Staff Lunch @ Straits Kitchen

Just when morale is starting to dip a little, a staff lunch comes along the way. And so for the sake of a $38+++ buffet lunch, I dragged myself to work.

Back from the Straits Kitchen, and I smell like a concentrated Hawker Centre. This restaurant at Grand Hyatt is a very up-market Hawker Centre serving local fare. Do not come here if you're looking for fresh raw oysters, sashimi, or other famous expensive buffet items.

Here, you'll find a few "stations", each specialising in different Asian cuisine. There is Indian, Chinese and Malay. Outside of these staples, is the extensive dessert station, and other miscellaneous things like popiah, rojak, and assorted juices. One major no-good factor is that coffee and tea is not included in the buffet price. One has to top up another $5+++ to get a cup of kopi. *major sulk*

One review claims that the best cooking came from the Malay section. Well, for today, I have to agree. The last time I went, I was most fascinated by the Indian section. I quite enjoy North Indian cuisine with their naans and papaddums and different types of grill meats, and other veges or curries, and dahl. I like dahl.

This round, the Malay section won with their superb grill food. I tried the chicken and satay, and rendang. Very nice. Would have like to try the grilled sea bass and sting ray. Sea bass serving was too huge, so I didn't dare to take. And stingray was out, everytime I want to go take it.

Chinese section was so-so. But, it's too typical food, like char kway teow, fried rice, roasted meats, fried oyster, etc. So, I didn't think I should waste too much effort sampling the food. The fried rice tasted better than it looked though.

Didn't get to try the rojak, but the popiah was quite nice. The filling is just nice, not very wet nor too dry, and the sweet sauce is very fragrant. Can definitely eat more than one piece.

I'm not a typically sweet-toothed person, but this time, I did try out more desserts. The variety is great. There's ice kanchang (wif abundant fresh cubed mangoes available). There orh-ni (lotus paste) and goreng pisang (assorted type). There's also the ice-cream segment, with choice of wafer or bread. Then there's other desert like gui-lin gao (looks like guilin gao), mango pudding, chin chow, longang almond jelly, sago, with choice of gula melaka and/ or coconut milk, or just plain syrup. There's also assorted kuehs and cakes, and peanut pancake, muah-chee, etc.

The way to close off the lovely lunch was really a nice cup of coffee. Just too bad it's too exhorbitantly priced. Honestly, i would not have paid an extra buck more for coffee, it should come complimentary with the meal.

That said. Every round I make pass the food sections, I ask myself, how am I gonna burn off these?