A friend told me about this Japanese ala carte buffet at this restaurant called KUMO in Alexandra Park Hotel's retail area, said we could go try.
I'm someone who doesn't mind a good buffet whenever there's one, so we went.
It's an interesting place, this retail area of Alexandra Park Hotel.
At first glance you don't know what to make of it.
There're a couple of eateries- a zichar place (with indoor aircon seating right in the mall), a roti prata chain, and then there's this- KUMO.
What makes this restaurant interesting is that whilst it doesnt look like a huge, fanciful restaurant, there're enough dishes to whet your appetite, and you don't need to worry that they'll be of mediocre quality.
Like this Sashimi Moriawase that came to us served thickly cut and ice cold.
There's little that can go wrong with a plate of sashimi, especially when there's squid, tuna, salmon and another variety of fish served alongside with it.
We had a lovely time chomping through the thickly-cut slices of cold, fresh sashimi, dipping it in a mixture of soy sauce and wasabi.
It is, after all, not often that I get to have such thick slices of salmon sashimi and tuna sashimi.
What's strange is that I had expected them to be hard to digest, and hard to chew.
But these fish weren't.
In fact quite easy they were to eat.
Nevertheless, after two servings of Moriawase (yes, that's how much we ate), we decided we had sufficient of squid and tuna and the white colored fish (I can't remember what it was), so ordered a plate of just Salmon Sashimi instead.
I'm still a little overwhelmed at how thick and chonky those slices were.
One thing though, they weren't as chilled and cold I had wished them to be.
Still, they were great, and we ate our way slowly through these thick slices, savoring the taste of the salmon with wasabi and soy sauce.
Of course we didn't just go for the raw fish alone.
A bit silly, otherwise.
We also went for the cooked food, which we weren't intending to miss out.
So there was an order for chicken kaarage- it turned out to be a single piece- then a bowl of agedashi tofu, a bowl of stir-fried beef, a piece of deep fried pumpkin, and tempura prawns.
My friend liked the agedashi tofu.
I liked the deep fried pumpkin and the tempura prawns.
Pumpkins are one of my favorite vegetables, and as much as I like them stewed, deep fried ones are even more delicious. Prawns, on the other hand, seem to be better tasting when coated with tempura batter, and I ate most of these pieces here all on my own.
There weren't many other dishes that we ordered after this.
There was another bowl of stir-fried beef- we liked the onions.
There was an order of two potato croquettes- all creamy and warm and soft.
Then we decided to have two servings of fried mushrooms, which, to our surprise, turned out to be a serving much larger than what we'd expected.
Not that we were complaining, though.
Especially since mushrooms are shared favorites and we always welcome deep fried mushrooms whenever opportunity comes for us to have some.
These deep fried mushrooms here marked the end of our mains for this meal.
But there was still complimentary dessert.
No ice cream though.
Instead we got a matcha daifuku. :)