Food: Buffet Town

Food: Buffet Town

Was looking for a review to do today and manged to find out that I have slated to review before but didn't have a chance. Thankfully I ate at this place not more then 2 months ago so I can still remember the associated points to review about! So this place is none other then buffet town!

Its a pretty crowded and popular place that has been around for a while under raffles city (NOT AT RAFFLES PLACE MRT). The nearest MRT station for this place is City Hall station and you always see a queue outside of it especially before it begins its buffet sessions which are afternoon lunch and dinner only. It's an international buffet and I have some pictures that I took below that you can refer to!

So all in all how did the whole experience feel for me? Read on to find out!


So these are the pictures of the food we ate

Has soup, rendeng meat, sushi, snippets from every cuisine

 So like any international buffet this place has the obligatory cream of mushroom soup and on the japanese side they have all the sashimi from salmon as well as the tuna flavors

Some potato some fish and carrot cake plus ham

 Really many various types of food here, all these are already pre cooked and you just have to collect them up from the warmers

Of course international buffet has the thin crust pizzas, 3 types here

 3 types of pizzas being the seafood, meat type and the margherita which is like some vegetarian pizza

Cooked chicken

 There was actually also a station whereby they will directly cook some of the food choices provided there, they provided seafood which i believe is squid, then chicken and some veggies, so you can get the guy to freshly cook some meat from you

Adding the asian flavor to the mix

 Has also the satay cooking area right beside the cooked chicken area but for this you had to wait awhile because it was always empty. The moment the satay is done its quickly wiped off by other hungry customers

Some of our own cuisine

 The laksa that they cook relatively fresh for you! obviously the soup is already pre made! Pretty milky taste but overall its not the spicy type

Finally some spaghetti

To top it off there is also spaghetti from the Italian side of the world although pizza should be from there too!

Besides this, there were some other items not pictured here which are cold seafood choices Chilled Prawns, Mussels, Big and Juicy Freshly Shucked Oysters, Scallops, White Clams and Slipper Lobsters which is also advertised on the website. It didn't seem supremely enticing to me but if seafood is your thing this might be what brings u here.

There is also desert and drinks provided from cute little cakes down to crepes and ice cream which is about 4 varieties and fruits all that. Drink choices included soya bean, coffee and tea as well as a lot of ice teas peach green lemon and the rest of the soft drinks

Overall, the taste of the food however to put it bluntly is pretty ordinary. Nothing particularly stood out from its outside counter parts. Satay tastes better outside, laksa better outside etc. Probably not a surprise for a place that tries to cover everything. Sadder part was the foods that were already cooked like the potatos and rendang meats were not particularly hot either which doesn't feel as tasty. 

Probably, the only thing that has going for it is its variety. Its variety is pretty vast with at least 15 choices for even the most picky of eaters such as myself and I think there are about 25 to 30 choices of food out there. Nonetheless, you won't be very impressed with the taste of the food no matter what you eat. Just to clarify again, I didn't eat the seafood so especially if you don't eat seafood like me, your rating would probably be similar.

Food 3/5

Atmosphere 3/5

Sitting place wise the whole area is pretty well spaced but being buffet style there will be people walking past your area especially if you sit in the center section. The other areas are all at the sides which means you will be pretty far away from at least one station of the food.

There is little interaction with the waiting staff and some of the cooks tend to be doing their own things sometimes which means its hard to ask them about what you are supposed to do with the food at this station such as the teppanyaki cooking station whereby they just leave the food there without telling you explicitly that you need to pick the food and pass it to the staff. The staff also don't tell you when the next batch of satay is ready neither is there a visible queue. So these will make it slightly more disorganized then usual.

There is a lot that can be done to improve the customer service and overall feeling but its still passable as it is not unpleasant.

Price 2/5

Prices range from $26.80++ on a weekday lunch to $41.80++ for a weekend dinner. 

This for the quality of food and service atmosphere, is pretty crazy especially for the weekend dinner section. Put simply, there is probably no way the food you eat will feel worth the $41.80 dollars excluding the plus plus. 

Only plus point is that drinks and dessert are all provided in house at no extra charge but worth it? I don't really feel so.

Accessibility 3/5

Perhaps the only obviously positive point of this place is that it is near. However, this place has strange popularity that means that you might need to try to reserve a seat during peak periods or you need to queue up or reach there earlier just to secure your seat.

It didn't fail in this category due to its ease of getting there but there is little ease to getting in. Also they follow the end time strictly which means once you cross the 3 pm mark for lunch and 10 pm mark for dinner, there is nothing left for you as they pack up. So if you don't get in at 1 pm for lunch or at 7 pm for dinner, you probably should just come back another day.

Overall

Food: 3 (Variety is "vast" but food taste is nothing impressive at all)

Atmosphere: 3 (No clear instructions on what to do, confusing, not too attentive staff)

Price: 2 (Extremely overpriced for the standard of food honestly)

Accessibility: 3 (Near MRT, doesn't mean you will get in though)

Overall: 2.75 (A barely passable score. I'll put it bluntly, I have no reason to go back there to eat ever again and even if my friends were to suggest it I probably would tell them that there are other places to eat compared to this place. Nonetheless it is still ok to eat on a weekday lunch if you really have no where else to go. I have absolutely zero reasons to eat a weekend dinner there though. Keep your expectations low if you are going there and maybe just try to convince yourself that you are there for variety)

Been there before and don't agree with the score? Post your comments below!

Here is its website if you want to check it out!

Disclaimer: Since this is a neutral or slightly negative review, I would like to say that all this is just words of opinion based on the dishes we had. Its not a professional review but the first impressions of a layman as per blog objective. So please don't be offended if you are a staff from there!

Food: Miam Miam

Food: Miam Miam

There has been quite a recent influx of eating places entering Singapore these days and there are a few that tries to infuse flavors together to give them the winning edge over their competitors.

Miam Miam is one such place that tries to infuse Japanese food with French cuisine! The usual offerings in its menus especially with regards to its main courses are the offerings of about 8 different types of spaghetti which incidentally is supposed to be a Japanese thing, and a few more selections of baked rice and baked Mac and cheese. Apparently Japanese spaghetti is supposed to be thinner than the usual Italian type of spaghetti according to the fun facts on its menu.

So how did the food from this unique place fare? how about its overall feel?

Food 3/5

We ordered two dishes for our dinner there, one of which was the Mac and cheese and the other was some long French word that we obviously cannot pronounce. You will see the name later.

In the case of the Mac and cheese, it's first winning point was that it was served directly from the plate it was baked in. This means that everything was sizzling hot and for cheese this is a great plus point. The pasta texture was just right as in cooked but still springy and the right type of pasta was selected for the cheese because the clam shaped pasta will just directly scoop up the cheese for your eating pleasure. There was also plenty of melted cheese to create the fun cheese strands when you lift the pasta up.

How it looks initially

How it looks after digging in

 The taste was good but being calculating you would find the grand sum of about 5 slices of meat here and maybe about 9 or 10 mushrooms in total! Yep thats the level of details we can go into!
Of course overall its the taste from the cheese and overall i guess you could say it was just filling enough but they really can put a bit more meat into it..

This was the 2nd dish we ordered with the name Souffle De Nuage

Look it looks like some bread

But its really not! its baked rice inside a top of egg that was beaten into some kinda fluff

So this dish, the top layer is actually egg and inside its some bubble or fluff thingy that probably is still the egg with rice right at the bottom. Its interesting that the staff actually came by to remind us to scoop up the rice from beneath and to eat together with the top because that is all there is to this dish. The fluff part was interestingly like eating bubbles which is nothing I have ever eaten before.

Overall, would say that these dishes are not those kind strong in taste with sauces and stuff and is rather mild in flavor. Its more of an experience kind of thing but I would say overall, not so much a tasty kind of thing. Not particularly great in variety also.

Atmosphere 3.5/5

The store floor area is pretty big and the seats are pretty comfortable with good spacing from one place to another. Some sad parts of the experience includes, slight waiting time. The Nuage came about 10 minutes after the mac and cheese. IT was good however that the staff did inform us of the waiting time and even recommended us to share it. You could use the button on the table to tell the staff you had some requests which is good instead of the usual wave hand like idiot method of getting the attention of the waiter.

I did ask the staff for some cheese and tabasco sauce when the mac and cheese came but unfortunately the items only came after i finished eating up the entire mac and cheese. Also another place that charges for water which I still feel is strange in this time and age in Singapore.

Overall, you can see the staff are trying to make the atmosphere here better for the customers but the effect is not significant. Kudos for effort though.

Price 3/5

Why do you charge for water??

So that was our expenditure for the meal which for 2 main courses is pretty ok. Its definitely not cheap, but the amount given is just alright bordering on a bit little. They are cooked and presented in a more unique way then usual so I wont say the price is exorbitant yet but it does not really taste that it is worth the premium overall.

Of course they do have the spaghetti choices for you that might be more worth the money but for the meal we had there this is the opinion.

Accessibility 4/5

There wasn't much of a queue when we got there and we got to our seats pretty quickly. It is also centrally located at Bugis which made it very convenient to get there by MRT and just find the escalator up there.

All in all its a good place to go if you are looking for some baked food or spaghetti and you can just get there, sit for a bit, eat your food and leave. 

Overall

Food: 3 (Definitely unique, but wont say that it was totally tasty, but is edible surely)

Atmosphere: 3.5 (Good attempts by staff to be helpful and attentive, but still lacking in areas)

Price: 3 (Paying for uniqueness, not for taste, nor for volume.)

Accessibility: 4 (Easy to get there and get in)

Overall: 3.4 (Fair enough score to indicate that its a place that you can go once in your life or a year or something to that effect. The food won't make you feel miserable and you probably will enjoy the experience. But like what i said to the waitress when she asked for my comment, the food was interesting, to which she replied "that means it wasn't nice?". You probably can get an answer about the overall experience there. Go ahead go and try it once, but after that it will be mostly up to the individual to consider if you will come back again.)

Try it out yourself and see if you agree with my comment!

Here is the website which is strangely short address name, if you wanna find out more about this place.