Thursday, May 14, 2009
Backstreets offers different kind of buffet
TOM ANGLEBERGER Special to The Roanoke Times
Backstreets offers outdoor dining as well as snug indoor booths.
Tom Angleberger knows what he likes. So we've asked him to eat at NRV restaurants and write about them. If you have a restaurant to recommend,
e-mail him. Tom Angleberger
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Backstreets Restaurant
- Pizza and Italian dishes
- Hours: 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday 11 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday.
- Address: 207 S. Main St., Blacksburg
- Phone: 552-6712
- Prices: Lunch buffet, $7.50. Pizzas, $7 and up. Pasta dishes, $8.25 and up.
You probably don't need me to tell you about Backstreets' pizza. It's been a Blacksburg institution since Addison Caldwell walked over the mountain.
And you probably don't need me to tell you about the restaurant's lunch buffet. (The buffet was the reason Caldwell walked over the mountain, after all; signing up to become Tech's first student came after lunch.)
However, you may not know that Backstreets just expanded its buffet.
First of all, the Backstreets buffet is not what you're used to. It's not a long row of big pans of food hiding behind a sneeze guard. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)
This buffet is just a modest-sized warming table. At first I was looking around for the rest of it. Then I discovered that our friendly waitress would bring our salads and bread sticks directly to our table. I prefer to make my own salad, from a salad bar -- but like I said, this is a different sort of buffet.
She also brought plates for us to take to the warming table, where we chose between several pans of heavily topped pizza, dishes of pasta, bowls of delicious buffalo chicken strips and little piles of neatly sliced sandwiches and gyros.
When one thing runs out, they may bring back something different, so you need to stay alert. On one trip I took a small section of a steak sandwich. Then they bought out the gyros so I had one of those. Then they brought out a different variety of steak sandwich and, yes, I ate that, too.
The friendly fellow who was restocking the pizza saw my boys and stopped to ask whether they would like a plain cheese pizza. What? Custom service at a buffet? Amazing.
And then there's dessert: beignets -- a "doughnutty" sort of ball of fried, sugared dough.
Can you believe that you get all this, plus a drink, for just $7.50?
If you go for dinner, the menu is packed with specialty pizzas, calzones, subs and some fancy entrees such as grilled tuna with apricot chipotle.
Bottom line: Backstreets' new buffet is different, well-priced and wonderful.
