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?
