The First Post

Some of us are fortunate to have very good colleagues, and from that group, few of us are fortunate to have great colleagues who can also be considered friends. I happen to think I fall into that category. Setting up this website was due, in no small part, to listening to their suggestions to document my greedy spend-money-to-make-yourself-fat habits. I'd like to introduce my (currently non-existent) readers to these great people.

Using the same words of a great Chinese demi-god, I've named them Wan, Too and Twee for convenience. This is us on a weekday afternoon having lunch at Orchard with the boss on leave.

The lunch venue was the 10 at Claymore, the former Hotel Negara which is now under the supervision of Pan Pacific. We were enticed by the 1-for-1 Citibank deal, which meant that the lunch buffet of $29++ came up to $17 all in per head. Well, actually it turned out to be a lunch treat courtesy of the gallant Too. (Thanks T!)

This was probably the smallest buffet I had ever been to in a hotel. The reviews were decent, but we were quite surprised to see the restaurant so full, and the spread so small. The photo below shows the full extent of the mains; 10 dishes (5 serving containers in all):

The entrees consisted of a salad bar (see below):

Together with a bread section, that was all they had to it! Even the one single serving of soup was served to us (interpreted as second servings were not allowed when the waiter removed my bowl with the spooon) was rather miserly, although the flavour of the borscht was pretty good.

To be fair, the mains were quite decent in terms of quality:

There were grilled prawns, roast chicken, lamb koftas, beef rump accompanied by broccoli (boring) and cheesy buttery potatoes.

Perhaps the dessert was the best part: a huge chocolate fountain and a relatively good spread of sweets including chocolate mousse and white chocolate cake.

Sadly, the coffee (from a machine) was poor. The machine ran out of milk, and I should have been adequately warned when the waiter ran off to get some and came back with a UHT packet.

All in, the food was of decent quality, but considering that we had come with the expectation of pigging out at a buffet, it was somewhat sad. Not quite worth the thrill of venturing out to Orchard on a weekday.