Conquering the all-you-can-eat monster

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Sanducci's serves fried calamari like this as part of its $16.95 all-you-can-eat buffet.

Can you tackle one of those all-you-can-eat buffets and stay on your diet, too? The answer is "yes," if you show a lot of self-control and eat the same foods you do every day.

On Tuesday night, we drove over to Sanducci's -- an Italian restaurant in River Edge that is less than 3 miles from our home -- for the $16.95 buffet. It's served on Sundays from 5 to 8 p.m., and on Mondays and Tuesdays from 6 to 8 p.m.

We had a choice of seven main dishes, including fish, chicken, pasta, fried calamari and eggplant parmigiana, plus two salads, mixed vegetables and pizza (I missed the vegetables initially because they were hidden under the pizza pan in a covered chafing dish.)

My son had two plates of chicken, pasta, pizza and bread, but I'm not eating meat, so I started with two dinner plates of salad, the second topped with fried calamari; then had three pieces of fish in lemon sauce and two plates of mixed vegetables.

I didn't have room for the eggplant parmigiana. I didn't eat pasta or pizza, and on the scale at the gym this morning, I had shed a pound, compared to the day before.

We've eaten here before and like the food. It's a BYO, but I forgot that and didn't bring any wine. My wife didn't have a big appetite and ordered angel-hair pasta in a tomato sauce with lots of crab meat ($17.50). She took most of it home.

As for the buffet, the sauce with the tender rings of fried calamari was too mild for my taste, and I would have preferred the wild-caught sole listed on the early bird menu to the farmed tilapia I had. 

But the broccoli and carrots in the mixed vegetables retained some crunch and the salad contained romaine lettuce, shredded carrots and fat grape tomatoes.

The waitress said the buffet included dessert, either rice pudding or chocolate mousse, but we're not dessert eaters. I asked for a cup of coffee instead, but she said it wasn't included. 

Sanducci's Trattoria, 620 Kinderkamack Road,

River Edge; 201-599-0600. BYO. Open seven days.