Never Go To An All-You-Can-Eat When You’re Starving

all you can eatI took The Teenager out for a meal today to celebrate some recent exam success.

They don’t do GCSEs like they used to (in my day, we just had one huge exam in each subject; nowadays they seem to do them in dribs and drabs, tsk), so I imagine we’ll be having quite a few of these meals over the coming months.

Anyway, it could have been bread and water for him earlier this week after I got his report card from school. Two weeks late.

I was only made aware of this by default after speaking with another parent and when confronted, The Teenager fake-smacked his forehead and said, ‘oh yeah, knew I’d forgotten something, must be, like, all that studying filling up my brain, like, totally.’

To cut a long story short, when he’s good, he’s pretty impressive but when he can’t be bothered, he’s awful. A snippet from two of his subjects – ‘… it appears that he has deemed this subject entirely irrelevant to his educational needs’ and ‘his mock exam was disappointing because he answered the wrong question.’

Anyway, lunch. A warehouse-type all-you-can eat soulless place, with tables crammed so close to each other I was able to read the Twitter timeline of the diner next to me as he scrolled through his phone, ignoring his friend and stuffing his face with noodles.

I was starving. So was The Teenager, but that’s nothing new. So we grabbed our plates and checked out what was on offer. The usual suspects (vague impressions of Thai, Chinese and Indian food with some salad thrown in) and we piled our plates high. Lovely.

Unfortunately, being British I felt a bit awkward going up a second time, and a third. As I passed the gaggle of waitresses, I felt compelled to say something stupid like, ‘oh, haven’t eaten in days‘  (one glance at me would confirm this is simply untrue) or ‘thyroid, eh?’. Why? I cringed as the plates piled high on our table, but I was determined to get my money’s worth.

We eventually moved like locusts towards the desserts section. Mini cheesecake? Yes please. Mini chocolate roulade? Don’t mind if I do. The Teenager made impressive inroads into the ice-cream bar.

Finally, we staggered to the door and as we headed back to the car, The Teenager said, ‘Aw, thanks mum, what’s for dinner?

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6 thoughts on “Never Go To An All-You-Can-Eat When You’re Starving

  1. Peter says:

    When you are hungry, All you can eat is the place to go!!! All Teenagers knees are always hollow that’s why he said what’s for dinner ….. Also eating Chinese food wait an hour and you are hungry again !!!!

    • stumbling in flats says:

      I guess so! And he certainly has hollow legs. And arms, lol.
      And yes, he is currently starving again!
      x

  2. Judy Epstein says:

    Yum! I’ll take a Chinese, Thai or anything Asian any day!

  3. Jonny says:

    We took our daughter to the Airport this morning….phew I forgot it was so busy at 7 in the morning ! I don’t want to seem hard done by, but I’ve missed flying away somewhere different but NOT AIRPORTS! Well, the drive up was amply rewarded when we stopped (on our way back) at a nearby hotel for a Full-on Breakfast….no expense spared….I mean…..you gotta do these things from time to time!

    Jonny

    • stumbling in flats says:

      You sure do! There’s a hotel near us which does a brilliant all-you-can-eat brekkie and it’s pretty fabulous. Apart from the fact they charge extra for mushrooms, which is a bit odd.
      x

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