Last couple of times have seen us have more high teas than dinners over at Marriott Café, and although it really makes no difference to me- I love my high teas, thank you- it is quite cool to be able to have something like freshly shucked oysters on the menu.
More so for my Co-Diner, I suppose, who loves the freshly-shucked oysters and eats them by the plates raw with nothing else but a wedge of lemon.
Me, I tend to go for the salmon sashimi, the cooked food, sometimes the soup, and most certainly the dessert, which is, basically, everything that's present on the buffet table.
I normally start with a plate of sashimi, and I take salmon and only salmon with the wasabi and soy sauce. There was a time when I would gobble down plates of these, but in recent times I've spread the variety out a bit more. Sometimes I take a bit of sushi, sometimes I don't. Along with the sashimi, I sometimes take the smoked ones as well, because they just go so well with cheese and there are times when I want a wee bit of cheese as some sort of starter.
Cooked food comes next, and I tend to grab a mix of whatever's available. There's often variety on the Marriott menu, so I don't really know for sure what it is that I'll get. This time there was pearl barley in some sort of cream sauce, so I took that, simply because I love the chewy taste of pearl barley and it is pretty unusual. There was this really soft, smooth fish slices with a citrusy sauce, so I took that too. A slice of roast beef with berry sauce, a bit of rosemary r0asted chicken, and a bowl of mushroom soup completed the western portion of the meal.
Over on the Asian side, there was chye tow kuay, of which I helped myself to quite a few pieces, simply because they looked chunkily attractive in their serving bowl. There was Hokkien noodles too, so I had a bit of that, and then there were steamed crystal paus done Teochew style, which I love for its chewy texture and its chives, so I had three, or four of those too.
It was back to the seafood after that- a couple of prawns that I deshelled myself, and crayfish. It's funny, I'm lazy to deshell prawns anywhere else, even at seafood restaurants, but here I don't mind. Even if I get a little squeamish, I just grin and rip off the head, the legs and the shell. Same goes for the crayfish. I won't eat crayfish anywhere else, except here. Elsewhere the sight of it on the plate terrifies me but here somehow I don't feel frightened. Maybe the warm ighting in the Café gives it a much softer look, maybe because there is quite a bit of meat on the crayfish here that I don't mind digging out with my knife, or maybe because there's Thousand Island sauce for me to slather the prawns and crayfish over.
In between all of this I was still helping myself to the oysters the Co-Diner brings over, but I always leave space for any second helpings of the day's favorites that I might have. This time I think I went back for more steamed crystal paus, and by the time I finished the 2nd one, it was just the right time, and space, for dessert.
Now, dessert is generally one of the main things of any buffet dinner I go to, but at Marriott Café, I make it as important as a main, because their desserts are really, really good.
They've got the locally made kuehs. They've got mousse of various flavors each in their little plastic cups. They've got cakes all sliced into sizeable portions (not tiny squares!) and which include cheesecake and butter sponge cakes. They've got a fantastic ice cream selection with flavors like chocolate, strawberry, mango, mint and cookies and cream that you can eat with cones or bowls, and as many toppings as one may like. Now they've even included a chocolate fountain with marshmallows and fruits on skewers for the taking. But the one dessert that distinguishes Marriott's offerings over any others elsewhere is the sticky date pudding- and that is a must have.
Never mind how full you already are.
So I had the sticky date pudding sans the vanilla sauce.
I had a slice of chocolate hazelnut mousse cake as well, and because I'm the type who cannot resist anything that is flavoured lychee, I had two little slices of lychee rose cake that truly had the distinct taste of the lychee fruit together with the gentle, delicate hints of rose.
More so for my Co-Diner, I suppose, who loves the freshly-shucked oysters and eats them by the plates raw with nothing else but a wedge of lemon.
Me, I tend to go for the salmon sashimi, the cooked food, sometimes the soup, and most certainly the dessert, which is, basically, everything that's present on the buffet table.
I normally start with a plate of sashimi, and I take salmon and only salmon with the wasabi and soy sauce. There was a time when I would gobble down plates of these, but in recent times I've spread the variety out a bit more. Sometimes I take a bit of sushi, sometimes I don't. Along with the sashimi, I sometimes take the smoked ones as well, because they just go so well with cheese and there are times when I want a wee bit of cheese as some sort of starter.
Cooked food comes next, and I tend to grab a mix of whatever's available. There's often variety on the Marriott menu, so I don't really know for sure what it is that I'll get. This time there was pearl barley in some sort of cream sauce, so I took that, simply because I love the chewy taste of pearl barley and it is pretty unusual. There was this really soft, smooth fish slices with a citrusy sauce, so I took that too. A slice of roast beef with berry sauce, a bit of rosemary r0asted chicken, and a bowl of mushroom soup completed the western portion of the meal.
Over on the Asian side, there was chye tow kuay, of which I helped myself to quite a few pieces, simply because they looked chunkily attractive in their serving bowl. There was Hokkien noodles too, so I had a bit of that, and then there were steamed crystal paus done Teochew style, which I love for its chewy texture and its chives, so I had three, or four of those too.
It was back to the seafood after that- a couple of prawns that I deshelled myself, and crayfish. It's funny, I'm lazy to deshell prawns anywhere else, even at seafood restaurants, but here I don't mind. Even if I get a little squeamish, I just grin and rip off the head, the legs and the shell. Same goes for the crayfish. I won't eat crayfish anywhere else, except here. Elsewhere the sight of it on the plate terrifies me but here somehow I don't feel frightened. Maybe the warm ighting in the Café gives it a much softer look, maybe because there is quite a bit of meat on the crayfish here that I don't mind digging out with my knife, or maybe because there's Thousand Island sauce for me to slather the prawns and crayfish over.
In between all of this I was still helping myself to the oysters the Co-Diner brings over, but I always leave space for any second helpings of the day's favorites that I might have. This time I think I went back for more steamed crystal paus, and by the time I finished the 2nd one, it was just the right time, and space, for dessert.
Now, dessert is generally one of the main things of any buffet dinner I go to, but at Marriott Café, I make it as important as a main, because their desserts are really, really good.
They've got the locally made kuehs. They've got mousse of various flavors each in their little plastic cups. They've got cakes all sliced into sizeable portions (not tiny squares!) and which include cheesecake and butter sponge cakes. They've got a fantastic ice cream selection with flavors like chocolate, strawberry, mango, mint and cookies and cream that you can eat with cones or bowls, and as many toppings as one may like. Now they've even included a chocolate fountain with marshmallows and fruits on skewers for the taking. But the one dessert that distinguishes Marriott's offerings over any others elsewhere is the sticky date pudding- and that is a must have.
Never mind how full you already are.
So I had the sticky date pudding sans the vanilla sauce.
I had a slice of chocolate hazelnut mousse cake as well, and because I'm the type who cannot resist anything that is flavoured lychee, I had two little slices of lychee rose cake that truly had the distinct taste of the lychee fruit together with the gentle, delicate hints of rose.
