Buffets evoke mixed emotions from food lovers. Many children of the '70s were dragged to the all-you-can-eat buffet at Sizzler, where Tuesday nights were set aside for all the garlic bread and overcooked meat you could pile on your plastic tray. Then there was the mythical buffet of Herculean proportions at your local four-star hotel-for me, that meant the Hyatt Regency Cambridge in Boston: You could chow down on eight blissful courses, ranging from lean prime rib to lobster tails to Boston cream pie, and then collapse along the banks of the Charles River to sleep away a lazy Sunday afternoon.

That was then this is now: I'm here to tell you that the best buffet table in any restaurant or hotel in North America-circa 2003-is right smack in the middle of Whistler, BC-in The Wildflower Restaurant on the lobby level of The Fairmont Chateau Whistler-one of the best hotels in Canada and arguably the best hotel in the entire province.

The Seafood Buffet ($48 Canadian per person) kicks into summer operation on July 8 and is on display every Tuesday evening during The Wildflower's dinner schedule from 6 to 10 p.m. What's so special about this particular buffet? For one thing, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better selection of Pacific Northwest seafood in any restaurant in Washington State or the Pacific Coast of Canada.

Vincent Stufano, the executive chef at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler, breaks down the unique genius of The Wildflower seafood buffet: "I've never been a big fan of buffets because typically the food is sitting in gigantic chafing dishes and that's not what I consider refined cooking," said Stufano, who has worked at exclusive restaurants such as Chez Danielle and La Belle Auberge. "Instead of having the food sit around on huge plates, we serve each dish on small platters so that it's more of a tapas-size portion. And we have two cooks prepare food for the buffet over the course of the entire evening. If one plate of scallops is emptied from the buffet, our chefs go to work to prepare a brand-new offering of scallops."

Classic offerings from the summer seafood buffet include pan-seared filet of halibut; grilled filet of wild British Columbia salmon; carmelized giant bay scallops; fresh tuna; B.C. prawns; fresh-out-of-the-Pacific Ocean Dungeness crab; oysters, either raw on the half shell or served hot in a Champagne-vanilla-butter sauce; and scallops in a pickled ginger and blood-orange reduction.

Along with the seafood, expect to find light summer dishes such as grilled asparagus, local B.C. berries and local produce such as heirloom tomatoes served with fresh cracked pepper, Salt Spring Island flower goat cheese and fennel dressing, and locally-grown greens with baked Marcella cheese with a vinaigrette of peaches and mint.

Says Stufano: "My goal is to give everything on the menu a B.C. accent, and so the fresh herbs are grown in our own hotel garden; 90% of the seafood comes from British Columbia; and all of the salads are made from local produce, with exotic ingredients like celery root. The food is Canadian, but prepared with the French cooking techniques and colored by my Italian ancestry."

Together with Wildflower Chef de Cuisine Shane Robilliard, Stufano has made the Wildflower one of the best restaurants in Whistler.

For reservations, call (604) 938-2033, or check out the Fairmont Web site: www.fairmont.com.

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James Rosenthal has written on food and wine for The Wine Spectator and San Jose Mercury News. He also writes sports instructional books, the latest being "Randy Johnson's Power Pitching" (Crown Books; 2003).

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