The French dining tradition that we’ve all overindulged in

The dish

Buffet, France

Plate up

Who among us – and be honest here – hasn’t overindulged at a buffet? You walk up to that long, treat-filled benchtop determined that this time will be different. This time, you will take just a reasonable amount of food, return to your table to eat it and then leave having ingested a mere elegant sufficiency. Wishful thinking. For those uninitiated – who apparently never went to Sizzler, and have never set foot on a cruise ship – a buffet is an all-you-can-eat display of hot and cold food, often featuring separate sections for soup, salads and other cold cuts, hot meals, possibly a “live station” with a chef preparing food à la minute, and then a dessert bar, and maybe a place with drinks. This sort of dining is an institution on almost all cruise ships, as is the tendency to wildly overindulge.

First serve

A buffet is both a style of eating, and the name of the furniture upon which the food balances. It’s also a French word, which would lead you to believe this is a French invention, though opinions are divided. Some claim the tradition of setting out plates of cuisine to pick at over lunch emerged in France in the 1600s. Around the same time, coincidentally, people in Sweden also began laying out platters of food in what would become known as a smorgasbord. By the 1800s in England, meanwhile, spreads of hot food were served buffet-style at concerts and balls, and the cuisine kicked off in earnest in the US after the 1939 New York World’s Fair, in which the Swedish exhibition featured a smorgasbord.

Order there

Though this isn’t exactly a cherished tradition in France anymore, L’Atelier Saisonnier in Paris (lateliersaisonnier.com) serves a highly rated buffet brunch.

Order here