Teppanyaki Ice Cream, Pea Curry & Chocolate Fountains

Teppanyaki ice-cream, pea curry and chocolate fountains. Where would you find all three? At a buffet of course. We all know Malaysians love buffets. What else could be better than to have everything at your table and being able to flit from sweet back to savoury and cold to hot and back again. I am not a big fan of hotel buffets because I prefer to pay the same price for a great 3-course dinner rather than sampling over 30 less than average dishes. The problem with buffets is that after while, they all start looking and tasting the same from one place to another. Chocolate fountains used to be novelty but now you can find them everywhere. The latest buffet in town is the newly revamped coffee house in Le Meridien Hotel called The Latest Recipe.

Boolicious, Lyrical Lemongrass and I met up for dinner several weeks back. We divided the stations and proceeded to conquer them plate by plate. One of the first plates to arrive back on the table came from the Japanese section, of course. Teppanyaki beef and scallops. The beef was quite sublime! Tender, juicy, buttery and full of flavour. The scallops were a little undercooked but it came with a sinfully creamy sauce. I reckon it might have been a mixture of cheese and mayo. Mmmm! There was also a small variety of freshly rolled sushi and sashimi.

The Indian section was fanbloodytastic! We were really surprised to find such brilliant Indian food at a hotel buffet. Every single dish was very good and not watered down to cater to foreign palates. I think all of us went back for seconds. I asked the cook at the Italian station to make me his special as I just couldn’t choose between the variety of fresh ingredients. All I asked was that it wasn’t creamy. So he made me a squid ink fettucine with assorted seafood. It was light, tasty and just what I wanted.

While Boo and LL busied themselves at the salad section and marveled at all the assorted oils and vinegars, I helped myself to seconds at the Japanese section. This time the scallops were much better. The only disappointing thing in the whole buffet was the dim sum from the Chinese section. The dim sum is not made in house and tastes genuinely foul! They really ought not to serve it at all. The Shanghai noodles in hot and sour broth was delicious. I don’t usually like broths that have been thickened with corn starch but this wasn’t too gooey and was incredible appetizing.

I think we underestimated the buffet and overestimated our stomachs. We made a feeble attempt at the dessert section and stuck mainly to the dark and milk chocolate fountain. The white chocolate fountain had broken down much to LL’s dismay. Still, there were heaps of others waiting for our full bellies. We moved on to the must-try teppanyaki ice cream which is basically where they mix various ingredients of your choice into ice cream. The trick to this is a very cold plate steel which keeps the ice cream from dissolving into a messy rainbow of mush. I picked coconut ice cream and asked for everything he had in his little station. I really liked it because it was so colourful and all the bits added a nice texture to the soft ice cream. All and all, it was pretty good value for RM78++. For those of you who like to eat your money's worth (yes, you know who you are), there are also oysters, prawns and yabbies in the chilled section.

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