OPINION - Limitless lobster? The posh buffet is Britain’s last gulp of democratic luxury

High-end buffets are all the rage in London. Set prices help: restaurants like to know how much they’re going to make in Burnham’s Britain. But aren’t they a bit… naff? Probably, but just as they work for accountants, guests quite like to know how much they’re going to spend. À la carte can bring unwelcome surprises.

At the glitzy Italian restaurant Bocconcino, the £80 price tag, or £105 with bottomless prosecco (somebody order a beveragino?), sounds extortionate, but a night out in Mayfair is rarely under a ton. I mean, a bowl of olives there is £8; a green salad is £16. Yet at its “grande buffet”, find oysters, lobsters, prawns, smoked salmon and mussels, presented ornately next to salads, pizza, pasta and, inexplicably, Sunday roasts. All this might be considered haplessly ostentatious, like what Trump would do every day if he ate anything other than McDonald’s, but who on earth doesn’t get giddy at a buffet?

They aren’t exclusively Mayfair. In the City of London is The Ned, a haven to men who still think tight suits look good. And a £120 luxury buffet of terrifying magnitude, where diners fill their boots. Garish, much? What else would you expect in the Square Mile? This is a buffet in a 1920s banking hall, to the tune of live jazz, with unlimited booze. To those with a bit of money, but not loads, these meal deals are almost democratic. Order lobster and drink champagne any time, anywhere and it’s easy to break the bank. Here it’s prescribed.

Nobu’s might be the best of the lot. Unlimited sushi for £90, at a Robert De Niro-endorsed restaurant, and it’s a glimpse into how the other half live. That whole avocado on toast for breakfast while not buying a house thing. I think it might even be a good deal for the hungover and hungry. Honestly, how much spicy tuna on crispy rice can one man eat? Plenty. This is all-you-can-eat, sir.

Loose belts and food mountains

So, naff, sure, but increasingly necessary in a turbulent food landscape. Maybe we should start taking buffets more seriously, à la Vegas, and rid ourselves of dispositions. We can all remember our first all-you-can-eat experience and the politics entwined. Mine was an average to poor Cantonese-style buffet in Oxford and I had one hell of a tummy ache the next day.

Are those cards delivered discreetly to overzealous types real? You must have seen them “online” — small missives explaining that the diner in question was being too greedy, despite paying the necessary fee in exchange for an unlimited banquet of whatever food is on offer. Those Instagram videos are wondrous: mammothine gluttons building mountains out of noodles, balancing erroneously pieces of fried chicken, calamari and gyoza on a too-generous bed. I’ve always gazed with amazement at those people. It’s all the drama, Mick, I just love it. It’s also so terribly, terribly unchic.

At Nobu, I find myself hovering next to the spicy tuna like some hawkish miscreant

But then at Nobu, I find myself hovering next to the spicy tuna like some hawkish miscreant, a man from small-town Ohio who wants to exercise his rights. I love it. We have the late, pioneering chef Katsuya Uechi to thank. He crafted miracles at his titular Los Angeles restaurant in the early 2000s. Yellowtail sashimi with citrusy ponzu sauce and discs of jalapeño? That was him too.

Uechi worked wonders in LA but it was Nobu who helped take the morsels global in the past two decades. Today they’re very much part of the London scene, or at least they are in Mayfair, where Gucci belts don’t have much give but mayonnaise sushi remains à la mode. At Nobu’s brunch-time extravagance, I spare the belt, and also pay quite a lot of attention to crab tacos — plump white meat inside fried wonton wrappers — cucumber maki, nigiri in various forms (but no salmon for me, thanks) and sea bass with yuzu, natch.

Exploit and be exploited

For that princely sum of £90, and for two hours, guests go to town, in a restaurant where a portion of chicken wings is normally £25. Some elegance might be lost but staff don’t seem to mind how many times we explore the counters. Maybe you have to eat a fair amount to warrant the sum, but arrive hungry and it makes sense, even with the 12.5 per cent service charge. I imagine the £49 wine or Asahi pairing would be put to good use by many. It’s the same story at the likes of Clap, in Knightsbridge and with a similar offering, if not an awful name, and Shangri-La the Shard, which for £139 will let you drink unlimited Veuve Clicquot and be dazzled by a chocolate fountain.

Buffets excite not only for their penchant to induce depravity, but because they balance such a fine line between being exploitative and being exploited. The Mövenpick Hotel in Marrakech does a chocolate buffet at 3pm in the afternoon and it’s so ridiculously indulgent almost everyone has to visit the gym before it and nap immediately afterwards. I remember the breakfast carousel at the Mandarin Oriental in Taipei and its endless stream of dumplings, which can be matched with western-style omelettes and the worst sausages ever produced.

I guess when everything seems quite Last Days of Rome, plentiful food brings solace.