Jerry Seinfeld once explained that he had ended his hit TV show Seinfeld after nine series (rather than ten) because he considered the program like a buffet - people should stop consuming while they are still enjoying it. He explained that it takes just one plate of food to push over you the fine line between enjoyment and that sickly over-full feeling.
Buffets have been part of our family celebration history. It was always a birthday treat for us to go out to a buffet in some five star hotel with the wonderful notion that we could eat as much as we liked, no holds barred! However Seinfeld was right. We almost always come home feeling bloated and a bit sickly. Afterwards no one sleeps well and sometimes has stomach ache the next day. Initially it is so enjoyable as we survey the array of things we can eat, by the end we can hardly move and feel less lovely than when we arrived.
So we stopped buffets. We started option for boutique restaurants where we might choose our favourite dish ala carte and really savour eating a rack of lamb, or a single but magnificent chocolate mousse, or a steak well done, or a salmon, or bowl of homemade pasta, or a gourmet pizza or whatever! Now we focus on quality not quantity.
The price works out about the same, but we go home savouring flavours and the memory of that particular dish rather than the variety of bits we picked off a table where the food had been sitting for too long anyway!
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