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Showing posts with label buffet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label buffet. Show all posts

Monday, April 16, 2012

Kiseki Japanese Buffet, The Hereen

What’s the best way to celebrate a special day with a loved one? For me, it’s by indulging in good food. Erick and I celebrated our anniversary by dining out at Kiseki Japanese Buffet at the Hereen. We’ve always loved buffet and took our time to try all the dishes offered in the buffet while enjoying each other’s company. 

Kiseki Japanese Buffet prides itself as the mega Japanese buffet in mini prices. It is located at the basement of The Hereen in Orchard Road. We dined on a weekday dinner and paid SGD 63.60 for two, plus 10% service charge at SGD 6.36 and 7% GST at 4.90 for a total of SGD 74.86 (Php 2545). 

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This was my dinner treat to Erick since he’s the one who’s been spending whenever we’re out in SG :) Thanks love! I told him to meet me at Somerset MRT at 6pm after work. We got there a bit early and the restaurant was just getting ready to open. But I’m glad we’re one of the first few customers.


The restaurant was huge almost occupying the whole basement floor. There are many tables which is suitable for big groups of friends and families. There are also different sections which you can choose to be seated plus there's a kids play area where your children can be left to play.

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There are many stations in the buffet. You will be overwhelmed where to start first.


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We started in the maki and sushi sections for our appetizer which is near the entrance of the restaurant. I used to not like eating raw but now it’s quite funny that sometimes I feel a craving to have tuna sashimi. 


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There’s a full salad bar where you can customize your own salad with the freshest vegetables and seafood with a home-made salad dressing.


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If you enjoy cold seafoods, there’s a cold selection where crabs, prawns, scallops, clams, and mussels are plentiful. The sashimi counter is just beside it.


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So okay enough for the raw selections, if you fancy something grilled, there’s a grilling section where you can select your meat and ask the chef to grill them for you. We had some grilled beef and squid. You can also personalize your own pasta by choosing the toppings, sauce, and pasta. We had a seafood and bacon carbonara.

When ordering something grilled, you have to clip your table number to your plate and you don't have to wait for your food to be cooked. The food attendant will just deliver the food to your table.


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The robatayaki counter offers various grilled selections like chicken meatballs, shitake mushroom, and salmon belly.  Shrimp lovers will be delighted to find out that during the buffet night, tempura was all over the menu – ebi tempura, tendon, kakiage, tempura udon, and more.


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There’s an okonomiyaki station if you're craving for some savory Japanese pancake with a variety of ingredients. 

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Erick loves soup and he was delighted to find that there was a nabemono bar offering shabu-shabu dishes. From the selection, you can customize what to be included in your shabu-shabu. We chose the hotpot with assorted meat, naruto maki, squid balls, and veggies.

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After three hours of gluttonous eating, we are left with full stomachs and maybe a few pounds gained. We are two happy eaters. 

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I always save the best for last..desserts!  There are quite a few selection but what we really loved was the Swiss chocolate roll. It was heavenly!

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There were other desserts like mango pudding, flamingo mousse, fresh fruit slices, brownies, cupcakes, and even green tea ice cream. By the way, drinks are refillable and you can choose from fruit juices, sodas, coffee, tea.

Overall, our dining experience at Kiseki was good. My rating would be:

Food: 4/5
Ambiance: 4/5
Service: 5/5
Value for money: 4/5

Kiseki will be moving to another location at Level 8, Orchard Central in June 2012. Visit Kiseki's website, print the voucher, and present at the new Orchard Central outlet to take advantage of an exclusive offer. 



Kiseki Japanese Buffet Restaurant
#B1-01, The Heeren (near Somerset MRT Station)
Orchard Road Singapore
65 6736 1216

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Seasons Buffet at the Manila Pavilion Hotel

So finally, we were able to use our Ensogo vouchers for Seasons buffet at the Manila Pavilion. The deal was good for a lunch or dinner buffet for two and inclusive of unlimited fruit juices or iced tea.

Calling for reservations was easy breezy. We decided to go for dinner last night. And here’s our experience.

Ambiance

The entrance to the hotel restaurant wasn’t elegant nor grand but it was classy and intimate. Seasons Restaurant is near the hotel lobby and very easy to locate from the hotel entrance.

Seasons Resturant

We reserved our seats at 6pm and we were there promptly. We were ushered to a small private room where there are about ten small tables. Plus points for the ambiance!

Private dining room


Food

Seasons buffet’s wide array of international cuisine was such a gastronomic treat. They have four live buffet stations featuring appetizers, noodles, grill, and desserts. There are also stations for the main courses, meat, seafood, sushi, and a lot more.

For appetizers..

Cheese, bread, spring rolls, and salad

On the plate..

Shrimp overload -- tempura, shrimp salad, shrimp maki


Craving for pizza and pasta? Let the chef create your own pasta..

Pizza, pasta, and calzone


We had carbonara with bacon, shrimp, squid, and parmesan on top.


Pasta lovin'

For the main courses, you’ll never run out of options.

Pork, chicken, and meat viands

For meatarians, you’ll find pleasure in Season’s buffet meat selection. This is one my fave stations in the buffet : )

I personally loved the roasted lamb. I wish I came back for more of this. It was so tender and heavenly!

Oh my lamb!


The Australian beef was firm and well-roasted.

Aussie beef


Who can't say no to lechon? Although I was feeling very full when they served lechon in the buffet table, I just couldn’t ignore it.  This is the smallest lechon I’ve ever seen but one of the the crunchiest and tastiest. 

Baby lechon


There was also roasted duck which can be served with the meat only or wrapped in a spring roll wrapper. You can choose which one you prefer. We had the one in wrapper but quite honestly I missed the taste of the duck because of bland taste of the wrapper or possibly because of its small serving.

Roasted duck


The grilling station was one of the live stations where diners flocked. There are shrimp, squid, barbecue, pork, lamb, beef, chicken, and tuna. You can ask the chefs to grill them for you.

For grilling


On our plates...

Beef bbq and grilled squid and shrimp


Well quite honestly, I didn’t find the barbecue appetizing. It has a strong taste like it was over-marinated.

You can also find dimsum and sushi and tables.

Dimsum and sushi galore

This big tuna sashimi was one of the main attractions of the buffet. 

Tuna sashimi

And for desserts, be prepared to taste all of these.

Desserts galore

I noticed that most of their desserts are “kakanin” which was yummy also. But they improvised some, for example, you will find an ube halaya cake cut into slices but there also ube bite-sized sprinkled with sweets on top. I didn’t find truffles or chocolates or a choco fondue though. 

You can also ask the chefs to create your own version of crepe! You can choose from peach, mango, apple and strawberry with ice cream on top. 

Peach-mango-apple crepe with chocolate ice cream

Service

One thing I noticed with their staff is that they are really attentive to your needs and very courteous. From the time that we were ushered to our seats and during our dining time, we were treated very well. They refilled our drinks on time and made sure we had new plates every time we need one.

The chefs in the live cooking stations were also swift in providing our orders. If not, they made sure that the food is delivered to our tables.

Two thumbs up for the exceptional service!


Overall dining experience

Season buffet's international food selection was wide and impressive although there are some dishes which can be improved as I cited. I hope they put the names of the dishes served. Some of them didn’t have names, there were just illustrations of pork, chicken, beef signifying the viand. But our overall dining experience in Seasons was great. 


We had a great time at the Seasons, obviously!

Dining is a wonderful experience when you're with your loved one

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Buffet Dinner at Café Jeepney, Hotel Intercon

Drink, eat, and be merry for tomorrow we die! That’s one of my favorite quotations in life. It’s the best excuse to indulge in good food. Agree?

Last Friday, I tagged along with Erick and his officemates (Paulo, Mau, Jade, Elyn, Marlon, Lhey, and Joel) to have buffet dinner at Café Jeepney in Hotel Intercon. Thanks to Lhey who got us 50% off the buffet price from her credit card rewards =). Actual price of the buffet is Php1616, so just do the math.

Cafe Jeepney with HP peeps
True to its name, CafĂ© Jeepney boasts its unique interiors with Sarao jeepney parts hanged in its walls for the Pinoy feel. The hotel coffee shop is also spacious or at least for the time we where there. The ambiance was relaxed for a hotel setting. 

Chop-chop Sarao jeepneys =)
To start off, there was a great selection of appetizers such as breads, soups, and salads. The shrimp mango salad was our favorite. Erick was delighted to try his favorite fruit in salad – watermelon tossed with greens and cheese (or so I thought). 

The grilled variety was also a feast. There were local favorites like longganisa, tocino, and bangus. The pork and beef barbecue was tender and juicy and keeps you coming back for more. It was also another favorite of our group.

Grilled selection
Too bad though, I wasn’t able to try the Mongolian barbecue as I heard it’s one of the stars of Intercon’s buffet.

The Japanese sushi table was also winner like in every restaurant, Who doesn’t love Japanese food? =P

Sushi table
Aside from the international cuisine served, we also enjoyed the live cooking and carving stations.

Pasta aficionados will love their signature pasta dishes cooked according to their preference – fettuccini, penne, and pomodoro with creamy white sauce and your own choice of seafood toppings (calamari, shrimp, and fish). 

Pasta-all-you-can
Of all the dishes served in the buffet, I really enjoyed the fish selection especially the sea bass in lemon butter sauce and the carved fish.

Make sure you leave a room for dessert. CafĂ© Jeepney’s buffet is famous for the wide variety of desserts. It was a big treat for sweetooths like moi!

Strawberry panna cotta, white chocolate truffle, crème brulee, mango crepe samurai, mango ube panna cotta, chocolate fondue, blueberry cheesecake..these and more made my heart squeal in excitement.
Desserts galore
Strawberry Panna Cotta

Blueberry cheesecake and dark chocolate cake
You can even make your own halo-halo which we had fun doing.

Mix your own halo-halo
It was a perfect dining experience to cap off another busy workweek. I love Fridays!


Café Jeepney
Ground Level, InterContinental Manila

1 Ayala Avenue
Makati, Metro Manila, Philippines
+63.2.793.7000 loc. 6771