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In this article about a news anchor's nearly dying of covid, he described the experience as very scare with this phrase:

Ponderosa suddenly out of the prime rib in the middle of the buffet line scary.

I am probably missing some cultural references here, because I don't understand this sentence at all.

hkBst
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Ponderosa is the name of a restaurant chain. They pride themselves on their prime rib` (a specific cut of beef). When many people come to a buffet, they form a line, and if the speciality most people came for runs out while people are still queuing, that may lead to some very dissatisfied customers.

I would guess that the anchor either worked in the hospitality industry before, or reported on some brawl that broke out because of something like this, and thus felt there was a similarly life-threatening quality about this... or it was meant to (jokingly?) downplay the threat of Cov19.

The sentence might get more palatable if you remove one 'the':

"Ponderosa suddenly out of prime rib in the middle of the buffet line"

loonquawl
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    As a Brit I'd never come across the restaurant chain and could only relate the name to what I imagine is the original, that is the ranch in the old TV series Bonanza. I think a more universal metaphor would have been "Macdonald's out of burgers scary". Still vastly inflating the significance of the catering emergency but expressing the unexpected and unthinkable nature of the event. – BoldBen Feb 24 '22 at 06:27