A buffet is a restaurant where the food is laid out on a side table for diners to see, choose and serve themselves.http://www.thefreedictionary.com/buffet An all-you-can-eat buffet allows diners to fill their plates as many times as they would like.

A wide spread buffet chain in the United States is the Hometown Buffet where they usually have an extensive selection of food and a location in nearly every major city in almost every state.http://www.buffet.com/about_buffets/faqs The restaurant also has two sister branches, those being Old Country Buffet and Country Buffet. The food selection includes everything from appetizers to desserts, with a wide selection of meats, vegetables, cakes, pies, fried foods and ice cream.http://www.buffet.com/our_menu/everyday_menu Unlike the typical restaurant, customers pay before they eat as they walk in the door, they are then seated and eat. At the end of the meal, they turn in their cashier's slip to the cashier or waiter.http://www.buffet.com/our_menu/how_to_buffet

Buffets can also be served at home when having a meal, appetizers or desserts. The host would simply lay out the food on the counter-top, a table or a piece of furniture designed for buffets called sideboards. Sideboards have been in existence for hundreds of years and are also called servers or buffets. Sideboards often have drawers and cupboards to hold dishes and silverware.http://www.nextag.com/buffet-server/products-html

Ancient and Medieval peoples had banquets that contained large amounts of food. However, the buffet began in the eighteenth century in France, where it quickly started spreading like wildfire through Europe. The buffet differed in that the food was laid out on a side table and the diners would walk by and be served from the table or serve themselves. By the late nineteenth century, the idea had spread out to the English speaking world as well. The Swedish called a smorgasbord which means table of sandwiches. The all-you-can-eat buffet in America is commonly credited to a hotel owner in Las Vegas named Herb MacDonald.http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodfaq7.html#buffets

There are many varieties of buffets nowadays, including sushi buffets, Chinese food, vegetarian and vegan, soup, and the all-you-can-eat buffet. There are many more buffet types that are more complex and extravagant and their origins and actual processes are difficult to trace.http://www.dinner450.com/hints.htm