h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yes. And there may have been regurgitation involved.

Had a cornetto on the way home though, so it wasn't too bad an afternoon.

I always think that the best strategy towards an all-you-can-eat restaurant is to go around the corner to somewhere actually _good_ and eat there instead. They nearly always provide you with enough.

A good case in point that used to do my head in when I lived in Birmingham was The Big Wok in the Chinese quarter there - that was all you can eat. It was OK, food quality was fine but literally just around the corner were several chinese kitchen/cafe places that knocked spots off it and if you could eat everything they provided you with for a fiver then you'd soon be struggling to walk between parked cars...
It was also of course true than busy as they got, the Big Wok did have queues coming out of the door at busy times - no accounting for tastes (or more probably ignorance of the existence of the others sadly).

{Had a cornetto on the way home though}

Just one?

Just one. Mint.

The attraction for me of all-you-can eat places is that you *know* you wont leave hungry. For me it's 50/50 with normal restaurants whether you leave full or not and there's no way to know beforehand other than examining the dishes of people already eating. It really is a bugbear of mine; I can't afford any restaurants very often, so eating out is a big thing. When I do, I want quality *and* quantity. My blood runs cold when I see a vast white dish approaching with a splodge of something arty in the centre, regardless of how good it tastes

Plus, to be honest, I think that most Chinese/Indian style buffet places actually compare quite well to 'normal' restaurants. I consider myself to have a fairly good pallet and OK, you don't get creativity, presentation or exotic flavours, but choi men for choi men, and bhuna for bhuna, buffet and standard restaurants compare pretty well in my experience.

You maybe want to think about portion sizes a bit (says mister 17 stone himself ) - when you get a massive plate with 'very little on it' you'll probably find that that is the portion size you really ought to be eating

You should maybe also maybe go to some actual good indian and chinese places too There are some really cracking places out there where the food quality is of no comparison to your standard chinese/indian. OK some of them get expensive but I've found pretty reasonable places that are a cut above the rest too.

"You maybe want to think about portion sizes a bit". Oi, you callin' me a lard-ass ?



Yes, well you may have a point; portion-size has always been my downfall. That said, I don't mind adjusting portion size at home; it's just that when I've paid for food at a restaurant, I wanna leave full!

Anyway, let me give you an example of the kind of portion-size that makes me want to leave without paying.. you know these pasta parcel/ravioli things you see on cookery programs? Well, in said programs you tend to get 2 or 3 parcels arranged artfully. Yes TWO OR THREE . At a supermarket you buy a packet with typically 20-30 or so pieces. I would usually happily eat one such packet for a meal or half with a piece of fish or meat. That's why getting 2 pieces would upset me somewhat.

Pasta parcels on cookery shows (especially the real culinary ones) tend to be quite big compared to the ones in the shops to be fair. I have seen them serve just one on Masterchef- but it was a reasonably sized one.

That's true. They're not 10x the size though

I make meatballs with pasta and I've never seen anyone manage more than two.

Mind you, they're each the size of my fist and smothered in cheese

Also, although I tend to avoid those pricey places too, I gather that part of the theory is that, if you *really* know your stuff WRT ingredients and proportions, and how to prepare them *just* right, a small amount *is* filling.
Having said that, that's a lot of ifs and buts...

I've never quite understood the "am I full?" thing as a judgement of whether or not I've had a good meal. A friend enthusiastically recommended a pub's food to me recently by saying "It's really great, you get loads!". What's it taste like? "Oh, it's just basic pub food". I really don't get it at all.

Like so many things, there's a balance to be achieved. I neither want vast quantities of horrid tasting cheap and nasty food (been there), nor do I want tiny- 1 minute to eat, portions of the most exquisitely flavoured masterchef-winning quality food (can't afford to be there very often, but I have tasted 'fine dining').

Quality-wise, all I really ask of a restaurant is that it's tastier than I can make myself at home. It's one reason I rarely order pasta dishes. I tend to think pasta is pasta; anything I've tasted in restaurants has only been marginally nicer than what i can make at home with a sauce from a jar.

My opinion on fine dining (or nouveau cuisine as it used to be known) is that they have spent all the money on the skilled chefs, superior kitchen equipment, and top quality ingredients already; would it really bankrupt them to use a piece of fish 6 inch wide instead of 4? As they seem to throw half the ingredients away anyway when a molecule is out of place or the meat is cut to the wrong shape, I can't really see that upping the portion size a bit would cost them much more.

>Quality-wise, all I really ask of a restaurant is that it's tastier than I can make myself at home.<

Me too to be fair. The trouble is I have veered further and further towards proper cheffery as I've got older and I now find this increasingly hard to find and am satisfied with banal stuff less and less. Snobbery, moi?

> It's one reason I rarely order pasta dishes. I tend to think pasta is pasta; anything I've tasted in restaurants has only been marginally nicer than what i can make at home with a sauce from a jar.<

Yessss. I do wonder what this obsession they have with creating home made pasta is on stuff like Masterchef. I've come to the conclusion that it's basically a skill thing rather than a taste thing.

>My opinion on fine dining (or nouveau cuisine as it used to be known) is that they have spent all the money on the skilled chefs, superior kitchen equipment, and top quality ingredients already; would it really bankrupt them to use a piece of fish 6 inch wide instead of 4? <

Well according to those chefs you see on telly - yes. More than once I've seen the contestant slice a piece of meat too thick for them and the chef go 'you'll be bankrupt in six months it you do that in your own restaurant'. It seems like boswellox to me too - but I guess they are pros and know their stuff...

>As they seem to throw half the ingredients away anyway when a molecule is out of place or the meat is cut to the wrong shape, I can't really see that upping the portion size a bit would cost them much more.<
Now *that* is an excellent point - well made. I suspect though, that off-camera - people are fired for putting one molecule out of place and wasteage may not be as high as it is when they get the clutzes in from Celebrity Masterchef.

I wasn't *really* trying to get into fine dining per se earlier although the diversion into that is my fault entirely. The chinese kitchens in Birmingham's chinatown I was talking about are more or less road side cafes or the equivalent of chinese greasy spoons. However, their food was consumed mostly by chinese people (which tells you something for a start) and you got treated like dirt* in there but the food was excellent and extremely plentiful. *Much* better than what you got in the all-you-can eat next door.

*(By treated like dirt I mean they shouted at you and would shove you all up into a corner if it meant squeezing more customers in. On that latter point though, why not? The english tendency is for one person to sit at a table for 10 and then everyone else is too shy or scared of confrontation to point out that this is a massively selfish thing to do.)

"The english tendency is for one person to sit at a table for 10 "
I know, and I do it too; it's a totally ingrained British thing that I don't think i could change even if I wanted to! The same thing happens on public transport; everyone sits as far from everyone else as physically possible, only getting closer as it gets busier. But yes, it is ridiculous.

The only time barriers break down and tables get shared by strangers is when a) everyone present is drunk b) when the place is heaving with people and there is no more room, c) a+b.

When I did Chemistry at school, our teacher called the Pauli Exclusion Principle the "Bus Rule" - no two particles will sit next to each other unless they have no other choice

I'm a bit like what Orcus said - I get annoyed at paying money for a meal that I know I could do better myself. I also get annoyed that I can't afford to go to the places that I might enjoy. Moan moan, grumble grumble

>>My opinion on fine dining (or nouveau cuisine as it used to be known) is that they have spent all the money on the skilled chefs, superior kitchen equipment, and top quality ingredients already; would it really bankrupt them to use a piece of fish 6 inch wide instead of 4?<<

with respect to your opinion - you'Re wrong there. Only the very very very top earn good money. The rest are lucky if they make a living wage. I'll give you that they pay for their ingredients.

The point about nouvelle cuisine, or any other menu-based food (where you pay for 5, 7, 9 or whatever courses) is that the overall effect of the whole meal is what counts. Trust me, those things are not thrown together in a 2 minute meeting after has been to the market. They are planned with a precision that would have left Napoleon, Wellington and Sun Tzu weeping with feelings of inadequacy.

If you go to an expensive restaurant and you don't feel "full" that's good, you're supposed to leave a meal thinking that you could manage a bit more.

And, of course, location and prestige are also factors in pricing. If you are too stingy to pay 42 quid for your plate of art then you might not be their target audience

Also, don't forget about these places where you are paying a lot: if they are the good places they tend to employ enough staff. that is not just a a sous-chef and 2 waiters for 100 covers. Good (contrary to EVERYTHING you see on the TV) do not spring fully-formed from the loins of their mothers, they work. And work. And work. And then when everyone else is asleep, they work some more. And while everyone is still asleep they get up and go shopping and start work again. They train for a long time to be able to place that wafer thin slice of truffle artfully across your piece of asparagus placed artfully across your scallop. You don't get that level of skill by paying peanuts (well, actually you do - but that is still enough to add a fair bit to the price of a meal)

We are labouring under a false dichotomy a bit, though. Not everywhere - not even *close* to everywhere - which isn't all-you-can-eat offers the kind of dining experience Sho refers to above. It is quite possible to simultaneously achieve bad value, poor food and small portions.