a term which may either indicate a sort of sideboard (usually for the display of silver or other tableware or for the setting out of prepared foods); or tables of food set out for guests to help themselves; or a meal for which such an arrangement has been made; or a refreshment room in a railway station (buffet de la gare in France); or a railway carriage serving refreshments (buffet car).
In France, a buffet garni is a buffet laid out with consideration for artistic as well as gastronomic considerations. Favre (c.1905) supposed that the poet Désaugiers was thinking of one such when he penned the lines:
Aussitôt que la lumièreVient éclairer mon chevet,Je commence ma carrièrePar visiter mon buffet.A chaque mets que je toucheJe me crois l'égal des dieux,Et ceux qu'épargne ma boucheSont dévorés par mes yeux.
The contrast is extreme between such a scene and what one might witness if present at dawn in the ‘buffy-car’ of a British railway train. Yet the sharpness of this contrast itself bears witness to the utility of a word which, after an obscure debut in the English language, has elbowed its way firmly into common parlance and now seems irreplaceable.
Alan Davidson was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish and fish cookery. In 1975 he retired early from the diplomatic service—after serving in, among other places, Washington, Egypt, Tunisia, and Laos, where he was British Ambassador—to pursue a fruitful second career as a food historian and food writer extraordinaire. Among his popular books are Seafood of South-East Asia, North Atlantic Seafood, and Mediterranean Seafood. In 2003, shortly before his death, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contribution to European culture.
