Friday night buffet at Cabbage Roll

27th and Lafayette St. (816) 233-4444

I travel a lot in my sales job, and one thing I usually do not eat at is buffets. But there is one little place here in St. Joseph that has the best homemade food on its buffet and that's the Cabbage Roll.

Let me tell you, these guys can cook. They have a Friday night buffet that is the best-kept secret, and they have been doing this for 20 years.

On the Friday night I went there, they had German food on the menu and all of it is homemade. Items like pierogies with onions, swine braton (pork), ribs with red cabbage, bean medley, hamburger cabbage soup, fish, potatoes by Larry and polish sausage with kraut.

Now if you love authentic German food, this is the place. Andy and Larry are the owners, and they put a lot of pride in their food and it shows. The pierogies with onions are filled with mashed potatoes and cheese and cooked with real bacon and onions to give it a great taste. My wife's favorite (besides the dessert table, but that's another story) was the hamburger cabbage soup. They should sell this by the quart. The cabbage cooked with the right amount of hamburger makes this a great hearty soup to order on a winter day. The swine braton was a juicy, moist pulled pork with tender carrots. The ribs and red cabbage had a sweet and tangy taste with bite-size ribs. The bean medley was a good mix of beans that had really great flavor. Their Polish sausage is steamed in the bun and wrapped in aluminum foil to keep the flavor in and the bun moist.

When you are done sampling all this good food, there is the homemade dessert table. This is the table to die for. All the desserts are made fresh that day, nothing store-bought here. You can have everything from homemade peach cobbler to chocolate eclairs. Also each month their theme changes from German to Mexican to Italian. These guys even put on Christmas in July.

They are only open for lunch during the week and Friday nights for the buffet. They are closed Saturdays and Sundays. A reservation is required for the Friday night buffet because they only make enough food for the amount of people who are coming.

STEVE WARNER | Stjoelive guest reviewer