Buffet dining made easy: tips and tricks for your next feast
All-you-can-eat, a term that is now familiar to everyone. Simply eat as much as you want or can. Brunching, here too, is about eating so much that at least the money invested is really worth it. In both cases, the motto is clear: eat a lot. But likewise, with both one may not be missing: The arrangement of the meals to a Buffet.
But what exactly is so special about a buffet? Why is it so much appreciated by so many people?
To answer this question, we must first think about what it is that we expect when we visit a normal restaurant. This is a menu from which you choose a certain number of dishes, depending on your appetite and hunger. Normally, one chooses a small appetizer, a main course and possibly a dessert. In this case, you have eaten three different dishes.
If you now compare it to the buffet, it quickly becomes clear that it is not about the sequence of dishes that is actually so typical of restaurants, but about variety. A buffet offers guests the opportunity to choose from a certain number of different dishes, to heap something onto their plate and thus to enjoy a whole range of starters, main courses and desserts. A buffet also offers the guest the opportunity to look at the dishes as they are prepared and to make a choice based on their appearance, which is usually not possible with an à la carte meal.
Typical buffets
Pretty much anything can be placed on the buffet, from cold plates to soup and roast. However, it is precisely this diversity that allows to distinguish them. Thus, in general, we distinguish between the hot and cold buffets and those that are a mixture of both.
Furthermore, a distinction is made between:
- The restaurant buffets
Probably the best known and most widely used form of buffet is the restaurant buffet. Cold, warm and mixed buffets are offered by restaurants, hotels and catering services at basically any time of day. So, you can find breakfast buffets, brunch buffets, lunch buffets but also dinner buffets.
- The banquet buffets
This type of buffets is somewhat similar to restaurant buffets in structure, yet it differs extremely in one point: here special emphasis is placed on appearance. Banquet buffets, as the name suggests, are served at official and important occasions. Here it plays an enormous role with the selection of the meals in particular and also with the optics to score and to impress the customer or the guests. In particular, culinary delicacies can be found here that are not easily served at a normal buffet in a restaurant, hotel or catering. - Theme buffets
Special occasions call for special dishes. As with the banquet buffet, you want to score points with the selection of dishes. For example, at a Halloween buffet, all dishes will probably have a slightly ghoulish touch. An Easter or birthday buffet, on the other hand, is more likely to create a festive impression. - International Buffets
If you choose a country or a region as a theme, you compose your dishes based on the cuisine known and loved there. For example, on an Italian buffet you will find typical Italian dishes such as pizza, pasta, but also antipasti such as small salami, ham, bruschetta or cheese snacks. The theme is also the program here.
The biggest buffet mistakes
However, before you jump into the next best buffet now, you should consider a few small tips:
1. Overfilling one's own plate may look lush and good at first glance, after all, one has something to eat. But if you put only a few dishes on the first plate and eat your fill of this quantity, you can hardly taste the other dishes or only with great difficulty.
2. Drinking in between also tends to fill your stomach, so that can also prevent you from enjoying the buffet in all its variety.
3. Plan time. Even if the feeling of fullness comes after a while, you should still not gorge. Because that does not do justice to the individual dishes!