バイキング
ばいきんぐ
noun
buffet; all-you-can-eat meal
1.
buffet; all-you-can-eat meal
A meal format where diners serve themselves from a variety of dishes, typically for a fixed price.
昼はバイキングにしよう。
Let's go for a buffet for lunch.
このホテルの朝食バイキングは種類が豊富だ。
This hotel's breakfast buffet has a wide variety.
バイキング形式のレストランで、好きなものを好きなだけ食べられる。
At a buffet-style restaurant, you can eat as much of whatever you like.
A Japanese-English word (wasei-eigo) derived from "Viking." The term originated from the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, which in 1958 named its buffet-style restaurant "Viking" after being inspired by Scandinavian smorgasbord. The name stuck and became the standard Japanese word for buffet-style dining.
USAGE:
- Used specifically for self-service, all-you-can-eat style meals
- Very common in hotel and restaurant contexts
- The loanword ビュッフェ (buffet) is also used, especially in upscale or international settings
COMMON COLLOCATIONS:
- 朝食バイキング: breakfast buffet
- ランチバイキング: lunch buffet
- バイキング形式: buffet style
- 食べ放題バイキング: all-you-can-eat buffet
- デザートバイキング: dessert buffet
SIMILAR WORDS:
- ビュッフェ: buffet — the French/English loanword; used in more formal or international contexts
- 食べ放題: all-you-can-eat — focuses on the unlimited eating aspect rather than the self-service format
- ブッフェ: buffet — variant pronunciation of ビュッフェ