Food and beverage in business hotels hardly appeal, especially those run by the management itself. Probably is a promiscuous statement to make but I have been proven right too many times. Off to Amara hotel for the first buffet of 2012!
Fairly empty for a weekday night, which is totally understandable.
The festive setup with what looks like a peach blossom tree. Buffet spread was limited, with dishes sparcely spaced and with one glance, I more or less knew what would appeal.
The untouchable chocolate display with macarons that would send Pierre Herme right into his grave, visually.
Looked like we booked the entire restaurant with such emptiness!
The buffet that came with a glass of white or red. Normal house pour.
Mushroom soup with bread stick. The soup was decently better than canned soup and the bread albeit slightly oily went quite well. The variety of bread was a generous spread of corn bread, mini pizzas and bread rolls. Wish I concentrated on this instead!
Appetizers that barely lifted the appetite much. Seafood was hardly fresh, the crab was too small to extract the flesh even. Prawns passable and the other cold appetizers went unnoticed. My main grouse of this - that cold and stiff sushi roll which was too hard. The rest of the sushi was pretty to look at yet hard to ingest. Thankfully, sashimi platter was still marginally better.
Live station of kebab crepe - sweet sauce meets tough chicken.
The rest of the hot dishes. Potato gratin, roast duck, sambal prawns, eefu noodles and tempura which was not featured here. Top of the pops goes to freshly fried tempura - at the very least, it was piping hot.
Yet another complimentary - cheese lobster. Stale one here with flesh so much, I left it mostly untouched.
None of the above deserved seconds, save for the bread!
Moving onto their desserts...I remember having a particularly good mango cake some moons ago yet none of their mousse cakes were available. This unlabelled sponge cake with layers of jelly was unimpressive. Blueberry creme brulee so stiff, probably cannot wobble with much shaking. Apple crumble was painfully sorry too. Cookies were decent as was the only white chocolate.
Macarons so poorly made, crumbly and sugary sweet with buttercream filling. Complete waste of time.
I say forget about even considering this buffet, at $46++ I can find better ones elsewhere. Whether service was good or not did not even come part of the consideration.
Elements
Amara Hotel
The festive setup with what looks like a peach blossom tree. Buffet spread was limited, with dishes sparcely spaced and with one glance, I more or less knew what would appeal.
The untouchable chocolate display with macarons that would send Pierre Herme right into his grave, visually.
Looked like we booked the entire restaurant with such emptiness!
The buffet that came with a glass of white or red. Normal house pour.
Mushroom soup with bread stick. The soup was decently better than canned soup and the bread albeit slightly oily went quite well. The variety of bread was a generous spread of corn bread, mini pizzas and bread rolls. Wish I concentrated on this instead!
Appetizers that barely lifted the appetite much. Seafood was hardly fresh, the crab was too small to extract the flesh even. Prawns passable and the other cold appetizers went unnoticed. My main grouse of this - that cold and stiff sushi roll which was too hard. The rest of the sushi was pretty to look at yet hard to ingest. Thankfully, sashimi platter was still marginally better.
Live station of kebab crepe - sweet sauce meets tough chicken.
The rest of the hot dishes. Potato gratin, roast duck, sambal prawns, eefu noodles and tempura which was not featured here. Top of the pops goes to freshly fried tempura - at the very least, it was piping hot.
Yet another complimentary - cheese lobster. Stale one here with flesh so much, I left it mostly untouched.
None of the above deserved seconds, save for the bread!
Moving onto their desserts...I remember having a particularly good mango cake some moons ago yet none of their mousse cakes were available. This unlabelled sponge cake with layers of jelly was unimpressive. Blueberry creme brulee so stiff, probably cannot wobble with much shaking. Apple crumble was painfully sorry too. Cookies were decent as was the only white chocolate.
Macarons so poorly made, crumbly and sugary sweet with buttercream filling. Complete waste of time.
I say forget about even considering this buffet, at $46++ I can find better ones elsewhere. Whether service was good or not did not even come part of the consideration.
Elements
Amara Hotel
A buffet need a crowd so that turnover of food is fast and you get fresher food !
ReplyDeletesigh yes, learnt it the expensive way. :(
ReplyDelete