, I ended up going back for more later on. I also picked up one of those made to order salads, they had gluten free noodles which were great. The pesto was decent, nothing special though. Ronda dos, consisted of a taco salad. They had make your own tacos, but as someone with gluten and corn allergies, I opted out of the shell and went for the insides. Which were delicious, the taco meat was nice and salty and the salsa was good too. Round 3, I went for several variations of potato. French fries, scalloped, mashed and roasted. The french fries were surprisingly good, though I only had a couple to not fill up. Scalloped were amazing, though not as good as my polish neighbour's mom used to make. The mashed disappointed me, it was boring and lacked butter and cream. I think it might've been pre-packaged. Lastly the roasted were ok, not horrible, not great. For dessert, again as a gluten-unable person I missed out on a lot, but I managed. The cheesecake had very little crumb, which was nice. The cake itself was lacking in texture and flavour, it was very plain, even when I dipped it in chocolate. The ice cream was fantastic, if someone could tell me where they get their ice cream from, that'd be great. For some reason the icy consistency and flavour of buffet ice cream is just delicious to me. The chocolate fountain's chocolate sucked, so don't bother with it. The chocolate mousse was too thick, like they had used thickening agents, too much xantham? In terms of service, they were fast and friendly. No complaints there. All in all, I wouldn't go back just because it's boring. But it's not bad food at all.

Friends and family have been dragging me into this place for years, and it's hardly changed. In fact tonight it had a poorer selection of main dishes. The salad bar wasn't too bad with the selection of different types of salads, though the lettuce wasn't that fresh/crisp. They cut corners far too much at this place, the chicken offered in the pan or on the grill still has no white meat, very sad. There is no meat sauce at the pasta station and no fresh hot peppers, just chili flakes--another thumbs down. The staff direct you to the pasta/stir fry sign for options, but it's far too overwhelming and difficult to read. For my custom dish they hardly put any spaghetti in the bowl, it was mostly sauce. Be aware that the staff that slice up the roast beef and make the custom dishes tend to chat with you, which can be good or bad, depending on the type of personality you are, or perhaps mood you are in. Personally, I wasn't into the small talk when all I wanted is for them to focus and quickly heat up my pasta sauce...and why can't I control the amount of added parmesan cheese?! The layout of the desserts just doesn't seem clean, like they can easily be contaminated. And why is it near the high traffic entrance/exit?..weird. They are presently renovating the buffet area and it looked a bit of a mess. They were proud to say that in the near future they will offer 7 different pizzas with a new pizza oven, instead of the present two types of pizza...yeah like when I'm plunking down $25 for a dinner buffet the first thing I'm going to be impressed with is the number of pizzas to choose from?...I can go to Pizza Hut for that, thank you very much! By the way, when I was there the two pizzas sat untouched for an hour. The only shining star on tonight's visit was that our waitress was super friendly.

Let 's be fair here, buffet 's need to be graded on a curve. If you went on taste, presentation, atmosphere and service without any context, most buffets would fail miserably. So, even five star buffets are really a four star when compared to most casual and fine dining establishments. As an example, top International buffets in Vegas may receive full marks on paper, but that needs to be viewed with a grain of salt. As a good casual dining restaurant in the same vicinity might only receive four stars and actually be a much better dining experience overall. That being said, really think about how bad a buffet is if it 's getting a single star. Tucker 's Marketplace (aka Mother Tucker 's) fails at everything they 're trying to accomplish. The food is bland, the presentation is sloppy, the menu is incredibly dated and the atmosphere was ripped from the pages of Canadian Living magazine from 1997. Don 't get me wrong, if you 're friends with people pushing sixty who have no taste, are afraid of cuisine created after the Great Recession of the 2000s and try to get home on time to catch 12 o 'clock news, this is the place for you. If you still expect a pulse when you put your fingers to your wrist, however, you may want to avoid this ghastly feed trough. You 'll find nothing but gristly meat, undercooked potatoes, stale desserts and a side of heartburn. Beyond the poor menu and lazy cooking, the ingredients seem subpar. Freshness is something you 'd expect from a place with Marketplace in the name of the restaurant, but all you 'll get is a fresh sense of bewilderment as you watch some patrons slurp down the slop offered here. I honestly don 't know why anybody walks through these doors when there 's a perfectly decent steakhouse next door and other dining options nearby. Avoid at all costs.