Will Self

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Real meals: All-you-can-eat buffets

July 21, 2011

I was meeting up with someone I worked with, ooh, getting on for 20 years ago and whom I hadn’t seen for pushing 15. I was coming from Manchester; she from Soho, London. We compromised on Drummond Street, that row of ethnic eateries parallel to Euston Road. Time was when you could eat a vegetarian thali here, then limp-fart along to the end of the road and buy an ex-Red Army greatcoat at Laurence Corner, a truly legendary army surplus store – so legendary that, when I ran into Paul McCartney at a party once and the subject of Laurence Corner came up, he told me that he’d bought his first double bass there back in the 1960s.

I suggested that we eat at the Diwana Bhel-Poori House “for sentimental reasons” – but this was pretty much a lie, my associations with this south Indian vegetarian restaurant being largely negative. I once ate there before boarding the Deerstalker Express to Inverness, and during the night developed septicaemia of such virulence that, when I got to the hospital in Kirkwall, Orkney, the following day, my infected hand was the size of a nan bread and chilli-hot streaks of sepsis were shooting up my arm. I’m not saying that this had anything to do with the Diwana, which has always struck me as perfectly hygienic and has decor not dis­similar to that of a sauna in a Swedish health spa, but you know how the mind is, always associating ideas willy-nilly for day after day; frank ly, I sometimes think that it might be a relief if the sun didn’t rise tomorrow.

No, I wanted to eat at the Diwana Bhel-Poori House because I happened to know that, at lunchtime, it puts on one of the most curious culinary spectacles known to humankind: the all-you-can-eat buffet. Whoever first hit on the idea of offering unlimited food for a fixed price was some kind of crazed genius, because while you might think that this would be an incitement to gluttony, I’m pretty damn certain the opposite is the case.

A fixed amount of food for a predetermined sum introduces a creeping barrage of anxiety – from menu choice through portion size and on inexorably to l’addition – that can only be assuaged by stuffing your face (or, in modern parlance, “comfort eating”). The all-you-can-eat concept, on the other hand, relieves the diner of her cares, allowing her appetite to shrink to its natural size.

Yes, I’d bet the farm – or, at least, a Birds Eye Traditional Chicken Dinner – that all-you-can-eat buffets put out markedly less food per diner than the menu-mongers. Granted, my empirical sample is only, um, me – and I’m not so much a lady-who-lunches as a girl who favours a Ryvita smeared with cottage cheese come noon. Indeed, apart from strategic meetings – such as encountering someone I haven’t broken bread with since the Major premiership – I’ve long since dispensed with the meal altogether.

So, there I was, standing in the Diwana Bhel-Poori House, waiting for my quondam colleague and watching while happy office grafters piled their aluminium salvers high with rice, chapattis, assorted vegetable curries, fruit, chutneys and so on, but absolutely appalled. A sign tacked above the buffet read: “Please use one plate per person, eat as much as U like.” When it comes to being non-U, substituting “U” for “you” is enough to put anyone off their shoots and leaves. Not that I needed any putting off: the sight of all that tasty nosh, mine for a mere eight smackers, utterly nauseated me.

What would happen if I were to eat all I could? In Marco Ferreri’s 1973 masterpiece, La Grande Bouffe, four dyspeptic gourmands gather in a country villa with the express intention of doing just that, their ultimate aim being death by buffet. The film won the critics’ award at that year’s Cannes festival – fitting when you consider that, taken as a whole, film critics have to be the professional group whose eyes are manifestly bigger than their intellects.

When my lunch partner finally pitched up, I mentioned none of this to her and went about the business of eating lunch as if it were second nature to me – indeed, so relaxed was I that I ended up consuming a normal-sized meal. After we parted, I limp-farted to the end of the road and stood there staring melancholically at the corner where Laurence’s used to be.

I suppose the moral of this tale is that, in the all-you-can-eat buffet of life, petites madeleines are always for dessert.

Will’s Latest Book

Will Self - Elaine
Will Self's latest book Elaine will be published in hardback by Grove on September 5 2024 in the UK and September 17 2024 in the USA.

You can pre-order at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Will’s Previous Books

Will Self - Will
Will
More info
Amazon.co.uk

  Will Self - Phone
Phone
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Shark
Shark
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Umbrella
Umbrella
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
The Unbearable Lightness Of Being A Prawn Cracker
The Unbearable Lightness Of Being A Prawn Cracker
More info
Amazon.co.uk
  Walking To Hollywood
Walking To Hollywood
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
The Butt
The Butt
More info Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Grey Area
Grey Area
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Junk Mail
Junk Mail
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Great Apes
Great Apes
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Cock And Bull
Cock And Bull
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  The Quantity Theory Of Insanity
The Quantity Theory Of Insanity
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
The Sweet Smell Of Psychosis
The Sweet Smell of Psychosis
More info

Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  My Idea Of Fun
My Idea Of Fun
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
The Book Of Dave
The Book Of Dave
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Psychogeography
Psychogeography
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Psycho Too
Psycho II
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Liver
Liver
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
How The Dead Live
How The Dead Live
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Tough Tough Toys For Tough Tough Boys
Tough Tough Toys For Tough Tough Boys
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Dr Mukti And Other Tales Of Woe
Dr Mukti And Other Tales Of Woe
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Dorian
Dorian
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Feeding Frenzy
Feeding Frenzy
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  Sore Sites
Sore Sites
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Perfidious Man
Perfidious Man
More info
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
  The Undivided Self
The Undivided Self
More info Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Bloomsbury  
Penguin

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