By Dan Leone

HEY, YOU gotta eat – and if you live around here, you have to eat out, or else what's the point of living around here? But let's say you're down to where you can only afford one meal a day. What're you gonna do?

Hell if I know, but you'd better do it for lunch. Because if you only eat breakfast, by dinnertime you'll probably be seeing things and falling down a lot. Which ... you may as well put yourself to bed early anyway, because you're not eating again until tomorrow. On the other hand, if you only eat dinner, you'll probably be seeing things and falling down a lot by dinnertime, and then you might miss dinner.

Trust me, lunch is the way to go. It's when lunch specials are. It's when lunch buffets are. All-you-can-eat Indian food, for example, is everywhere around the Bay Area. The last one I went to was at Great India Restaurant (6127 Geary Blvd., S.F. 415-751-4433) in the Richmond. Between 11:30 and 3 p.m. you can eat all the tandoori chicken and curry chicken you can eat for $5.95, and it's real good stuff. They keep the steam table stocked with nan and rice, and there're vegetarian things too: a cabbage dish, lentils, potatoes, a salad bar with that great green mint yogurt sauce.

Don't be shy. Go back and back and back. The idea is to eat all you can eat, and then keep eating – at least two plates more. That's what esophagi are for. And your average chicken thigh is an almost perfect fit in most mouths; just remember not to say anything when you're paying the check.

"Was everything OK?"

"Mmm" works. Or a nice no-teeth smile and a nod. Or, to be perfectly safe, just leave your money on the table and wave.

They say you can't take it with you, but they mean wrapped in a napkin in your pocket. Once it gets past your teeth, it's yours, and it's with you, and it's going to come in handy later in the day – even if you can hardly walk right now.

Speaking of which, there's the Wok-In Cafeteria (50 Mendell, S.F. 415-550-7200), off the beaten path in India Basin. I saw a hand-painted all-you-can-eat sign leaning against a car parked at Mendell and Evans, and I followed the arrow to an excellent Chinese buffet, $4.95, Monday through Saturday between 11 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.

Cheap Chinese buffets and dollar-a-thing Chinese joints are about as proliferous around here as Indian lunch buffets. There's probably one or the other or both somewhere along your line of duty every day. If you have a car, you might consider messing with the chains. I still swear by Sizzler, which still includes fried chicken wings in its so-called salad bar. But for our purposes I'd recommend Fresh Choice (4927 Junipero Serra Blvd., Colma. 650-757-7892), because it's cheaper, so long as you have access to their Internet coupons: $5.49 before 4 p.m. on weekdays, $5.99 before 6 p.m. As much as I love wingdings, and as much as I miss meat in general at Fresh Choice, I also love salad and soup, and theirs are good ones, especially the chicken noodle.

The good news for me is that soup and salad are two things I can't stop eating. I can be the first one there in the morning and close the place down, if they let me, and if they don't, then that brings me to the other advantage of the chains: they're chains, and therefore inherently evil, so you don't have to feel bad about walking out with pockets full of muffins or fruit or, hell, soup, depending on the nature of your pockets.

You high-styling down-and-outers probably already know that the Tonga Room (950 Mason, S.F. 415-772-5278) at the Fairmont Hotel has a $6 all-you-can-eat happy-hour buffet. The catch is you have to get at least one drink ($4 for a Bud, $5 for house wine). But if you're one of those people, like me, who's going to have a drink with dinner anyway, and if, like me, you're good at nursing one drink from 5 to 7 p.m., you can drive the Tonga Room crazy and pack in a magnificent meal in a tropically lavish tiki bar setting, just for kicks. Chicken wings, ribs, miniature pork buns, chow mein, pot stickers, fresh fruit ... they prefer to think of them as hors d'oeuvres, but a lot of those little plates add up to dinner, in my belly.