Two Buffet Options: Synergy vs. Greatness

By Lev Novak

In life, there are more buffets than you might realize. First, of course, are the actual buffets. You can find them, sure, but what about a salad bar? Or most frozen yogurt places? Those are buffets, after all, and what is life but one large buffet full of options to be chosen, added and combined?

Okay, that last one was a bit of a stretch. But frozen yogurt and salad bars abound, and the question remains: how do you do it?

Option One: Synergy

With synergy you have the most elegant solution, which is, obviously, to get the best possible combined results from your plate or bowl.

Synergy means making sure you follow a game plan. If it’s tart frozen yogurt, for example, you combine it with a light, tangy topping or two and make sure the flavors match. If it’s salted caramel, you add either a dark chocolate topping or some fruit. If it’s a light, healthy salad you add a grain or one grilled vegetable.

Those might not be the most expecting options, but they’ll all work together. Synergy is about excellence and restraint. Think about the soda fountain (a soda buffet) at fast food places. Sure, combining all the sodas is a crazier use of the buffet, but haven’t you grown out of that? Just a root beer with a splash of Dr.Pepper is good enough for adults, because that’s synergy.

Show restraint, keep the game plan in mind, and follow synergy to your buffet success.

Option Two: Good Stuff

Show restraint? Restraint? That’s unjustifiable.

This is a buffet.

If you’re getting frozen yogurt and you see a bland tart flavor, you could make a nice tart option. There’d be a graham cracker crust, and some fruit on it, and maybe some of those chewy not-quite-candy things they have. And it would be delicious. It would!

But what would you be missing?

Red Velvet Cake crumbles. Hot fudge. Kiwis. Lucky Charms. Dark salted caramel flavor. Brownie chunks. Raw cookie dough morsels. Strawberries that look unusually good.

None of those fit into the “nice tart option” recipe option, so you’d have to ignore them. You’d have to miss all those flavors all for the sake of synergy, of restraint, of those false buffet Gods who would keep you shackled to diet and reason.

Is that what you want?

There are so few options to get what you want in life that to turn your buffet into a well-reasoned plate would be a waste of the insane freedoms granted to you. I know kiwis and cookie dough don’t go together. But that’s freedom, and freedom tastes great.

Live hard and well. Your stomach will sort it out.

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