Smörgåsbord syndrome: My love/hate relationship with buffets

COMMENTARY, May 16 — A few thick slices of raw salmon and tuna, in vibrant orange and French fuchsia. A single oyster, doused in a spicy mignonette laced with jalapeños. Half a crayfish, boiled then chilled. Prawns. Wasabi, soy sauce and pickled ginger, appetisingly pink.

This is a buffet bounty on your plate.

There’s more where this came from.

And that last statement is why I stay away from buffets, in a nutshell.

Let me preface this by stating that, despite my love/hate relationship with buffets (which I will expound on shortly), there is nothing inherently good or bad about a system of serving food where a variety of dishes are placed in a communal area for diners to pick and choose from.

It’s what we bring to the table, if you’d pardon my pun, that colours our experience of the buffet. Personally, I fear that a buffet brings out the worst in me.

Firstly I loathe crowds so jostling in lines (don’t get me started on those who skip queues) with those who don’t respect personal space so every buffet station is a private tour of the nine circles of Hell, as lovingly described in Dante Alighieri’s Inferno.

Chefs at their stations preparing food for hungry patrons.

Then there is the anguish of seeing chefs at their stations preparing food for hungry patrons. They don’t seem to be enjoying themselves, smiling through gritted teeth as never-ending orders of eggs in all their variations get hollered at them over the din.

Speaking of the egg station, the late Anthony Bourdain did us no favours by describing how hollandaise sauce, "that delicate emulsion of egg yolks and clarified butter” has to be held at a lukewarm temperature primed for bacterial reproduction.

Or as he vividly put it: "Hollandaise is a veritable petri-dish of biohazards.”

Yummy.

When you finally reach the front of the line, there is the exquisite torment of deciding which dish to select from... and how much.

Portion control has never been a strong suit for most of us (certainly not me!) and a seemingly boundless quantity of replenished food doesn’t help.

Consider this a smörgåsbord syndrome (or maybe the Smörgåsbord Syndrome; can I get this trademarked, anyone?) — the inverse relation between one’s willpower and the amount of food presented at any given time.

A smörgåsbord of seafood and cold cuts at a hotel buffet.

Once you get past the platters of seafood and cold cuts, the trays of ayam masak merah and mountains of fried rice, comes the final hurdle of a buffet ordeal.

When you have a plate of sashimi here, and a plate of fettuccine carbonara there; the former warming up dangerously whilst the sauce for the latter is swiftly congealing, you are presented with the classic diner’s dilemma: Which should I have first?

Foolish me, I always start on the carbohydrates first; who can resist fried rice, even a subpar rendition, especially with a sunny side up? (No eggs Benedict with the aforementioned hollandaise sauce, please. No, thank you.)

The diner’s dilemma: Which should I have first?

My carbohydrate-forward days are in decline, however, thanks to my militant gym buddy who keeps reminding me to hit the proteins first. (Is it any surprise that my recent Korean BBQ buffet bonanza was as much motivated by his Great Protein Agenda as the impending rainstorm?)

This was the first chink in my armour, so to speak — the enthusiasm of someone whom I loved and trusted. If he could find it in his heart (or perhaps hungry, protein-starved muscles) to love buffets, then surely so could I.

Indeed love makes the world go round.

My Thai friends make it a habit to go for shabu-shabu buffets and wouldn’t take no for an answer should I be so foolish to decline an invitation. (I wouldn’t mind a pad krapao buffet but apparently no one in Bangkok has started one yet.)

My nephew always gets extra helpings of rice, even when there are more luxurious options available, and gets admonished by his elders for this. Adorable.

Even the salad bar, something you might imagine most would veer away from in favour of the glazed hams and mutton curries, draws its fair share of buffet followers. (Probably not those on a Carnivore Diet though.)

Even the salad bar draws its fair share of buffet followers.

And then there is the sweet realisation that if your significant other makes a beeline for the sashimi and seafood, loading up on oysters and crustaceans, well, maybe you should too. Isn’t seafood an aphrodisiac, after all?

Banquet or bane, buffets are whatever we make of them. That, coincidentally, is not unlike life itself, no?

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