View at a Cardinals game, May 14.

A mere three readers said they wanted to hear more about my vacation, and I can’t blame the rest of you, so I’ll limit this to my blog. St. Louis, the nearest big city when I was growing up, has a certain mystique for me, but it’s not a city too many Californians would choose as a vacation destination.

As with any big city, there are interesting things to see and do, and St. Louis is old enough (founded 1764) that some of them are quite old. This visit, in fact, I visited Cahokia Mounds, an Indian site that is thousands of years old. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a village that at its heyday, around 1250 AD, had a population of roughly 20,000, comparable in size to London or Paris of that era. (The traffic must have been terrible.) It’s also got the largest manmade earthen mound north of Mexico.

Other activities this time were more modern, at least relatively. Ted Drewes frozen custard (since 1930) and Carl’s Drive-In (since 1959) are reliably great. The Delmar Loop has been named one of America’s 10 Great Streets. And the Public Library, after a recent $70 million renovation, has been restored to its 1912 Beaux Arts glory while updated where appropriate. It may be more impressive than L.A.’s Central Library.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg that is St. Louis. Every visit I do a few new things and a few old favorites. Sometimes the new things become old favorites. There are plenty of intriguing-sounding places I still haven’t been despite numerous visits. For one, U.S. Grant’s home. Or places I want to return to, like Crown Candy Kitchen, where the 14-slice BLT has become nationally famous since my last visit; I go for the ice cream.

The moral is that you can go to almost any city of size, not just the obvious ones, and find beautiful, inspiring, tasty, fun things to do.

Dalia’s Pizza Buffet, 9558 Base Line Road (at Klusman), Rancho Cucamonga

The former Sizzler on Base Line Road has been converted into something almost unique to the area: a pizza buffet. No, not just like Shakey’s or someplace where they have a buffet at lunchtime. I mean it’s all-you-can-eat all the time, like HomeTown Buffet. There is no menu to order from.

Curious, I went there for lunch one day last week. I paid my $7.49 at the cashier for a buffet and $2.39 for a soda (“all you can drink”) and then checked out the offerings.

There is pizza, obviously, seven or more at a time, even at 1:30 p.m. when I arrived. And there is salad, soup, pasta and garlic knots. They also have fried chicken, french fries and onion rings. And there is soft-serve ice cream, cookies and even chocolate-covered strawberries.

The salad was fine, the Italian wedding soup not bad, and a ravioli was unexpectedly meaty. The pizza, oddly enough, was the weak link, blandly sauced, bready and unmemorable. I ate six slices anyway. It seemed like the thing to do.

(I didn’t take pictures of my plates of food. With a buffet, photos seemed kind of beside the point.)

When I left, after 2:30, the buffet had eight pizzas out, and there were still a handful of customers. A manager told me that during the afternoon lull, customers can request a pizza, saving the kitchen from putting out a lot of food no one is there to eat. But by 5 p.m., he said, people start coming in for dinner ($9). Putting out individual-serving submarine sandwiches is under consideration, and customers can place to-go orders.

Dalia’s has six other locations in the area, most of them take-out or delivery only. I thought Dalia’s pizza buffet might be unique, but CiCi’s Pizza, a Texas-based buffet chain, now has a location in Chino Hills (4200 Chino Hills Parkway).

It’s an interesting concept and Dalia’s does seem to be trying. I might even go back for the novelty factor. I wish the pizza were better, though.

Rancho Cucamonga is getting its first gastropub, and it’s a hot name. Slater’s 50/50 is a small chain that began in Anaheim Hills in 2009 and has expanded to four other locations with its beer (100 craft and local beers on tap) and burgers that are half beef, half bacon. Haven’t had one, but it sounds interesting, and Slater’s has won a bunch of “best burger” honors.

Now one is coming to the former Harry’s Pacific Grill building on Day Creek Boulevard on the edge of Victoria Gardens. “This summer,” Slater’s website says.

Btw, my Restaurant of the Week feature will return next Friday.