China Buffet King
Crackers to my right, spring rolls to my left and I’m stuck on the horns of a dilemma. Not for long though…..
We’re under starters orders at the 7.30 at Braehead. Dinner plates (as large as you like) at the ready, and we’re off. The going looks good. There’s every Chinese dish we could conceivably want to eat. Not only that but we have a certain obligation to eat every conceivable dish merely because it is a buffet and if we’ve paid for it we might as well eat it. Coming up on the inside we start with prawn crackers and spring rolls, moving swiftly on to sesame toast, jumbo shrimp and sushi. Totally foregoing the notion of separating starters and main courses we further pile our plates with Spare Ribs, Mussels, Aromatic Duck, Sweet and Sour Chicken, Lemon Chicken, Beef in Black Bean Sauce, Peking Duck and finish the mountain of food with onion rings, noodles and chips.
People give us strange looks as we go back to our table and a baby starts howling as we pass, but we are beyond worrying. We are at China Buffet King, it’s cheap, it’s cheerful and we are starving.
Ten to fifteen minutes later the going gets a bit harder and we are not so much starving as struggling. The mound of food on our plates does not seem to have decreased any but our stomachs would beg to differ. Those said stomachs are protesting and have started making strange groaning noises (or is that us doing the groaning?) No matter how bad it gets we have to clear our plates, as to do anything else would be ungrateful and what did our mothers always tell us about the starving children in Africa? So we persevere and our trousers and skirts start to strain at the waist. Buttons are surreptitiously undone and our rate of eating slows almost to a standstill.
Eventually after a Herculean effort over the remaining hurdles, our plates are cleared and we’re stuffed. We should of course really have ended our dining experience there, but one final hurdle awaits in the form of dessert. There is of course a well known law (whose name escapes me but Glutton’s Law would be appropriate) which states that no matter how full up you are there is always room for dessert. And so it is that we struggle up for our mandatory visit to the dessert section of the buffet. And what an incredible selection lies therein. The pangs of overeating and tightness around the waist miraculously leave us as we approach and take in the spread before us.
We’re on the home straight now and the plates are again piled high, this time with syrupy pancakes, profiteroles, black forest gateau, cheesecake and, of course, jelly and ice cream. The God of Gluttony has a kindly eye on us though and we manage to finish off our mountains of dessert with no ill effects although we are deserving of much lingering agony for our greed.
At weigh in we had been around a normal healthy weight but come weigh out we’re pronounced unfit to be in the close proximity of food for, oh another week at least.
It’s been 2 days now, my belt’s still tight and my stomach’s still protesting…
We’re under starters orders at the 7.30 at Braehead. Dinner plates (as large as you like) at the ready, and we’re off. The going looks good. There’s every Chinese dish we could conceivably want to eat. Not only that but we have a certain obligation to eat every conceivable dish merely because it is a buffet and if we’ve paid for it we might as well eat it. Coming up on the inside we start with prawn crackers and spring rolls, moving swiftly on to sesame toast, jumbo shrimp and sushi. Totally foregoing the notion of separating starters and main courses we further pile our plates with Spare Ribs, Mussels, Aromatic Duck, Sweet and Sour Chicken, Lemon Chicken, Beef in Black Bean Sauce, Peking Duck and finish the mountain of food with onion rings, noodles and chips.
People give us strange looks as we go back to our table and a baby starts howling as we pass, but we are beyond worrying. We are at China Buffet King, it’s cheap, it’s cheerful and we are starving.
Ten to fifteen minutes later the going gets a bit harder and we are not so much starving as struggling. The mound of food on our plates does not seem to have decreased any but our stomachs would beg to differ. Those said stomachs are protesting and have started making strange groaning noises (or is that us doing the groaning?) No matter how bad it gets we have to clear our plates, as to do anything else would be ungrateful and what did our mothers always tell us about the starving children in Africa? So we persevere and our trousers and skirts start to strain at the waist. Buttons are surreptitiously undone and our rate of eating slows almost to a standstill.
Eventually after a Herculean effort over the remaining hurdles, our plates are cleared and we’re stuffed. We should of course really have ended our dining experience there, but one final hurdle awaits in the form of dessert. There is of course a well known law (whose name escapes me but Glutton’s Law would be appropriate) which states that no matter how full up you are there is always room for dessert. And so it is that we struggle up for our mandatory visit to the dessert section of the buffet. And what an incredible selection lies therein. The pangs of overeating and tightness around the waist miraculously leave us as we approach and take in the spread before us.
We’re on the home straight now and the plates are again piled high, this time with syrupy pancakes, profiteroles, black forest gateau, cheesecake and, of course, jelly and ice cream. The God of Gluttony has a kindly eye on us though and we manage to finish off our mountains of dessert with no ill effects although we are deserving of much lingering agony for our greed.
At weigh in we had been around a normal healthy weight but come weigh out we’re pronounced unfit to be in the close proximity of food for, oh another week at least.
It’s been 2 days now, my belt’s still tight and my stomach’s still protesting…
6 comments:
I see what you were doing, Gwen. A noble experiment to prove that no, you WON'T neccessarily be hungry again in half an hour. Grand work.
Buffets are evil. You start off thinking, "I'll try a little of everything," which soon turns into eating a lot of everything at least twice.
I agree with Katie, buffets are the work of Satan. Many is the time i've gone up to a buffet table thinking "sausage roll, spoonful of coleslaw, mini sausage and chicken drumstick" and ended up with two plates and a "bit of everything"
There's a fab Chinese buffet restaurant in a town called Swinton in Greater Manchester. It's got every Chinese dish under the sun and I think I've tried 'em all. In the same night.
Here, we have Seahouses take away. Hmmm. Well actually, they do a mean Lemon Chicken.
Crystal x
Don't suppose there's any left over eh Gwen? Mme S is in Edindurgh, she could pick it up on her way back down south. Obviously with the Mrs away I haven't eaten, so better make it double portions!
Indeed ISBW. And it looks like the experiment was a success. I will need to try it again sometime soon just to prove the test results though.
I would agree with you Katie and Nunhead Mum there is definitely something about Buffets that seems to say - "try a bit of everything" and "eat as much as you want". Which of course means that that is exactly what you do.
The next time I am in the Manchester area I will look up that restaurant Crystal. The lemon chicken sounds good.
I'm sure some left overs can be arranged Valentine. I just hope that Mme. hasn't scoffed the lot before she gets home.
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