They've always been welcoming, this place, from the time when they were Traders Hotel, and they're even more so now. Hospitality doesn't begin with the room. It begins with the one who helps you with the bags. It begins with the one who opens your cab door. It begins with the security who guides you through the doors and nods at you.
Here they double up their roles from time to time. :)
Where in the afternoon the previous day upon check-in, you'd might see him waving to you at the entrance, morning the next day you might see him again clearing plates and carrying trays at the restaurant they call J65.
I think it is J65, no?
Funny, I don't think of it in the name of the restaurant. I think of it as the place that everyone goes for breakfast, whether it be their buffet breakfast, or the breakfast of crossiants, sandwiches and coffee to-go.
What I eat, when I do have breakfast here, is pretty much varied, but it generally goes in the combination of both East and West. Depending on my appetite for the morning, sometimes there will be more of the West, where the like of scrambled eggs, sausages, sauteed mushrooms and hash browns make it to my plate. Almost American, except for the toast and the baked beans. I somehow tend to avoid the baked beans. :)
Occasionally there's the Continental, which is, for me, cereals, yogurt and a crossiant. No granola, I'm not that into the chewing stuff, but cornflakes and Rice Krispies and Coco Pops, which I know is meant for the kids but, hey never mind. Sometimes I take a muffin. A really small muffin, which I eat for the sake of wanting the joy of having a muffin for breakfast.
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| Eggs and Fruit |
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| Smoked Salmon |
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| Eggs and fruit cocktail |
I do go for the Asian too. But not wholly. Not the full works, but a bit here, a bit there. So I might take something like half a plate of char kuay teow or mee tai mak, two hard boiled eggs that I dip with salad cream(!), a fried egg, a bit of the laksa soup and maybe a pau or two. I might even take a small bowl of soba because I like soba and it's nice and cold and fun to slurp. But I've not taken a bowl of porridge.
Not so far as I remember.
Maybe it's because I want to take a bit of everything, and a bowl of porridge would bypass it all.
See, that's the charm of buffets. You get to eat a little bit of everything. You get to choose- which is one of the greatest joys of having a buffet. You get to decide whether you want to go all healthy with muesli and salad and fruit and yogurt. You get to decide whether you want it all sugary and sweet with Honey Stars or Koko Crunch and follow it up with potong ice cream and toast with lots of jam. And you get to decide if you want to eat parts of the whole world.
That's what I do- usually. A bit of Asian on this plate. A bit of Continental on the other. A bit of American on the third and there's everything mixed in between. There're staples though. :)
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| Breakfast staples |
Staples that I can't do without no matter what it is that I choose to eat. Like coffee. Good coffee. Good coffee from the machine that lets me choose between espresso, cappuccino and latte. Like juices. Juices that I get to mix between orange and carrot, or orange and pineapple. Like smoked salmon, which I try to go for cos I liked smoked salmon and I eat it either by itself or with scrambled eggs and toast. And like fruits, where there's watermelon and papaya and rock melon and canned peaches and canned sea coconut and fresh plums and pears and bananas.
Bananas are a popular favorite. :) They seem to disappear from the bowl really fast.
Having breakfast here is a relatively relaxed affair. There's no hurry. You don't get cheesed off by staff telling you that breakfast closes in half hour when you're down at 930. (That happened at another place once and never did I go back there again..) Here you don't get much of a view as you do all the action at the lobby, which, if you were sitting at the spot where I was that day, this is what you see.
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| View from My Table |
But there's enough to look around. The restaurant is laid out very square, very neat, very structured, with the quirkiness, the minimalist and even quaint vibes that hit the right notes with xennials and millennials today.
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| Yogurt, Coffee, Cereal & Ice Cream |
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| Tables and Chairs |
But what stands out, really, ain't just the place, renovated or no. What stands out are the F&B crew. I'm not kidding. Somehow their team work stands out over many a place I've been to. Sure, people come and go; sure, staff move around here and there, but what doesn't change is the spirit that they have. They own it, the service, they own the service standards here I'd say, they've got a d*** good one. They're friendly, they're lively, they're gungho, they're efficient and some of them, I'm glad to say, have become, personally, more than just a rep of hospitality.
They have become friends. :)