Melting pot - Holiday Inn Atrium

Granny's birthday and the family gathered at Melting Point - Holiday Inn Atrium for a celebration. 

It is considered an International buffet where there are a 1-for-1 credit card promotion. Not much photos were taken except for the first and last helping of the day. There are different counters for different types of food - the salad counter, the centre counter where there are fresh seafood, satay grilling, lamb and mee soto cooking, the cooked food consists of Asian Cuisine and the dessert counter.

For the seafood counter, I managed to grab a photo - there are mussels, clams, lobsters, sashimi and prawns. Alright, the seafood are fresh, especially the Sashimi and the crab. In our opinion, you will make your money worth by eating lots of crabs and sashimi. 

For the cooked food, the variety was just alright - the must try dish (if it does not change its menu) would be the roasted duck and the crayfish. Both are flavourful and have great distinct taste. Further to that, the service crew at the satay corner really had a busy time. The satay was always gone the moment it got landed on the tray. In my opinion, some Singaporeans are really inconsideration - seeing a long queue for the satay, they could happily grab the whole brunch to themselves. 

Seafood

I love cakes and there are quite a huge variety of cakes to choose from. The cube size makes it easier to handle especially after a huge dinner prior to that. With the size, we could easily try more variety. Remember to leave some stomach space for other desserts like ice cream and ice kachang!

Cakes

But whether this buffet is worth the money, I think ok with the credit card promotion. Oh by the way, the service crews are quite attentive and the empty plates are cleared promptly.

Holiday Inn Atrium,
Outram Road, Singapore 169075

Lok Lok - Malaysian Local Delights @ Tanjong Katong

Three years ago, I was in Malacca and I heard about this Satay Celup. I had wanted to try it but I read about them reusing the pot gravy - that is for the whole night, they will just replenish the gravy instead of changing a new pot for the new customers. Oh man, my friend backed out on this food trail and till now, I have not tried this yet.

Sometime back this year, my friend, Cutie Wc whatsapp-ed me a picture showing "Malaysian Local Delights" with many satay sticks. I thought she went Malaysia for a food trail but to my surprise, she was having loklok in Singapore!!! But I wasn't in the mood for food back then and this shop slowly faded away. until recently, I decided to find some unique food to bring cuzzie around and this shop suddenly reappeared and off we went. Pretty excited  for the both of us as it is something different from the usual steamboat that we have.

When we reached around 1pm for lunch on a Friday, to my horror, there was no one in the shop eating the steamboat. We were quite upset that we travelled all the way just to find it closed. So I decided to ask about the opening hours for dinner such that we can come back later. Pretty surprised that the person at the counter says the steamboat buffet is on and led us to a table. We were the ONLY customers in the shop. As cool as it could be, it was quite boring as food is supposedly to be shared by many people. But well, it was a Friday afternoon and people had to work, unlike us. 

So apparently, there are two prices - S$24.80 for Monday-Thursday and S$26.80 for Friday-Sunday. The person explained that there is a 10% discount at this timing as the food range is limited. Well, there are more choices for dinner crowd, I guess.  

For around $24 per pax, I won't say it is cheap but the idea is refreshing enough for us to go try it! We were counting that if 1 stick of food is worth 50 cents, we would have to eat at least 50 sticks to make the money worth. By the way, the price includes free-flow drinks. 

For the sauce, we chose the satay sauce and the penang prawn soup base. The Penang Prawn soup is slightly spicy and the satay sauce tasted great.

The soup base

The food are all placed in the fridge and you can just take them from it. It is slightly different from the normal buffet places where the food are placed in open air. But it was tiring to open the door just to grab some food. I guess you can take a lot at one good - helps to save the environment.

Raw Food in the Fridge

I did not take many photos of the food, was busy eating instead of snapping. Here are some of the food I took - Pork Slice, Small intestine, Meat balls etc. There are also beef, vegetables and those yong tau food ingredients. By the way, the boss told us to cook the raw food using the soup base instead of the satay sauce. This is because the satay sauce is only lukewarm and could not really cook the food. Thus, we put the food into the penang prawn soup base, cooked them and dipped them into the satay sauce.

The Raw Food

Okay, have you tried Prawns in Satay sauce before? This is cool. Nice innovation to cook the prawns. And the prawns are fresh and we can easily peel off the shell. Not much of a hassle to eat prawns. But I guess we can first cooked the prawns, shell it before dipping into the satay sauce. In this way, our hands will not have satay sauce. I loved the prawns and I had quite a couple of them.

Prawns

Here's some of the other food I ate. My cuzzie was saying that they all looked the same once we dipped them into the satay sauce. I was wondering why I did not try the original flavour before dipping them into satay sauce.

Some other cooked food

Here's my achievement at the end of the feast - 63 sticks of food. VERY FULL!

My achievements

For the innovative idea of satay steamboat, I definitely recommend this place. But would I come again? Maybe not in near future!

Malaysian Local Delights
224 Tanjong Katong Road

L'Espresso High Tea Buffet @ Goodwood Park

It was just a random gathering with a friend whom I have not met for quite some time. Not knowing where to go, she suggested L'Espresso High Tea Buffet @ Goodwood Park. Not a bad idea for a chit chat and chillax gathering. We can eat and catch up with each other's life, a great way to bond over food. 

At L'Espresso High Tea Buffet, each diner is entitled to two choices of beverages. The variety of choices was not that bad and the list consists of teas — black, green, herbal, and fruit teas — coffees and espresso-based drinks, hot chocolate, hot milk, and also iced beverages like iced mocha and iced lemon tea.

Since it was high tea, I decided to choose TEA for my first drink - Rosehips with Hibiscus Flowers tea. A special tea with lingering taste of sourness. A refreshing hot drink to start off my High Tea. Look at the cups - the prints is so pretty. 

Rosehip with Hibiscus Flowers Tea 

I wasn't expecting much from a High Tea Buffet but was totally surprised with the wide variety of pastries and sandwiches they've got there. I guess if you do not like bread, this buffet is certainly a no-no for you. 

The long food counter started off with the Croissants, Sandwiches and Canapes. Here are some of the variety I got for myself. 

The croissants is very crispy and soft, totally a must try for this buffet.The chicken crepes was nice too. Despite being a cold dish, the chicken was tender. The salmon canapes was marvelous - Salmon being fresh and the beetroot mousse totally complements the whole taste.

Assorted Croissant, sandwich... 

For salmon lovers, the Smoked salmon is a must try as well. I ate it with the mini bagel. More of the canapes which they name it  open faced sandwich. The toppings of salmon, prawn and tuna were really fresh. 

More of the food

Scones came into different flavour and I got the plain scones to go with the jam. The scone is not too buttery nor is it too dry. The texture of the scone was great and is perfect with some butter or jam. The baked pork meatloaf went well with the french loaf. A hot dish that was kept warm throughout the buffet. 

Scones

Hot savouries was next. The fried finger food was a change from eating bread and flour. The crispy chicken was like the popcorn chicken from KFC (quoted from my friend after she ate it). The fried finger food was just normal. 

Finger Food

If you love cakes, I think you will love this buffet. There are quite a number of varieties to choose from. Here are those that I took to try out. The size of the cakes was totally just nice that I can actually tried most of the cakes on the trays. 

The white chocolate dome cake was special. Sweet on the outer layer and when you ate it, the cake was actually coffee taste. I think coffee lovers will love this. I think there is this cherry cake that you can eat bites of cherries in every bites - giving you a crunchy feel when eating it. The cheese brownie was quite special and the cheese taste was not that strong. There was also this Earl Grey cake where the Earl Grey taste will linger around your tongue after you ate it. The green tea lime cake was refreshing and nice. 

Cakes

Last but not least, here comes the chocolate fondue and fruits to end off the day. 

Chocolate Fondue

After all the eating, we ordered a Ice Mocha to end off the buffet. A worthy buffet if you are into bread and cakes.

L’Espresso
Goodwood Park Hotel
22 Scotts Road