Café One – Tea Buffet

As a first entry, Cafe One seems like an ideal kick off point. With a 24 hour buffet running from breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner, late-night, teemed with a la carte options, Cafe One forms part of the Park Lane Hotel. Having visited the dinner buffet when it first opened, my mango-obsessed friend insisted that the mango tea buffet seemed like a good idea and a reservation was duly made.

A confirmation call was given 24 hours before our reservation and warning given that the table would only be held for 10 minutes. So, the following day, we arrived, 3:32pm (the buffet starts at 3:30) to our table.

We had a glimpse of the chocolate fountain at the entrance (+1 immediately given) and lead to our table. A quick tour around revealed a small sushi section, salad section (quite a poor selection for a low cost item), a hot foods section (comprising of 2 Indian dishes of tandoori chicken and curry potato salad, a Thai dish of minced lamb larb, a Japanese dish of beef wrapped enoki mushrooms and a variety of Chinese hot foods and dim sum. There was also a noodle station, a sweet soup section and of course, the dessert section.

As my friend noted with much disappointment, there was a distinct lack of mangoness to the place but plates were filled (starting with the sushi first, of course) and we sat down to begin. I started with 2 pieces of scallop sushi (could have been fresher with not such gummy rice) and 1 piece of mackerel sush (definitely could be fresher!) along with a small piece of tandoori chicken with mango chutney, some lamb larb with cucumber raita. The larb and tandoori went down well but it was immediately decided to forgo any more sushi. The hot food selection consisted of salt and pepper salmon head (quite alright although not hot enough), seasonal vegetables (cooked to some limp state), braised tofu with fish meat, fried chicken stuffed with little bits of ham, breakfast pork sausages (?!?), and the dim sum selection was decent with har gau (wrapper looked awful but apparently was quite good and chewy), sui mai, lotus seed bun and beef gau.

The noodle section had a choice of three kinds of noodles: ho fun, lai fun and yellow noodles with a choice of ingredients including 3 kinds of squid, lobster ball and beef ball accompanied by either baby bak choi or yau choi and plain soup or spicy soup. I opted for the spicy soup which was very plain and flavourless, with undercooked lai fun and soggy beef balls, overall, not worth trying although the line up for the noodles is tempting.

The best part, by far was the dessert station where there was a soft-serve ice cream station with chocolate, vanilla and mix flavor either in a cone or cup, with a variety of toppings, then pancakes and waffles, in addition to the dragonfruit, honeydew and marshmallows to dip in the chocolate fountain. There was the usual assortment of cakes and puddings, along with fruit. Upon questioning the waitress, it was found that the lack of mangoness was due to being in the wrong place! The mango tea buffet was downstairs in a different restaurant altogether although still part of the Park Lane Hotel.

Overall the food was ok and for the price of $120 a head, it was decent with a nice setting, friendly service and a nice cup of tea/coffee. Value for money is there if you bring along a big appetite and a love of desserts.

Food presentation: 6/10
Food selection: 7/10
Food quality: 5/10
Setting: 7/10
Service: 8/10