Living Mildly, Eating Fearlessly.

I had brunch yesterday with two of my best friends, friends that I have known practically my entire life. I met J. literally on the very first day of kindergarten when the teacher asked her to help me at the coat closet and something about the way she slung my tiny plaid jacket onto that brass wall hook impressed me and made us friends for life. Two years later in the second grade I met G. while admiring her red patent leather purse with the big gold rings affixed to it, and her, J. and I became a trio, a force to be reckoned with on our inner-city-school playground. I liked to think of us as a miniature version of Charlie's Angels without the good hair, hot clothes or crime-fighting skills.

We eventually went to different schools, got married, had kids and moved to different cities. J. and G. now live within minutes of each other and around an hour's drive away from me, but we all still manage to get together without fail three times a year to celebrate each of our birthdays. The routine is always the same - we meet on a Sunday at the birthday person's house sans husband and kids and treat the honoree to brunch. Over the years, when our kids were small we've had to bend those rules a few times and bring one or both of our kids along (necessitated by breast feeding schedules or babysitting issues) but for the most part we've been able to make it a girls-only bonding affair. I imagine we'll be doing this into our old age, eventually all rolling our wheelchairs into a van, trading coupons for Depends and Metamucil and complaining when one of the other's oxygen tank hums too loudly.

The restaurants vary from year to year, but the one prerequisite is that the brunch must be of the All-You-Can-Eat-Buffet variety, the kind where upon entering you are greeted with a vista promising absolute gluttony and excess. To see table upon table heaped with platters of crab legs and cocktail shrimp and huge chafing dishes piled with pounds of sausage is what gets our mouths watering and makes our reunion complete. We've actually got up and left restaurants when upon being seated we were handed a menu and informed that their Sunday brunch consisted of their standard breakfast selection served with a glass of champagne. No going back for seconds of eggs benedict or standing in front of a 'chef' while he carves up a slab of prime rib? We're outta here.

Another thing we look for in choosing a brunch is the co-mingling of ethnic cuisines. We've tried the brunches at Mexican restaurants where you can feast on unlimited servings of chicken enchiladas and finish off with a glass of horchata and even a brunch at a Japanese restaurant where they had fry-while-you-wait tempura stations alongside enormous vats of of miso soup. But the hallmark of a truly great brunch is one where your slice of lasagna happily shares a plate with your Chinese dumplings and on your second go-around that same plate is home to caprese salad, a spicy-tuna handroll and a mound of wasabi.

Please don't lecture me about the dubious reputation of the all-you-can-eat buffet. I've read Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential where he cautions against ever eating at such brunches, especially at hotels, where it's common knowledge that they gather up all the leftover food from the week, lay it out attractively on an expensive platter and foist it upon a hungry, unsuspecting public. Ever wonder what they do with the leftover rolls they pick up from your dinner table? Look no further than the gargantuan banquet table at that restaurant's Sunday brunch, where piles of 'fresh' bread beckon to you from baskets the size of trash cans and that piece of leftover chicken from your kid's plate has now been cut up and incorporated into a lovely antipasto salad platter.

In fact, I like to freak myself out by imagining the scene preceding the brunch at a hotel restaurant we frequent. In a dark, basement corner of the kitchen, scores of hefty hotel workers in hair nets flank a long conveyer belt onto which platters of cast off room service trays are being dumped. The workers use their stubby fingers to pick out and discard cigarette butts smashed into scrambled eggs and condom wrappers stuffed between slices of french toast. What remains are sent down to a crew of chefs whose sole job is to immediately come up with appealing brunch dishes incorporating all the scraps being hurled at them via the conveyer belt. Six mounds of old hashed browns and a scattering of half eaten bacon? Pork au gratin! Three uneaten sides of steamed vegetables and some leftover shrimp cocktail? Seafood salad, bon appetit!

Is this visual I've created enough to make me turn my back on our beloved Sunday buffet? Are health reports that caution how vodka destroys brain cells enough to stop you from inhaling that fourth martini? I didn't think so.

I admit to being a bit picky when eating at restaurants. Here in L.A. all retail food establishments are given a grade by the health department indicating their cleanliness and food handling practices, with 'A' being sparkling and anything below a 'C' being the type of place where you'll find the cook using the poultry scissors to trim his toenails. I always try to eat at restaurants with an 'A' grade, although I've eaten at the occasional 'B' restaurant when desperate and only once at a' C' joint. This happened when the girls were small and Rigel and I found ourselves wandering the streets of Santa Monica late one night. We were starving and had gotten to the point where we had to choose between risking our health at the questionable offering in front of us or eating the children and lying to the police that they were attacked by wild dogs.

But I seem to be fearless in the face of all the health hazards the glorious all-you-can-eat buffet presents. At the sushi table, I barely bat an eye at the huge plates of raw fish sitting out for who-knows-how-long as I scoop up five pieces and place them on my plate, right next to the hunk of salmon whose age is unknown. Moving on to the cheese table, I hardly notice the absence of a sneeze shield and treat myself to a generous slice of brie and a handful of crackers from the obviously picked through basket. And look - it's a hearty pasta salad! I try not to think of the tomatoes that are probably leftover from the vegetable plate tossed out last night by room 1104.

We're already thinking of where to take J. for her birthday brunch which is coming up at the end of February. Both her and G. live in a city filled with first class restaurants, but the trick will be in finding the place that has a twelve-ingredient omelet station and a table in the back devoted entirely to potatoes. We'll walk in, survey the scene and try and decide which chafing dish to attack first, choosing to ignore the sauces that have congealed because of a extinguished sterno. Then we'll return to the tables with our heaping plates, determine who managed to snag the most slices of bacon and sit down to talk about our lives.

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tags: friends | gluttony | all you can eat | food and lots of it

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