The 7 Best (And 7 Worst Foods) You Can Find Under Buffet Heat Lamps

It's one thing for heat lamps to keep food warm on a restaurant's kitchen line. It's another for heat lamps to be set over a particular food for extended periods of time, like at a buffet. Sure, the function is obvious: to keep cooked items warm so that people aren't eating cold, neglected food. But can an incandescent bulb really be the best option for all foods? 

The answer is no. And it's not just my personal opinion. Turns out, some foods are better off under a heat lamp than others. This is something to keep an eye on the next time you hit up a buffet. Heat lamps tend to emit a radiation that dries, so victuals that are dense or require moisture should be kept away from lamps, while crispier eats are better off utilizing them.

Here are seven of the best foods you can find under a heat lamp, along with seven of the worst. Buffets are already a dicey proposition for some diners, but learning more about the proper fare for heat lamps brings a bit of wisdom on the matter, and where wisdom is gained so is reassurance.

According to both my Ancestry DNA return and literally every gesture my family ever made, I'm Italian-American. Does that mean I fall into the stereotype of the annoying pasta purist that believes every Italian-style noodle needs to be al dente, sensibly sauced, and at least a football stadium away from any grilled chicken? Yes-ish, depending on the day and how much of "The Sopranos" I've watched recently.

Where I do draw the line, however, is pasta that's been sitting under a buffet heat lamp for any duration of time. Yes, pasta that's too soft and mushy is damn near a Geneva Convention violation, but the dampness-sucking hardening of a heat lamp does pasta absolutely no favors. More often than not, what you get is some kind of pasta that reverts back to an unholy bastardization of its raw form texturally, along with whatever happens to the poor ingredients that have been incarcerated along with it. There are pasta recipes that never get old. Then, there is pasta that sits under a heat lamp, getting old well before its time.

One of life's major disappointments — outside of the job market for a bachelor's degree in philosophy — has to be reheated, microwaved french fries. The reason? They attain a weird combination of wet and rubbery textures that makes it feel like you're eating a shredded bath toy. Moisture is anathema to a french fry, which needs crispiness to have any kind of point to its existence.

This is where a heating lamp is advantageous. It treats the potato in arguably its finest form with the respect it deserves. Is it because a buffet heat lamp is sentient and imbued with empathy? Unlikely. Probably more to do with the drying effect of the light.

And the thinner the french fries, the better for a buffet. Heat lamps work best with, not only foods that are fried, but slimmer in size. This is because the type of warmth they emit can't penetrate thick foods, meaning the middle stays at best disappointing and at worst unsafe. Therefore, the only thing you risk with buffet french fries is a spike in cholesterol levels. (Wait, I was meant to be selling this.)

Wet, watery scrambled eggs at a buffet is just a criminally unappetizing version of one of the most appetizing breakfast items around. However, the eggs are not just revoltingly brackish in these circumstances, they're potentially hazardous.

When scrambled eggs are left out for too long at room temperature — forget even under a heating lamp — they can enter the so-called danger zone, where they become ripe for bacteria to be fruitful and multiply. This increases the chance of food poisoning. Do I really want to risk a visit to the hospital or days bent over a toilet by betting on a buffet worker being 1,000% on their refresh game? Does anybody? (No disrespect to the fine people who work at a buffet line, but they're human like the rest of us.)

Besides, when you know that fluffy, luxurious eggs not only exist in the world, but that you can easily make them yourself at home, why settle for a subpar buffet version unless you're a juror quarantined in a hotel for a celebrity murder trial?

This is a tough one, because, like my pasta pomposity, pizza is often subject to a personal legitimacy test. This is the New Yorker in me combined with the Italian-American side. (Double whammy of overbearing food personality.) For a pizza to meet my unnecessarily obnoxious expectations, it should come from a certain kind of place, be prepared a certain kind of way, and have a certain number of elements.

Yet, there is the self-treasonous part of me that has no problem eating a slice that's simply edible and nothing more (no, stay seated, I'm already patting myself on the back). Buffet-style pizza is also nothing new, as it's been a feature at both Pizza Hut and Little Caesars. If you've generated billions of dollars like they have, you've probably done something right (and possibly many, many things wrong).

So, as much as I'm chancing my Neapolitan forebears giving me an exasperated mock-prayer gesture from their graves, I'm good with pizza under a buffet heat lamp. Although, the thicker the pie, the less this is the case, as the heat lamp is probably going to leave that center lukewarm and doughy. But thin crust? Hey, why not? Snobbery can only take you so far.

Rice sitting under a buffet heat lamp may seem harmless. But like a cornered animal it can lash out and bite you in the face. (Sorry, that simile was supposed to be reined in halfway through.) What I'm saying is, like scrambled eggs, rice that's left exposed to heat for too long is vulnerable to bacterial growth, or rather regrowth.

This has to do with a particular spore called Bacillus cereus that lives in uncooked rice. These spores are resilient buggers that survive the cooking process. Thus, when rice is left at lukewarm buffet temperatures for an extended duration, Bacillus cereus can sprout into active, toxic bacteria that's only too happy to propagate.

Not to mention that the dehydrating heat lamp will ossify the top of the rice in a way that's basically the evil bizarro version of deliciously crispy stuck-to-the-pan rice. For these outlined reasons I, and you, should steer clear of arroz con heat lamp.

Is it true that even bad fried chicken is still pretty good? Someone from a rich fried chicken culture, like the American South or South Korea, might justifiably disagree. That's fair. Someone like lowly me, however, can come across a very meh piece of chicken, that's still been battered and bathed in hot oil, and chow down with a blithe shrug of the shoulder.

Does that mean I need to take a good long look in the mirror at myself? For this and many other reasons, probably. Does it also mean that I'm totally good with buffet line fried chicken? Yes, it does. As mentioned, fried foods and heat lamps make for an acceptable and surprisingly effective duo.

And to reiterate, heat lamp fried chicken is nowhere near the legit thing. But it can be hard achieving really crispy fried chicken at home, and one is not always near a killer soul food restaurant. Plus, even awesome fried chicken spots will serve it out buffet style. If you can't trust that, then nothing on this good earth is to be trusted, I say.

The cookware industry has long created alternate ways to keep soup hot that are not buffet-style heat lamps. This was not done by accident. Soup being a liquid, and liquid being the quintessence of moisture, means it's exactly the type of food that hydration-eradicating electric bulbs should stay miles away from. Of course, most buffets probably realize this. If a buffet has somehow either ignored this fact or shown itself to be completely oblivious to it, then that's a telling sign. Or, more like a stop sign.

Buffet soups should be kept warm with equipment like a steam table. The only time lamps and soup should be combined is when a college student is eating Campbell's Chunky and crash-finishing their thesis. Doesn't matter the soup — it could be split pea, it could be corn chowder, it could be lobster bisque (double red flag), it could just be bone broth for a starving, rescued mountaineer. If a heat lamp is involved, turn around and walk the other way. Back into the mountain.

This comes with a caveat. Well, two. The first one is, you might be German. If you are German, then you probably have a certain standard for your big, soft pretzels, just as you would your football, your lederhosen, and your industrial metal music. In this case, any kind of pretzel on an American buffet line is going to disappoint you — if not disgust you.

The other caveat for a buffet line pretzel is that it can be under a heat lamp for too long. So long, in fact, that it becomes less of an Auntie Anne's and more a Rold Gold. Yet, if a pretzel is under a heat lamp for a sweet-spotted amount of time, then it becomes a pleasant combination of pillowy on the inside and crisp on the outside.

Add a bit of your standard spicy mustard and you might as well be in a Munich beer hall slamming back boots of lager (which would go a long way in making even a subpar pretzel seem like a culinary glory).

When braising meat, you're searing it first to get a nice crust then simmering it in an enclosed pot with liquid to get it super juicy and tender. There is no third step that says you should then expose it to thermal radiation from a light fixture for an ambiguous span of time. In other words, braised meat and buffet lamps should stay as far away from each other as elephants and a Waterford crystal outlet.

Unlike a Manhattan subway rider in July, braised meat has a friend in humidity — which is the complete opposite of what a heat lamp provides. Exposing it to such lighting will remove all of the delicate nature from the meat and turn it into Spongebob when he visits Sandy Cheeks without his fishbowl helmet.

As with soup, a steam table is more conducive to keeping braised meat the way it was meant to be served. Otherwise, the meat is best off mimicking someone in a near-death experience and avoiding the light from above.

A carved meat station is an exceedingly common feature of many a buffet line. It's also one of the few areas with a genuine human touch ("Until AI comes for that job too!" — Curmeodgenly Luddite). 

A professional with a very sharp, very large knife not only serves as ready-made buffet security, but also doles out delish slices of beef, pork, turkey, or some other kind of edible flesh. This meat is often under a heat lamp, which is all fine and good — as long as it's the correct heat lamp. 

The ideal type is a flexible gooseneck lamp. This allows the carver or chef to apply and remove heat as they see fit. This is especially important if the carving station has a heated bottom as well, which is not irregular. For me, I feel like I can always give carved meat the eye test. If it stimulates my appetite upon sight, sitting in its own drippings, I'm going with it.

What's better than gravy to go along with that aforementioned carved meat, or really anything else slightly dry and savory? There's a reason gravy has literally become a byword for a welcome bonus to something already good. And a buffet line of food items that have been sitting under drying heat probably needs some roux-based, simmered liquid to increase palatability. Unless that gravy has also been sitting under a heat lamp. Then we're all screwed.

Gravy that needs to have its heat maintained benefits most from said heat emitting from the bottom, like with a steam table. If that heat is coming from up top, like from a lamp, then you or I will probably wind up hating it as much as Colonel Sanders hated KFC's gravy.

With a heat lamp, the lower levels of the gravy will be practically untouched by warmth of any kind. Alas, if you're going in for a seemingly harmless dollop of the stuff, most of it will be, like a night out with Morgan Wallen, regrettable and unsavory.

Vegetables and the Maillard effect are a better marriage than Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz. And that's saying something. (They seem like such an amazing couple who are in it for the long haul!) Greens, roots, bulbs, and fungi — culinarily they're vegetables, people — that are charred and crispy are stupendous as a side yet also totally great as a standalone meal.

They are also a welcome bit of fibrous nutrition at a buffet, where much of the fare can sometimes be a bit, shall we say, insalubrious. Good thing that a buffet heat lamp agrees with roasted vegetables.

Granted, restaurant-level roasted vegetables can be made at home, but if I'm already doing the buffet thing and they're on the station, I'm going in there with élan. Now, if the quality of the veggies are lacking in the first place, then woe is me. But chances are it won't be the heat lamp's fault.

I didn't grow up eating casserole (unless you count lasagna). To me, casserole was always a middle-America dish that nuclear families on TV shows would have for dinner. Nonetheless, being finally introduced to something that's basically a mix of anything and everything in a pan and baked until crusted was a welcome development. Another thing I would eventually learn as well: Buffets do not make for good casseroles.

In keeping with the very crux of this article, it's the heat lamp that does the ruining. Casseroles, because of the inherent thickness, need the temperature to be kept up through-and-through — definitively not the heat lamp's forte. Chafing dishes, yes. That should be more the default buffet casserole status. Otherwise, stay calm and pick something else to eat.

The right casserole recipe can make life easier. Casserole under a heating lamp buffet, unfortunately, will have a far less positive impact on your existence. At least I'm going to certainly avoid it at all times.

As anyone who has watched "The Great British Baking Show" knows, excess moisture is bad for baked goods. How many crushing Scouser blows has Paul Hollywood landed on nervous competitors presenting him with a gummy center? 800? More? Aside from Victoria sponge cakes and the like, most finished baked items suffer from comprehensive, prolonged heat penetration. Which sounds way more inappropriate than I intended.

All I'm saying is that it's not surprising that baked goods like breads and pastries are considered prime offerings in a heat-lamped buffet setup. The exteriors crisp up, the interiors stay soft and doughy, and all is right in the world.

Some of us choose buffets and some of us are stuck with buffets. Regardless, you want to find the optimal eats in that self-service mealtime milieu. A warm roll at the start along with these other friendly recommendations can set you on the right path.

Aside from going off researched information — through food and cookware websites, along with other reference points — I went by my own experience with buffet items to sus out this binary breakdown of foods that work well with heat lamps and foods that absolutely don't. More often than not, the science behind the why aligned with my feelings on the matter. This has less to do with any type of acumen of mine than it does with the pretty straightforward nature of the subject matter.