The seafood all-you-can-eat counter at Les Grands Buffets
Franck Tremblay
Forget low-rent buffets. For the French tourist industry, all-you-can-eat has long been associated with prestige and abundance—from princely buffet froid (cold dishes laid out for self-service) to upscale Club Med resorts—and one restaurant in the south of France proves it.
Every day, twice a day, in an unassuming corner of Narbonne, a ritual unfolds. In a suburban shopping mall between the municipal ice rink, the swimming pool, and the bowling alley, diners take their seats for what might be one of France’s most extraordinary buffets. Founded in 1989 by Louis and Jane Privat, Les Grands Buffets has turned the idea of an all-you-can-eat buffet inside out: not as a symbol of excess, but of reverence.
Here, travellers don’t just come to eat; they come to honor a tradition, to taste history in a single evening, and to discover the culinary traditions of France inside one celebratory event.
This All-You-Can-Eat Buffet Is The Guinness World Record Holder Of The Most Cheeses In A Restaurant
Inside its 1200 square metres of buffet tables and four dining rooms, Les Grands Buffets styles itself as a conservatoire of French cuisine. There are over four varieties of homemade foie gras, more than fifty desserts created by in-house pâtissiers, and the Guinness World Record’s largest restaurant cheese selection—111, but at the last count, now closer to 120.
Renowned chef, Auguste Escoffier published his Guide to Classical French Cooking in 1903, and as the restaurant grew, Privat realised all his recipes were subconsciously drawing from Le Guide Culinaire, whether a beef bourguignon or a daube (a slow-cooked stew). In 2024, the Escoffier Foundation recognised the restaurant as a ‘global showcase for Auguste Escoffier’s cuisine.’ Today, Les Grands Buffets sees itself as a living museum of traditional French cooking.
Privat says, “From the highest gastronomy to classic cuisine for a party, people come to us to experience the panorama of traditional French cooking.” Think soup with foie gras and truffles, followed by hare à la royale, then a grand selection of cheeses, before a crêpe Suzette is set alight in front of you.
Les Grands Buffets has over 111 cheeses to taste in its all-you-can-eat buffet, a Guinness World Record for a restaurant.
©CHEERS—Adrien PrivatThe All-You-Can-Eat Buffet As High-Class, Silver Service
All-you-can-eat buffets are often viewed as low-class, but this is not fast food, but slow pleasure—served on silver, on a grand scale. “People don’t come to eat a lot,” Privat says. “They come to discover the repertoire of traditional French cuisine.”
Les Grands Buffets serves 400,000 diners a year—twice a day, every day—and receives 3.5 million reservation requests, meaning they turn away about 3 million people. Eighty percent of its clientele are French, but many cross the border from Spain; Barcelona is a three-hour car ride away. They sell 55,000 bottles of champagne and 100,000 bottles of wine each year. “People reserve six months ahead, get dressed up, they eat, they drink, and they really have fun,” says Privat.
It’s an all‑inclusive anchored in heritage, service, and ritual: silverware, carved roasts, and cheese trolleys gliding between tables. It updates the 19th-century French buffet tradition—those princely receptions and banquets where abundance equalled prestige—and gives it modern coherence. It fits perfectly into France’s dual loves: gastronomy and the all-inclusive spirit long celebrated by Club Med.
All-You-Can-Eat Is French Luxury Travel History
For the French, the idea of going all‑inclusive at the high end is nothing new. The modern buffet itself has deep French roots, stemming from the lavish buffet froid and service à la française of royal courts and 19th‑century hotel banquets, where abundance and prestige went hand in hand.
In the 1950s, Club Med turned that instinct into a holiday format, inventing the all‑inclusive resort and later pushing it firmly up‑market with four‑ and five‑star villages aimed at affluent families.
Club Med was established as a not-for-profit, based on the idea of an Olympic village community atmosphere, with a simple philosophy: “The aim in life is to be happy, the place to be happy is here, and the time to be happy is now.”
It was based on the utopian idea that different nationalities could come together and forget about the divisions created by World War Two. Rationing had just been lifted in France, and people were searching for simple pleasures and social harmony, as reported by FranceToday. It was from the sense of equality that the all-inclusive notion was founded. Money wasn’t used in the resorts, and in the early days, strings of beads were exchanged for drinks at the bar—at the time, it was a revolutionary idea that made everyone feel like billionaires.
In the 1990s, as low-cost travel entered the industry, Club Med found itself in a quandary. But it decided to upgrade and go upmarket, bringing wealthier families into the all-inclusive idea. Critics were horrified, worried about how all-you-can-eat buffets could become chic and exclusive, and that the rosier notion of communal eating would be lost in an upmarket environment. What’s clear is that if any nationality could make it work, it would be the French.
Today, France is one of the world’s strongest luxury travel markets, and the notion that you can pay a fixed price for a weekend of serious food, good wine, and ritualised service feels completely natural.
Les Grands Buffets sits squarely here: an all‑inclusive that swaps plastic wristbands for silverware, carving trolleys, and cheese carts. And so this all-you-can-eat buffet in Narbonne represents a celebration of French pride, of culinary pilgrimage, and is definitely worthy of a visit on your way through France—if you can bag a table.
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Dining and Cooking