A lively debate this evening culminated in Mrs MWS stating: "Why don’t you put it to that forum you fuck about on, it’s like Mumsnet but bitchier…
What could have raised such passion?
Buffets.
After 14 years, I managed to muster the courage to share in earnest my dismay for the beige banquet - No I don’t like picking a bit of this or that - a warmed through Iceland platter gives me the straight up conniptions.
Your views Sirs please.
Buffets are invariably shit. Cut price vomitorium for people who have no taste.
But a Smorgasbord is far more preferable 
Ah, but there are buffets and buffets.
I have participated in some right rancid, skanky buffets that would make your ears water but also the occasional one that dances on the palate like Ginger Rogers on Fred Astaire.
Quality (and setting) are everything.
Has to have small pork pies and bendy paper plates with plastic knives that couldn’t cut an over ripe peach.
Buffets can be great if they’re done well. When is it and what time should I rock up?
If I think of my favorite meals, none of them have ever been a buffet - How is it then, as the season of gluttony wobbles in to view, the thought of defrosted beige becomes a luxury?
Further issues & concerns:
The notion of ‘fun size’: If something is delicious, make it the size of a bus not a button.
Hidden woe: Stashing vicious little shits like mushrooms in breadcrumbs or making something look like a sweet treat when really it’s cold fish or some such is as cruel as the wonder bra.
Temperature clash: Hot, cold or both? - Straight out the gate, a volcanic Vol-au-vent and cold Canapé confuses my shit. Get to the back of the cue and what was hot now is not, Yay body temperature sausage party.
Hygiene: There’s fingers all over the show here: Never mind the shits from the Iceland prawn ring, look out for Uncle Norris’s fetid hands pawing all over the nose bag as he selects the most plump delectations. It’s OK though, next up is little Billy fresh from the germ incubator (School) to tickle your fancy. Meanwhile you get to eat with your fingers like a Norse God with Norwalk under your nails.
Aftermath: Who loves washing up? (The dish washer is full from the prep) All the plates in the house seem to have been used for a meal no one will remember.
In Oz, the zenith was the late 70s/early 80s. All-you-can-eat Smorgasbords were fantastic. Gorging was the raison d’être. Budgets weren’t tight, so it was about getting people in the door. There were some that almost had legendary status. Fantastic variation and quality ingredients.
I lost count of the number of Smorgasbords I got banned from due to extreme consumption.
Buffets in all their guises are fucking despicable constructs. The orders of unpleasantness are what inspired Dante to write.
Add in the fact that every cunt is wearing flip flops and wanders either aimlessly or is dead set on getting there before you just puts the tin hat on it along with greasy strangers’ fingerprints left on jauntiliy angled utensils.
The all you can eat buffet. People say you should never judge a book by its cover, this does not apply here. The queue of ‘customers’ waiting to get in tells you all you would ever need to know about these places.
Office meeting buffets. Delivered under the protective layer of cling film and only unwrapped once every fucking plate of it has the required amount of condensation inside. Also, contains the mysterious ‘spring roll’. Even analysis in the L.H.C. has proved fruitless in its quest to find out exactly “What. The. Fuck. It. Is. Actually. Made. Of.” Once it’s constituent parts are identified hopefully this will give some idea why it can only exist in two states, cold as the grave or hotter than the gates of fucking hell.
Buffets? Not my bag.
edit: neither is spacing it would seem. Bloody forum software… we need a paperclip that magically appears and offers help.
I once had the misfortune to eat at Smorgy’s, a short lived chain purveying all-you-can-eat misery to the germ ridden, snot coated loin-fruit of Straya and their overweight be-mulleted parents. Inevitably the food was also germ ridden, snot coated and thickly covered with dandruff and mullet scatterings. The salad bar being safe only for the truly hardy of constitution. Sizzlers in Queensland was even worse.
Buffets and Smorgasbords are the work of Beelzebub and should be burned to the ground by the right-thinking, salad-dodging fat bastard classes who demand even moderately sanitary conditions with their deep fried diabetes enhancers.
The worst buffets are the all you can eat chinese, a gluton mass of chewy stuff with some over done rice, mmmm yummy 
Cheese and pineapple on a stick for the win.
Focus is blurring. The bain marie bastions of all you can eat restaurants and or carveries deserve their own thread. Should sufficient courage or misfortune present itself, avec ‘Reviews’.
The Buffets in the cross hairs here are the demonic domestic variety. Most specifically ‘Other peoples’ (often relatives) efforts at what passes for an indulgent ‘treat’.
Forum tagline etc etc
Buffet = no.
Buffets are the natural habitat of the people who -
Buffets have gone downhill since the high point of the 70s
Oxymoron. The high point of the 1970s is still a nadir…
It’s a bit like the high point of Norfolk
Is there any point to Norfolk?
Crab sandwiches and containment.
