On the toughest reservation – Lauren Collins in The New Yorker:

‘The restaurant is called Les Grands Buffets. A week or so later, I went to its Web site, and entered my e-mail address to receive a secure link to make a reservation online. It was late July. The next available table was for a Wednesday in December, at 8:45 p.m. “We remind you that this reservation is non-modifiable, you cannot change the number of guests, the date of the meal, the hour of the meal, or the name of the beneficiary,” the confirmation e-mail read. If I wanted to bring children under ten years of age, I needed to submit their names at least three days in advance. (They eat at discounted rates.) I would be refused entry if I showed up in sweatpants, an undershirt, a bathing suit, a sports jersey, flip-flops, a ball cap, or any of three kinds of shorts. The toughest reservation in France, it turns out, is not at a Michelin-starred destination like Mirazur or Septime. It’s at an all-you-can-eat buffet situated in a municipal rec center in the smallish city of Narbonne.’

(…)

‘In 1989, Narbonne was looking for someone to handle catering in the new rec center. The Privats decided to put in a bid. “At the time, especially in the provinces, going to a restaurant was hardly the habit that it is today,” Louis Privat once recalled. He knew that in order to flourish they would have to draw people from far beyond the city. So he decided to offer something novel: an all-you-can-eat cafeteria. Little by little, he upgraded the menu and tricked out the décor. The hyper-French concept emerged only gradually—a brand identity as much as a patriotic conviction. “We had sushi,” Cavalier confessed, of the early days, during our tour.’

(…)

‘“I completely share Mr. Privat’s vision of being able to continue to develop and innovate,” Bertrand Malquier, the city’s mayor, told me. “We are fighting so that, when he makes his choice, it will be exclusively Narbonne.” Last week, Narbonne and Privat announced that they had come to an agreement: Narbonne would pledge fifteen million euros to renovating the rec center, carving out a separate entrance for Les Grands Buffets, while Privat would commit nearly five million to the creation of new attractions, including a separate tea salon and a shop selling regional products, with a shared goal of increasing the annual number of visitors to eight hundred thousand. Every Narbonnais, Malquier told me fondly, has been to Les Grands Buffets at least once. In fact, his family had just celebrated his son’s eleventh birthday there. Malquier had discovered a delicious new cheese. It was actually from England—Stilton, he thought it was called?’

(…)

‘I missed Les Grands Buffets. The point of all its over-the-top excess might actually be a kind of scarcity: an experience so bonkers that it’s exceedingly rare.’

(…)

‘I was standing near the rotisserie when, suddenly, a “Welcome, shoppers”-style intercom activated. “Ladies and gentlemen, behold the pressed-duck ritual, just as it was conceived in the nineteenth century,” a suave male voice intoned. “The duck has been roasted on a spit. It is now placed on the table of the master canardier. With the silver duck press, he will crush the carcass to extract the blood and juices, which give the sauce its unique flavor.”’

Read the article here.

Everything can be upgraded, especially the all-you-can-eat buffet. A buffet that I associate with tasty to not so tasty Chinese food.

It seems to be worth a detour to Narbonne. I plan make that detour together with my son later this year.