A friend introduced me to this hotel restaurant a couple of months ago.
As always I had begun a little skeptical- I mean, Dorsett @ Cantonment is not known for its restaurant- but now that I've eaten here a few times I have come to appreciate the structure, the menu, and the function.
Not all buffets need to be aesthetic and elaborate.
Some just need to be present, available, and fun.
Fun is how I would describe the buffet here at Lucent.
It might not be the best of all worlds, but it is, at least, the best of some.
This is the place to come if you're a lover of simplicity seafood.
By that what it means is that you're not going to find mountains of baby lobsters, crayfish, freshly shucked oysters of two types, shiny fresh mussels, and prawns of various sizes all for the taking.
What it does mean, however, is that you will have prawns, baby lobsters, lala shellfish, mussels, the occasional scallop, and freshly shucked oysters of one kind.
My friend makes no bones that he comes here for the oysters.
I, on the other hand, am more keen on the hotpot, and whatever ingredients I can throw into the small cute little pot in the center of the table.
What's funny, however, is that I find myself needing to be very creative when it comes to the hotpot.
Not because they don't have enough ingredients but because theirs are all cut into small cute little pieces that I either have to take a lot of (to fill the pot) or take a lot of each and everything to make the pot look stuffed and full.
That would be good if I take everything that they have.
Except I don't.
I won't take foods that I won't eat, so that leaves me with selections up to only three, or four.
Of these, however, I do take a lot, so in my pot this evening there were scattering heaps of Chinese cabbage, quail eggs, black fungus- for extra nutrition, cheese tofu- for the fun, and two big prawns (that I knew I might eat, might not eat, but I chose it for the color)
I helped myself to a lot of cabbage this evening.
I wanted the warmth of them vegetables inside my mouth.
But I also wanted the carbs.
So from their cooked food section I had a couple plates holding sushi, what I think is a piece of battered prawn, and a small serving of tom yum bey tai mak noodles (mice's tails) that looked too nice to not try.
Sushi was probably my most favorite choice for today.
You could say I was hungry.
And there's nothing better of a quick bite to have a few pieces of aburi salmon sushi, a few pieces of what looks like California roll but has salmon on top.
So hungry I was this evening that I ate up most of the sushi rice.
Yeah, all them pieces.
Those that I didn't finish I dropped them into the soup to make a modified version of pao fan, and I got to say, tasted really good, especially at the end after the prawns had been boiled, and all the other ingredients had been cooked.
This evening I also helped myself to a bit of the fish.
Not just any normal fish, but grouper, or white bass, something, definitely one of the more expensive fishes that I wouldn't normally order when eating elsewhere. This fish came served with a little bit of cream.
Then I had a plate of sashimi- we got both salmon and tuna- dipping them in soy sauce as well as sesame oil (that we brought from home). If I'm not wrong there were two plates we took this evening, of which this is one.
Sometimes I don't know if I prefer tuna or salmon. Tuna does have that color and brightness that cheers me up, and it goes very well with the sesame oil, soy sauce and wasabi same way that salmon does too.
Of course I had my fair share of oysters.
My friend won't let me leave here without eating at least one.
He probably had at least seven or eight, if not ten or twelve.
Me, I stuck to two.
Not because they weren't fresh or too small, but (unlike him) oysters fill me up easily and I would have eaten more but I still wanted to have ingredients from my pot plus take some other of their cooked food.
One of the things I wanted from the counter were these huge poached eggs. So my friend got a serving for me, and I ate them with more of those tom yum bey tai mak that by now I had really come to appreciate.
I was getting full by now but there is always room for dessert when it comes to a buffet like this so we went for a cup of ice cream each- he took his usual chocolate, I had strawberry- and I got meself a plate of cakes.
There was a gula melaka cake (with coconut flakes), a red velvet cake, and a cute little slice of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting on top.