When is a buffet not a buffet?

[Henrietta75]

So family member invites me for a buffet breakfast
to a pub type place which we haven't visited before so
they can speak privately about an issue.

The blurb on the doors and advert hoardings is
"Buffet breakfast 7am - 11am" come and enjoy blah..

Anyway we sanitise our hands at this empty place (9am saturday morning) and we're told yes its a buffet but
the servers pour your breakfast choices in the plate, here is your seat. Unlimited tea included.

So we go over to the counter and one by one server pours our food and we take it back to the table. Sausages are a bit cardboardy but thats another story, rest is fine.

I feel like another hash brown and a few mushrooms, FM wants a couple of slices of bacon. Eventually server appears and says sorry, you only get one plate that's it.

Is this a buffet? Nothing other than prices on the disposable paper menu for veg or non veg and reads clearly buffet - Is this normal?

Surely that’s a cafeteria 😂

Yes, there's nothing that says All you can eat or food refills, just items to select.

No. That's no buffet.

I assume current covid guidelines means restaurant can't have people serving themselves as this would mean number of people touching the same utensils.
Shame about not being able to go back for seconds

"Pours" your breakfast? Eh?

I imagine in normal circumstances, the buffet is the usual all you can eat, serve yourself kind of deal.

It is a buffet because you get to chose what to have on your plate out of all the items listed. It’s not an all you can eat one though.

The menu says you can choose "small", "standard" or "large". To me that implies a carvery style arrangement rather than a traditional hotel breakfast buffet arrangement.

Given a buffet is a meal where people serve themselves, it's clearly not a buffet whether you were allowed seconds or not.

Buffet breakfasts are not available due to covid regulations at the moment, I can't think of anywhere that is doing the usual buffet breakfast.

Only at a hotel could you have a second run at the buffet, if you were in a pub/restaurant type place that's usually a one-time-only (and that does look like a pub because of the bottomless tea and toast offer, I've seen that in the same chain).

Stops the pure gluttony of an all you can eat place anyway.

Good for obesity too.

It is a cafe where you point and shoot then eat. One round only. Good.

Never heard pour a breakfast before.

You can't be sharing utensils at the moment so I'm not surprised you were served.

However, the breakfast plate is priced by size from what I can see on the menu, so surely you would just get the "small/cheapest plate" and keep going up in that instance. It's perfectly clear to me the only item you can refill is hot drinks, not your plate.

A buffet is a choice of the items you do/don't want. Just like a carvery. It doesn't mean it's bottomless.
The only time I've seen that it's called an "all you can eat buffet" not just a buffet.

The choose your size with different plate sizes and days they apply etc would tell me I couldn’t go back.
Well I could but I’d need to lay again.
I agree this is not a buffet though.

Yeah it's not an all you can eat buffet so they are right

It sounds more like the kind of 8 item breakfast you get at garden centres and such like. I guess it's a buffet in the sense that you can choose your own items but you wouldn't expect to go back for seconds.

Buffet refers to the style of serving - help yourself from a choice of options.

At a party or work function you can go back and pick at bits as you please.

Restaurant Buffets, including hotel breakfasts, are usually (IME) 'all you can eat' and you can go back for seconds.

BUT looking at that menu and the choice of plate sizes it is clear that that is the size of your one portion.

So in this case, although it is unusual, YABU.

This place is more on the model of a takeaway salad bar - choose the size of box, fill it up, and that's your lot.

The fact that they say the tea/coffee is bottomless implies that everything else is not.

It’s just a run of the mill buffet where you select the items you want - not an all you can eat or bottomless buffet. Yabu.

I suppose if you had a selection of grapefruit juice, porridge, yoghurt, baked beans, tea / coffee, packet of cereal, very runny scrambled egg - then the whole breakfast could be 'poured'.

Not my preferred style I must admit.

Yes that's a buffet, the word doesn't mean you get to fill your plate as many times as you want.

If they didn't have different prices for different sizes of portion, then I would agree with you. But they do. It would make no sense to charge more for a large portion, if you could pay for a small and just get several helpings.
It looks pretty clear to me - it's whatever you choose but the portion size depends on what you've paid for.

yes that's a buffet, it's just not an "all you can eat" buffet. what makes it a buffet is that you could choose any combination of the listed items that you wanted. the small/medium/large makes it clear that it's a per-visit price, and the "unlimited tea/coffee" would be redundant if everything was unlimited.

I think the reference to bottomless tea/toast/coffee plus the different plate size options give it away.

Definition of buffet
a meal consisting of several dishes from which guests serve themselves
But due to Covid they served you.
They didn’t advertise ‘all you can eat’ so I would only expect one serving.

I think it's pretty obvious from the menu that you only get one serving, otherwise it would be non-sensical to have different size options. It's a buffet because you get to chose (and probably serve pre-COVID) for yourself from a range of dishes/options.

I do get your point though, it is quite unusual for a buffet to be one visit only.

Some good points here - thanks.

Think all the previous buffets I’ve been too (pre COVID) didn’t say all you can eat but you could go as many times as you liked, this was for a Chinese one and a multi cuisine place. Granted this isn’t practical now because of measures - I missed the plate sizes in the beginning as Fm paid which is logical now.