Many novelists struggle to find a metaphor that typifies their age. For Saint-Exupéry it was the aeroplane; for J G Ballard it is the M40 Westway; for me it is the all-you-can-eat buffet. In my novel The Weeping Women Hotel, there is a scene where a woman goes to a Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant. If you want to encapsulate the way Britain has changed in the past 50 years, nothing typifies that metamorphosis more than this modern dining phenomenon.
When I was young there was no such thing as an all-you-can-eat buffet. That food should be offered in abundance ran contrary to the puritanical dining culture of the post-war UK where, if anybody had cooked something as exotic as a pizza, they would have served it boiled.
When I came to London as a student in the Seventies, there was a place in Kensington that did something along those lines, and perhaps my affection for the idea comes from when I knocked into an overloaded coat rack there, which threw the diners' food across the room. At first I panicked, thinking I was going to have to buy meals for 10 people out of my grant, but then I remembered that they could just go and refill their plates themselves.
It was the late Eighties when the Chinese brought the buffet concept to its full flowering. For me it was in a wonderful mall called Oriental City situated in the distant north London suburb of Colindale. It was while visiting its fabulous food court that I noticed a branch of the Zen chain that was offering over 100 dishes for something like £7.95. I decided the only way I could do justice to such a spread was to walk there, a distance of perhaps 10 miles. I set off at about 4pm and it was only when I found myself trying to ford the concrete channel that is the River Brent in the dark that I was forced to turn back. In the end I cycled there one night to meet friends, but I have to say it's not a good idea to ride a bike home when you've eaten nearly 100 dishes.
Another of my favourite buffets is called Indian Veg in Chapel Market Islington. For an unbelievable £2.95 you get as much broken poppadom, rotis, rice, pakora and vegetable curries as you could possibly want, and it always seems to be full of academic-looking people having fascinating conversations about the Albigensian heresy, and a number of customers dressed in those paper suits the police give you when you've been sick on yourself in the cells.
Eating at buffets can lead to complications though. In London there's a string of vegetarian Chinese all-you-can-eat restaurants that cater to the counterfeit-meat aficionado, where you can have as much mock curried mince, sweet-and-sour sham ham or faux fish as you like for a very reasonable £5. There's one near me in Clerkenwell where it is possible to park outside. The young Chinese staff seem to have very little English but have shown a great degree of interest in my car - an Alfa Romeo.
One time I turned up in a boring Citroën C5 estate and explained to one of the young waitresses who asked where my usual ride was that I also reviewed cars for a newspaper. I had clearly not been understood, however, because the next time I visited another waitress asked me about my business of 'renting' cars. I decided to end the confusion by inventing an almond-eyed young bride called Mei Ling. Next time I went to the restaurant I said, 'My beautiful almond-eyed young bride Mei Ling has taken the beautiful car to go and visit her handsome young cousin Wang Feng at his big detached house in Hounslow.'
The following week I told them that her father, who lives on Iron Shirt Mountain, had been urging me to put the luxury car-rental business into his daughter's name for 'tax-related' purposes. In week three I broke down over the garlic broccoli and blurted out, 'My beautiful almond-eyed young bride Mei Ling and her handsome young cousin Wang Feng in league with her wicked father have robbed me of my business renting beautiful cars. All is lost!' That stopped them asking about my car-rental business and I got a voucher entitling me to a free meal worth £5 out of pity.
· Alexei Sayle's The Weeping Women Hotel is published by Sceptre at £12.99
