It is, according to Michel Guérard, that be-toqued legend of French gastronomy, ‘the greatest culinary theatre in the world’, an edible extravaganza so spectacular, so delectably magnificent, that it has reduced even the most seasoned of gourmands to giddy raptures of greedy exultation. Some call it the Disneyland of déjeuner, others the Sistine Chapel of serious eating.
What everyone agrees on is that Les Grands Buffets, an all-you-can-eat affair in the South of France, is not only the country’s most sought-after booking, but, with an estimated €24 million (around £20 million) annual turnover and over 380,000 customers last year alone, possibly its highest grossing restaurant, too.
Les Grand Buffets, though, is no ordinary buffet. Forget the stuff-your-gob ignominy of the average pile-it-high stodge fest.
Here, ‘Le chef vous propose’… quail stuffed with foie gras, whole roasted turbot and fillet of beef. Along with 50 varieties of pastries and puddings, and a cheese ‘board’ that, with its 111 different fromages, is certified by Guinness World Records as the largest selection of any restaurant on earth.
The lobsters are probably Canadian, and a little overcooked, writes Tom Parker Bowles
The famous Cascade de Homards lobster tower
What’s more spectacular still is that you pay just €57.90 (around £50) per person to eat as much as you like. There are no limits, save the strictures of one’s stomach.
First, though, you need to bag that table. The restaurant has a seven-month waiting list, but by some miracle, logging on to the website in early February, I manage to find a table for four for lunch in mid-May, meaning the merest of three-month waits. Our booking is for 12.45pm, although we’re allowed to stay until close of service at 4.30pm. Dinner guests can linger until midnight.
And so to lunch, on the most glorious of late spring days, appetite piqued and belly girded for battle. The restaurant sits on the edge of Narbonne, part of the Espace de Liberté sports complex, in the middle of a nondescript industrial estate, squeezed between an ice rink and swimming pool.
Le Moulin de Mougins it ain’t. As we enter the restaurant, the walls clad in cherry wood and polished brass, there’s a plaque with a quote from Rabelais, that great writer and bon vivant: ‘Fay ce que vouldras’. Or ‘Do as you wish.’
And there’s something splendidly Rabelaisian about the whole place, a temple dedicated to sybaritic pleasure. Service is slick and charming, up there with any Michelin-starred place, and within moments we’re sitting in the garden in the cool shade of a large umbrella, accompanied by the tinkle of tiny waterfalls and the clatter of knife and fork.
There are linen napkins, proper glasses and cutlery with a generous heft. No paper cups or disposable plates here.
At this point, early in the day, everyone’s eyes gleam with the same mildly manic glee. Will we get our money’s worth? That fear is swiftly dispensed. We’re given a map of the restaurant, along with the wine list (that is both vast and astonishingly good value, as drinks are not included in the buffet price) and plan our attack.
Always remember: this is a marathon, not a sprint.
One of the waiters holds up a canard au sang – or pressed duck
The chocolate fountain is part of an epic spread. It would take ten visits to even start to do it justice
A half cock crab and a brace of Alaskan king crab legs. Then a great dollop of mayonnaise and back to the table
So off we trot, into the main room, and straight to la cascade de homards, the famed lobster tower, a multistoreyed Moulin Rouge of vivid pink crustacea, all cloaked in a diaphanous cooling mist. A couple of those, a dozen oysters, a half cock crab and a brace of Alaskan king crab legs. Then a great dollop of mayonnaise and back to the table.
The edge smoothed off from our hunger, we start to relax as each of us begins separate raiding parties to different parts of the buffet – the foie gras section or the rotisserie, aglow with radiant heat, where whole piglets and chickens turn slowly on spits. You queue, order one dish (and one dish only, although you can return as often as you like), then wait for your number to be called.
The one place that seems eternally empty is the buffet crudité section. No one, it seems, craves a raw baton of carrot, organic or not.
There are stations for canard au sang, a great old restaurant dish involving a duck press that resembles some medieval torture device; lamb à la ficelle (hung on string and roasted).
Another trolley for crêpes suzette, the chef’s face lit up in a flash of burning liquor; the nine varieties of ham on the bone; battalions of metal chafing dishes filled with slow-cooked beef stew; that cool, musty church of cheese, piled high with truckles, pyramids and cylinders. And the puddings and the ice creams and the chocolate fountain and the… Well, I could go on and on. It would take ten visits to even start to do justice to this epic spread.
The tower is a multistoreyed Moulin Rouge of vivid pink crustacea, all cloaked in a diaphanous cooling mist
As to the actual quality, well, many dishes are outstanding. Cool, briny oysters; terrines as ornate and beautiful as Pompeiian mosaics; fish soup with all the boozy swagger of a sailor on shore leave; the sweetest suckling pig; excellent charcuterie; a slab of côte de boeuf, pinkly powerful; some of the best stewed tripe I’ve ever tasted. And those cakes and puddings – pure patisserie perfection.
Not everything thrills. How could it? The lobsters are probably Canadian, and a little overcooked; caviar is ersatz, or at least not from a sturgeon – all-you-can-eat beluga caviar at this price really would be something miraculous; kidneys in madeira sauce are tough and chewy, having sat in their chafing dish too long, while some of the prettier hors d’oeuvres have the chilled whiff of airline catering about them.
Cut through all the pomp and pageantry and this is cooking on an industrial scale. Albeit very well done.
The kitchen knows exactly what they’ll be preparing every day and for exactly how many people. There’s minimal wastage and any leftovers are used in staff meals. Try as they might, few punters will eat their full €57.90 worth of food. It is a brilliant business.
But I’m being unnecessarily picky.
Because this is more than mere buffet, rather a glorious celebration of French gastronomy from the haute (a lobster dish, braised hare) through the bourgeois (a veal stew, lemon tart) to the resolutely rustic (tripe, snails, frogs’ legs).
It also celebrates the dying art of the rôtisseur and saucier. Sure, you’ll probably find superior versions of most dishes elsewhere. But that’s not the point.
As Michel Guérard so rightly points out, this is culinary theatre of the most delectable kind. Albeit more burlesque than Samuel Beckett. Mon dieu, it’s fun, slow braised in a surfeit of generosity. Les Grands Buffets is a passionate cri de coeur, not only one of the best-value lunches you’ll ever eat but, in the words of the restaurant’s owner Monsieur Privat, a Louvre of classical French cookery.
Not so much a culinary thrill ride as a museum of good taste.
For more details, go to lesgrandsbuffets.com