You know, I won't be forgetting the dinner that I had here at Westin Singapore any time soon.
Not because the meal was a buffet (even though, yes, it was so) but because I had been wanting to drop in to this hotel for the longest time ever but never had the chance to do so.
I can't say I am very familiar with The Westin- it has, after all, been many many years since I last stayed at this hotel brand when it was still back at the Raffles City site, but I have wondered how this new one at MBFC be like, and I have wondered how it be looking like.
In that sense, then, I'm thankful for the view.
Especially since not everyone who came for dinner this evening snagged a table by the window the way we did.
And it isn't every day that one gets to look out to the sea, the solo island in the middle of the sea, the sky, the clouds, the highway, and the port terminal of which I don't know it's name.
At first glance it might look like all these pictures are the same, but in fact they were taken at different times and a close look will reveal minute changes that we'd otherwise not bother to see.
More importantly of course was the food.
I didn't manage to get pictures of everything that I ate, but here's a sampler.
One of the first plates I took had a slice of beef (with horseradish mustard), a handful of stir-fried noodles (I think it was Ee Mian) and a couple of mantous that I took a bowl of chili crab sauce for.
I can't remember whether the beef had a strong flavor, but it certainly was tender, and I had no difficulty chewing through it. Together with the horseradish one got a bit of grilled gamey warmth with the tart, slightly spicy condiment.
What I liked, if I'm not wrong, were the noodles.
They were savory, not very salty, and every bite gave me a taste of the soy sauce (or whatever sauce) that seemed like it had coated over every strand of noodle.
Of course one can't go wrong with fried mantous and chili crab sauce, both of which complemented each other very well. Would've been lovely if the sauce were thicker, then again, it might not have picked up so well.
After this there were oysters.
One cannot come to a buffet without taking freshly shucked oysters (if there be any), and especially if they be fat, juicy ones like the ones they serve here.
It's recommended that one have oysters with lemon or tabasco sauce.
We like ours with vinegar.
Apparently it helps with the digestion, and aids easing the taste of the brine.
For this meal I think we took more than two plates, but it's been a while, and I can't remember.
I know I took a fair bit of seafood though.
Like these crayfish which, I have to admit, at other buffets I usually don't.
It's not because there wasn't anything else to eat.
But it was because I wanted to have foods that I knew I would not be able to have outside of such a buffet offering, and so even though the roast duck and roast meat looked really good, even though the platter of salmon in cream seemed enticing, I had to calibrate and curate what I was having this evening.
I'm going to say that I pretty much enjoyed this crayfish.
Yes, there have been times when I've gotten a bit squeamish at the legs and the shell and the green green thing that people say is roe and is actually nice to eat, but this time, with the aid of mayonnaise and Thousand Island salad cream, I simply ignored the legs, ignored the feelers and tried to give myself a lovely time pulling out the meat from the shell (rather barbarically), slathering it generously before happily eating it.
Perhaps what I liked about these crayfish here were that they were extremely chilled and cold. It didn't matter that I took my time pulling the meat off the shell. Even when I came to the last piece, it was still cold.
Same too it were for the salmon sashimi, which, for this evening I'm not sure whether there was salmon belly or just the salmon alone.
Whichever it was, the slices were thin enough, the flesh was firm, the sashimi itself was chilled, and there was no odd odd fishy taste like some other less-popular places might have served.
So firm was the sashimi that I helped myself to a few pieces of the Aburi salmon sushi too.
Somewhere after this plate of sashimi back I went to the buffet counter, trying to make up my mind with the cooked food offerings this time.
To be honest there was a lot to choose from.
Here at Seasonal Tastes there was a pasta station, a soup station, a bread station, a cheese station, plus a salad bar and all the other cooked foods ranging from the Italian to the Western to the Eastern.
I wasn't sure what I ought to eat, so where I might have had stir-fried vegetables Chinese style, or fried rice, or even wok-fried pieces of fish swimming about in some sort of gravy, I went for a bowl of lobster bisque (it came recommended), another tong-ful of stir fried noodles (yes, they were hard to resist), and another dish which I too suddenly cannot remember.
At the end of the meal there was of course dessert where at their round dessert counter I helped myself to a variety of cakes- there was cheesecake and red velvet cake, if I'm not wrong, plus a couple of gummy sweets, some candy, and a cup of gelato, which, instead of one, I ought to have taken two.
But I had gotten a little full by then, what with the pre-prepared kueh pie tee (the chefs actually filled the little cups for you) and popiah that I know is easy to find all around the country but for some reason this evening I found a little hard to resist.
