I'd guess the convenience of it was the real attraction for him. No cooking, no cleaning up, no waiting. Just readily available slop a few times a day, everyday. I'm sure it was his ghetto version of heaven, and probably gave him monstrous gas, which ofc for him was a plus. "Sumptuous" farts for him to sniff while he waited for his phone to ring.
Bleh.
I think what's going on there might have something to do with Nostalgia Goggles and a wish to return to more pleasant times. If Jon's experiences since getting booted from school are true (as he reported them, so, grain of salt), what we're talking about here is a man who has little-to-no control over what is brought into the house to eat. Sure, he may get a small allotment of money to take to a convenience store or something, but that's likely it. If Jon wants to roll out to the grocery store to by a bag of this, a couple cans of that, and a few slices of the other - well, he simply can't. I can. You can. We can. Jon cannot. Jon has to get his mother's permission first. Everything from list approval, to transportation, to covering the cost is entirely up to his mom. To say nothing of the supposed torment his brother put him through by "gobbling up" all the food in the house while Jon was "starving like a dog" (heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee!).
On the other hand, you had the ASU cafeteria. You walk in, and boom - food. Acres and acres of it. If you didn't like X, you could eat Y, and nobody was going to steal food from your plate, or knock you down and take it. There was no fear of coming in one day, seeing an apron-clad cook with tears in his eyes and his hands on his cheeks, saying "Oh, no! We're out of food!" in front of an empty buffet bar.
Finally, there was an audience. Froot Broot could disrupt the decorum of the place and start doing some stupid routine to draw what he thought was positive attention to himself. The people trying to eat or study or chat with each other were too nice to call campus security, and some may have enjoyed seeing the crooked-necked ninny make a fool of himself.
In comparison to how he lives today, Jon did indeed have freedom, a freedom that he longs to return to. It wasn't a freedom that he had furnished for himself, however, and could be easily taken away from him when his sicko, childish behavior found him on the wrong side of the bars. Now, at 40, Jon lives with a lack of agency in his own home that most of us will probably never know until we are well into our 80s, losing control of our faculties.
Going to Old Country Buffet for this guy must feel like having a meal catered by Wolfgang Puck.
