Aqua Marine @Marina Mandarin

Hello! (:

Guess what? I think Jeffrey and I have found the buffet with the most bang for the buck (at least for now)! =) We went to Aqua Marine for a weekend Asian buffet lunch a couple of weeks ago and it was nothing short of fantastic! (: For $38/ person (after some credit card discount), we managed to feast on a wide array of mouth-watering Asian dishes! While the quality of some dishes could have been improved, majority of the dishes were of average to excellent quality! It's definitely a place that we would recommend: not only is the buffet reasonably priced, the wonderful ambience of the restaurant and the relatively long lunch duration (12-4pm) are additional reasons to try this buffet!

The empty outdoor seating area. Every single diner chose to sit indoors on that very Sunday because the weather, unlike the past week, was excruciatingly warm that day.

Table setting. I love the blue tablemat! (: Fits the restaurant's name.

Lots of curves and 'waves'.

There're protruding "water droplets" on their blue glasses! (:

Black coffee. I'm guessing it's an acquired taste because I don't seem to like it very much.

I prefer something sweeter and milkier like bandung! It was lovely. I'd three cups of it!

I think the lettuce is too big! It covered the rest of Jeffrey's appetizers!

Lettuce, mayo egg, tuna on bread, smoked salmon on bread and corn in the middle. The mini sandwiches (tuna and smoked salmon) were fantastic. I went for a second helping!

Salmon sashimi! Yumyum. The guy at the sashimi counter was very nice because he chose a relatively big piece of sashimi and sliced it up for me! The sashimi was very fresh, definitely something that you should try!

Plateful of sushi. There was a relatively wide variety of sushi so there's a high chance of you finding a particular type of sushi that you like.

Bak Kut Teh/ Pork Rib Soup. The soup was supposedly "sweet" so I guess it wasn't too bad. This is the first buffet that we've to that serves bak kut teh. Heh.

Some kind of meat, curry fish, dumplings, sambal vegetables, rice, mixed vegetables and steamed egg with spinach in the middle. The steamed egg with spinach was fantastic! (: Really liked the combination.

Some vegetable, prawn crackers, fried rice and char kway teow! The char kway teow was much better than expected! We ate quite a bit of it! (:

Briyani rice, fried chicken wing, prawn crackers, chicken rice and some chicken.

DIY-rojak and smoked salmon slices. The DIY rojak was a hot favourite! Many people kept going to that station to stir up their own rojak!

Thai glass noodles, kueh pie tee, vegetable dumpling with crab meat sauce, some vegetables and salad you tiao. The thai glass noodles were very flavourful. I liked the idea of having crab meat sauce with dumplings but the dumpling skin was too tough! =S

More crackers, charkwayteow and fried chicken!

Claypot rice. I think the only saving grace was its ingredients. The rice was rather uncooked and the sauce wasn't aromatic at all =(

Carrot cake! This was only average. We felt that it was rather bland, it could have been saltier.

The laksa was good! The laksa gravy had just enough spiciness and it wasn't watery as well. Definitely a must-try.

Oooh Aqua Marine's dessert range is definitely something to rave about. I loved how there are all these little platters of goodness for me to pick up and put on my plate! Chocolate mousse, durain pengyat with corn, chocolate cake, chocolate tart. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, on this plate was gastronomically pleasing.

Lemon meringue, durian roll, cheese cake and brownie.

Yellow bean/ tao suan. This fell below standard so please avoid it to avoid disappointment.

Jeffrey's ice kachang.

One last salmon sandwich for the road, along with slices of fruits.

We really enjoyed the food and the dining experience at Aqua Marine. I urge you to visit Aqua Marine and try their food for yourself! (:

Cafe Vic @Carlton

Hello! Today's been a long but fulfilling day =) Really need to thank the good friends I've in school who keep me sane!

Anyway, I'd like to share some photos that Jeffrey and I took during our buffet lunch session a couple of weeks ago before I head to bed! We went to Cafe Vic for a dessert buffet last year and it was pretty good so we decided to try out their weekend lunch buffet.

Cafe Vic is currently undergoing renovations so we were warned that it may get a little noisy after the official lunch period (12-2pm). True enough, the drilling started almost immediately after 2pm but thankfully we'd our fill by then so we called for the bill and left before our eardrums could get hurt.

Cafe Vic has a relatively wide array of 'starters' dishes, which in my opinion were pretty good (:

Clockwise from green vegetable leaves at '12 o'clock': Coleslaw, Potato salad (yum!), fruit salad (made up of mango, apple and strawberry bits.. YUM!) and Jellyfish.

Left to right: Green leaves, sushi and ham sandwich

Vegetable sandwich and egg croissant

Coleslaw, Potao salad and 2 kinds of sushi (P.S. They do not refill their sushis very often so there was a shortage of sushis at one point in time!)

Cold Soba. (It wasn't nice so please don't take it!)

Salmon sashimi and california maki! (I LOVE salmon sashimi with thick wasibi mixture! Gosh. And I was quite upset that there was only ONE california maki left when I went to the sushi area! Boo.)

Dragon Ball aka Fried Prawn Ball with more salmon sashimi!

Fried fish fingers, Potato Salad, Coleslaw, Jellyfish, Fruit Salad. (Jeffrey and I were amused that they served fried fish fingers as one of their dishes.. we could have cooked that at home! But they tasted nice so it's alright.)

Pork ribs(?), Chicken, Dragon ball and Siew Mai.

Fried Potato Wedges, Roasted Duck, Roasted Beef with Sauce. (The fried potato wedges were cold but somehow I finished them anyway.. Must have been really greedy!)

Fried Fish Fingers, Fried Carrot Cake, Stirfry Green Vegetables and Fish! (We got SO excited when we saw fried carrot cake because we NEVER had them at a buffet before! The carrot cake tasted average but it was much better than expected! The vegetables were pretty well-cooked because they were still pretty crunchy when eaten.)

A 'Fried' Platter: Fried Fish Fingers, Fried Rice, Fried Carrot Cake, Fried Dumplings. The fried rice was surprisingly tasty despite looking very bland and ordinary (:

An assortment of cakes: cheesecake, chocolate cake, mango cake and avocado cake. Apart from the avocado cake, the rest were fantastic, especially the chocolate cake.

Black Sesame Paste. (It tasted really terrible. It wasn't blended properly, it had a bland taste and the consistency was just plain wrong.)

Little platelets of goodness: Mango mousse, some kind of creamy thing with raspberry perched at the top, custard with blueberry. Everything was wonderfully delicious!

Jeffrey's version of ice kachang, which consists of nothing but ice and syrup! =)

Honeydew Sago. (Evidently, there were other fruits in it as well such as mango and strawberry bits! This was surprisingly refreshing!)

A scoop of chocolate icecream. (This is possibly the worst scoop of chocolate icecream that we've tasted in any of our buffets. Enough said.)

A glorious piece of chocolate cake. (To make up for the less-than-desirable chocolate icecream, I told Jeffrey to have a nice slice of chocolate cake before we left the restaurant and I'm thankful that we did! It's always nice to end our meals on a pleasant note (: )

This buffet only costs us $32/pax after discount and both of us felt that the price paid was pretty reasonably but we would have preferred a wider variety/ better quality of food/ a combination of both. Having said that, it was nice to have a slow, relaxing Sunday lunch at the relatively empty Cafe Vic restaurant (: If you plan to go there any time soon, please try to go during the 12-2pm window period so that you can avoid the drilling and what not.

Will update again soon! (: TGIF!

Melt @Marina Oriental

Hello! (: The weekend is finally almost here and I can't be more thankful for that. I'm looking forward to the Dec holidays though I haven't made any plans yet.. I guess it's just good to take a breather from school.

Anyway, Jeffrey and I went to Melt a couple of weeks ago for a Sunday brunch/ lunch buffet. We've read many good reviews about this place so we decided to give it a shot! It is located at Marina Oriental Hotel, which was very crowded on the day we went to Melt because there were FOUR wedding receptions being held concurrently! Gosh. We weaved our way through the crowds of people as quickly as we could so that we could stuff ourselves at Melt!
Initially, we thought that there were very few patrons at Melt because it looked pretty empty from outside. Little did we know that Melt has a HUGE seating capacity and it was relatively packed inside! We took delight in being members of a large and relatively boisterous Sunday lunch/ brunch crowd.
We had the pleasure of sitting right opposite the desserts area, which explains why I could take this shot. Actually, the desserts area is a squarish place with three sides filled with food so what you're seeing is only ONE side of the square! Yes that's how much desserts they have! I felt like I was in desserts-heaven! =)
Nice table setting. Amazing how a single flower can make the entire table setting look more presentable.
Glass of water on table mat with our cutlery. They provided a small white plate for us to rest our used utensils so I'm pretty pleased about it (:

Other empty tables. I love the "homey" feel of this restaurant.

A small dish of water for us to wash our hands after eating seafood! Neither Jeffrey nor I got our hands dirty so we didn't use it at all.

Orange juice. One 'special' thing about Melt's buffet is that you can choose to have the free-flow soft drinks and fruit juices buffet or the free-flow champagne buffet. Since Jeffrey and I don't drink alcohol, we chose the former.
Guava juice. (There were many other kinds of juices and you can even ask the lady at the counter to make mixed-fruit juices for you! Splendid!)

Here are some photos of the food that we ate that day. There was really TOO much food to try and I think we only managed to try half of the dishes served that day!

Sushi, lettuce, prawn crackers.

Smoked salmon, papaya salad, fruit salad, lettuce with salad sauce.

Cheese Fondue! This was time we tried cheese fondue and it's quite nice! =)

Seafood in cream sauce, panfried fish and shepherd's pie.

Duck, pork, some kinda pita and nasi briyani (there were just too many kinds of meat to remember)
Fish chunk, fried potato ball, curry vegetable, curry potato, basmati and two types of indian sauces. (I loved the indian food section, everything there was FANTASTIC!)

More fish chunks and basmati. I couldn't get enough of indian food so I went for numerous rounds!

Meat feast! With nasi briyani and crackers.

Long beans, baked beans, seafood in cream sauce, panfried fish, potato gratin. The Western food section was also very lovely. It was a pity we didn't get to try their made-on-the-spot-burger set cos we were simply too full. It looked good though!

More briyani rice, crackers, mashed potato and prawn.

The BEST on-the-spot cream-based pasta we've ever tasted. The cream was thick and tasty, unlike other cook-on-the-spot pastas. We LOVED it!

I finally couldn't resist my temptation to get a cup of sprite though I've had many glasses of fruit juices already.

Like I mentioned, their dessert section is astoundingly huge and there's such a wide range of desserts that for once, I couldn't finish trying most of whatever I wanted to try! I can't remember what desserts I ate so I'll just post some photos and let them do the talking:

An assortment of cakes (there were many more varieties!)

Warm chocolate cake in a cup. This tasted EXTREMELY sinful but it made me feel SO good eating it!

Their famous waffle with icecream. They also had crepes but we didn't have enough space for that =(

A plateful of dessert-'shooters'. You simply can't get enough of them!

Although we only managed to try about half (or less) of the dishes, we were completely stuffed after our meal! We decided to call for the bill and when it came, I got a shock because our buffet cost $88/person AFTER discount! Oh my goodness. We've never spent so much on a meal before! Thankfully, both of us felt that it was worth our money because the quantity and quality of food were excellent (: Honestly speaking, I was pretty thankful that Jeffrey and I decided to have half a lobster each during the course of our meal because it helped to justify the hefty lunch bill to some extent.

What one of our lobsters looked like, with some salmon sashimi for company.

Lesson learnt: check buffet price before deciding to go for it! (: Alrighty, that's all for now, will update again soon!

Have a pleasant weekend everyone! (: