10 Of The Most Expensive All-You-Can-Eat Seafood Buffets In America

Buffets get a bad rap, conjuring images of long lines waiting to access silver chafers with dried out banquet food. But an all-you-can-eat format also offers diners a rare opportunity. Buffets featuring expensive or premium delicacies let diners indulge on items that are rarely served in copious quantities, so they can be adventurous and try something new. These lavish layouts feel special and celebratory, so even with prices for some soaring into three figures per person, they're often still seen as a good value.

Any buffet that specializes in seafood has opted in on the daunting task of sourcing and storing a variety of highly perishable products, often held on crushed ice. In some cases, items need to be kept alive until cooked or served. Seafood specialists offer multiple raw and cooked preparations of dozens of different items to showcase the bounty of the sea. This requires specialized equipment and hours of work by chefs, so it's usually done on a grand scale.

For diners, these types of lavish buffets are viewed as a special splurge. Customers expect to pay a premium price, but in exchange, they want the good stuff — and plenty of it. Most of the spots on this list have earned solid reputations for serving beautifully presented buffet spreads of pricey premium fish and crustacean crowd-pleasers like lobster, crab legs, oysters, shrimp, and even caviar. These are 10 of the most expensive seafood buffets in America.

Proclaiming that it serves the best seafood in San Diego, 100s Seafood Buffet and Grill is a full-time all-you-can-eat buffet. The normal dinner buffet price of $43.99 upgrades to almost 60 bucks on Lobster Thursday, landing it a spot on this list of top spendy seafood-specific buffets.

Despite the premium price tag, 100s delivers a casual dining experience. While not noted for being luxurious or for attracting a fancy crowd, the buffet includes an ample array of top-shelf seafood like crab legs, oysters, shrimp, and scallops, along with assorted Pan-Asian hot entrées. The reference to grill in the name refers to a traditional Japanese teppanyaki station where buffet chefs put on a show flipping shrimp like pros. A gorgeous spread of freshly rolled sushi and sashimi rounds out the buffet line. There's even strawberries for dipping in a chocolate fountain at the end of your meal for that classic buffet finish. Or, enjoy them at the beginning. Why the heck not?

Reviews for 100s are generally positive. Some negatives that have been noted are that drinks are not included in the buffet price and that the crab legs here are only served cold on ice, rather than steamed and served warm with drawn butter. Crab legs without warm drawn butter apparently leaves some reviewers feeling left out in the cold.

When is a buffet not a buffet? When it's all-you-can-eat yet you can stay seated and get your unlimited servings brought to you, it's part buffet, part traditional restaurant. Sexy Crab, with two locations on Long Island, falls into this category. Here, you tick off boxes on a large paper menu to indicate your selections. The menu explains that diners may order as many rounds of anything on the menu, but the restaurant reserves the right to charge $15 per pound for leftovers. Okay, fair. This degree of specificity is appreciated and, honestly, $15 per pound is a pretty good price to bring home cooked restaurant-grade crab legs or lobster, so some diners may view that as an invitation rather than a warning. 

Online reviews here are positive – diners enjoy the interactive aspect of checking off the boxes on the menu and note that the seafood dishes all taste great and very fresh. Specialties here are crab boils and sushi, so if you're someone who can't tell real crab from imitation, put yourself in the hands of the experts. There's also a nice variety of classic fried appetizer combos, like crab cakes and hush puppies, or popcorn shrimp and fried oysters. The dinner price is $59.99 on weekends and holidays, and that includes a cocktail. Bump that up to $75 and your single cocktail becomes a drink tower. It might be wise to request a bib.

Located in Little America resort in Salt Lake City, Lucky H Buffet offers a special seafood buffet during weekend dinner service for $69 per person. Kicking it up a notch on weekends with the addition of some extra seafood dishes, the buffet offers diners an opportunity to enjoy unlimited surf-n-turf.

While it may boast one of the higher price tags among seafood buffets in America, reviews of the experience at Little H are often negative. One very thorough review on Trip Advisor says that, despite the inflated price tag, the food quality at Lucky H was comparable to that of Golden Corral. Ouch. 

Unfortunately, this seems to line up with what many reviewers have said. The most common cited issue is mediocre food quality. Diners note shrimp that doesn't taste fresh, dried-out oysters, and hot food that generally just isn't hot enough. Multiple reviews do mention that the room and ambiance is lovely and the service is helpful and attentive. But at this high of a price point, it's hard to look past low food quality. Even if you follow all of the best tips for navigating an all-you-can-eat buffet, if the food isn't fresh and hot, there's no way to justify the expense.

The Buffet at the Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Resort in Honolulu is a seafood buffet and Korean BBQ – a unique and tantalizing combination, with surf-n-turf combo options for days. The Buffet offers a full teppan station searing up traditional Korean meat dishes like kalbi and bulgogi, but then adds to that a buffet spread of traditional luxury seafood delicacies like oysters, crab legs, and shrimp cocktail, along with extensive raw fish preparations including a Hawaiian poke bar, sushi, sashimi, and a rolled-to-order temaki station.

Poke bowls originated in ancient Polynesia, so you can expect fish dishes to be impeccably fresh here. So much seafood is consumed raw on the islands that fish must be of the highest quality. In fact, the focus on local foods is taken so seriously here that the resort proudly spotlights its fishery partners front and center on its website. The Buffet's $89.99 price is reflective of this emphasis on freshness and quality despite the less-than-lavish surroundings.

Diners are limited to 90 minutes of buffet time to tackle all the raw offerings and unique Pacific-Asian fusion dishes like Hawaiian Kampachi with Tamari Ponzu, Buccatini Kimchi Carbonara, and Hawaiian Waters Seafood Chowder. This sort of creative Polynesian-Asian fusion cuisine showcasing Hawaii's sparklingly fresh fish makes this an expensive seafood buffet with unique appeal.

Crab House is a three-location NYC mini chain with restaurants in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The format here is all-you-can-eat table service — there's no actual buffet spread. One of the priciest options on the list, the Times Square location's Premium Seafood Buffet rings up at $168 per person, while the other two locations offer a seafood buffet for $90 as well as an upgraded lobster buffet for $125.

Specific dishes can vary slightly depending on location, but all three Crab House outlets have the same set-up. The restaurant refers to its model as a "contactless buffet," where you check off the items you want on a paper menu and give the list to a server. Each dish is made fresh to order and delivered steaming hot.  So, no, there's not an actual buffet line. But, hey, you're in New York City — forget about it.

Standout dishes here include Salt & Pepper Lobster, Dungeness crab, whole fried sea bass deboned tableside, and an assortment of Cajun and Chinese-inspired options. For those inclined to go full  splurge mode, the Midtown location even offers a $49 Mojito Shipwreck cocktail that's served in a souvenir punchbowl.

The Nordic is a seafood buffet with legendary status in New England. Founded in 1963 by the Persson family, the scenic lakeside all-you-can-eat spot is known for being packed with busloads of summer tourists up from The City (New York, of course). Seafood lovers seeking out truly iconic New England foods like fresh local steamer clams and chowder have been making the pilgrimage up to The Nordic for decades. So, like any busy tourist spot, it gets plenty of rave reviews along with its fair share of pans.

Negative reviews mostly pine for the days of yore when the price was lower. Some also claim that quality has gone downhill, or astutely observe that, for the current price ($145 per person), diners could get a higher quality full-service dinner in the city. The draw here, though, is in quantity.  All-you-can-eat near the ocean in New England means indulging in prized delicacies like lobster, bacon-wrapped or fried scallops, steamed littlenecks, and lobster fritters. 

The steep price for dinner includes soft drinks, coffee or tea, tax, and a service charge, so that's an all-in price. However, The Nordic does impose a maximum dining time limit of two hours, so don't plan on lingering too long over coffee. Summer is the buffet's busy season, and the iconic seaside restaurant closes for a period every year during the winter, so make sure to double-check the schedule before heading out.

Bacchanal Buffet inside Caesars Palace bills itself as the largest of all Las Vegas buffets. In a town famous for its extravagant buffets, that's saying something. The name, derived from Bacchus the ancient Roman god of wine and ecstasy, is synonymous with revelry, indulgence, and over-the-top celebratory debauchery. Perfect for getting your Vegas on, baby.

Caesars Resorts did a $17 million renovation on the Bacchanal space in 2021 to ensure this buffet compares favorably to the competition down the strip. The stats (according to the resort's website) are 25,000 square feet with 10 kitchens, 250 menu items, and even nine chef-attended action stations. Reviews, even with expectations driven high by all that Vegas-grade money and hype, have been overwhelmingly positive.

The standard Caesars Bacchanal buffet (pricing varies from $40 to $95 depending on the day and time) offers a wide array of seafood, including Jonah crab claws, Cajun seafood boil, sushi and poke, and even rarely seen undersea creatures like whelks. The true Vegas high roller move at Bacchanal is to hit the special crab brunch, served weekends only from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. for $79.99. Note that reviewers strongly recommend scheduling an entry time, as Bacchanal is very popular and space is limited. There's also a 90-minute time limit that is apparently strictly enforced, so if you're having crab legs, plan to get crackin' quick or you may be forced to skip the cannoli station.

Cafe Sierra is located inside the Hilton Hotel next to Universal Studios in Los Angeles and is well known for its highly-regarded seafood buffet served in the hotel's airy, sun-dappled atrium. This combination of a top-notch seafood buffet served up amidst old-school Hollywood glamour has resulted in Cafe Sierra being named best all-you-can-eat buffet in the entire state of California.

The spread features Lobster Thermador, shrimp Har Gow and other assorted dim sum, and king crab legs. Sushi chefs arrange jewel-box displays of maki, sashimi, and hand rolls, so sushi novices won't need to consult a beginner's sushi guide to know what to order. The seafood buffet at Cafe Sierra is available weekends only at $139 per person for dinner and $95 for brunch. An additional 15% service fee is added to all buffet checks since the restaurant is a no-tipping property.

After that mandatory service fee and tax, Cafe Sierra's swanky Hollywood seafood extravaganza tallies up to around $180 per person. It's definitely a splurge, but beer, wine, Champagne and mimosas are all included for that base price as well. That'll take away some of the sting of the entry cost expense. For a perfect light, nostalgic Hollywood finish, stop by the dessert station and grab a freshly spun tangle of cotton candy.

Vegas buffets offer a degree of scope and scale found in few other food destinations. A dozen or more casinos compete for buffet-goer's dining dollars, so the mindset seems to be go big or go home. The Buffet at the Wynn really embraces this approach. Reviewers rate the quality of its seafood offerings — including towers of shrimp, crab boils, a huge spread of sushi, and a Hawaiian poke station — as being the best on the strip.

The grandeur of The Buffet at Wynn is indeed top tier. The Seafood Gourmet Dinner buffet has an entry level price of $79.99, to which diners may add an endless pour ticket that starts unlimited alcohol a-flowing for an additional $32.99. There's also a lobster tail supplement for another $90. The real Vegas move, though, is to go for the Ultimate Buffet at $175. The Wynn explains that this is for when the occasion calls for living large. It includes priority seating, the endless drink package, limitless visits to the buffet, and a special tableside Maine lobster preparation. Whoa. Large living, indeed. Even if you're not a billionaire or platinum club member, it's fun to pretend that's how you roll every once in a while, if only for a weekend. Isn't that kind of what Vegas is all about?

Garnering a mention in the highly respected Michelin Guide, Navio, the fine-dining restaurant at uber-swanky Ritz-Carlton Half Moon Bay Resort outside of San Francisco, is likely to be one of the fanciest spots on this list. Instead of laying out a traditional buffet line, Navio essentially offers diners unlimited amounts of everything on the normal menu. This format is only available during Sunday brunch. 

It's a showcase of Bay Area seafood luxury. Highlights include a full-on caviar service with blini, raw oysters, blue prawns, Dungeness crab eggs benedict, house-smoked trout, lobster, and Pacific king salmon. Every dish is cooked to order and individually plated by the restaurant chefs, so this isn't a slop-it-yourself, chafing-dish and sterno kind of party. Instead, beautifully composed plates are set up on linen tablecloths with a fine-dining flourish by attentive, world-class servers. It just also happens to be all-you-can-eat. Can you say "best of both worlds"? Never mind saying it, you'll whisper it to yourself contentedly like a Zen mantra.

Despite the steep $199 per person price, reviewers rave about both the experience and food quality at Navio's brunch buffet. There's a time limit of two hours, but diners can order two of each dish at a time. Want a scenic window seat so you can gaze serenely at the ocean while you devour its bounty? Navio has got you covered — for an extra 50 bucks per diner.