Ikoi Japanese Restaurant

This post is a place highly recommended by JK. This post doesn't have a lot of pictures. Because this post is about Ikoi Japanese Restaurant, which was serving Japanese ala carte buffet. And it was 11 of us visiting. So, with 11 pax and an ala carte buffet, you can imagine the speed at which we were ordering and wolfing down our food. But I will do my best to describe some of the favorites from my memory.

Sashimi. Really, at $38++, free-flow sashimi is a deal. We started with three plates of mixed sashimi. That meant it came with Salmon, Tuna, Swordfish and a few others. The few others probably included octopus and mackerel, but because we didn't enjoy those as much, they didn't stick in my brain very well. THE SWORDFISH IS AMAZING!!!! Cold, juicy, sweet. I was inhaling swordfish like nobody's business. Even J, who usually don't take sashimi because she dislike the 'fishiness', could try and liked the swordfish. She did ask my opinion which sashimi she should try, and I told her very pointedly, only the swordfish. N, our Dutch intern, loves salmon and tuna. She said back in the Netherlands, Japanese buffet will never include sashimi, so she was going to town with the salmon and tuna. Somehow, all the sashimi lovers were seated at my end of the table. The other end had a few who don't do raw fish or don't do fish in general. So as one of those at the other end observed: "it was entertaining to see sashimi disappearing down your end of the table".

Our table some time in the middle of the meal

They also served a soup in a little tea pot. I'm actually not sure what soup that is, but it's a delicious soup. They also served chawanmushi in the cutest little cup. When placing order here, you pretty much don't need to worry about portions. Because one portion is for one. So for example, grilled salmon. We were expecting the usual restaurant size piece, so we ordered two portions to try. Ended up it was tiny two-mouths slices each. You get the gist.

Things we loved: grilled saba fish, grilled salmon, yakitori, shishamo, soft-shell crab handroll, sushis (that's what the colleagues said. They disappeared so fast I didn't even know we ordered them).

Things we didn't love: tempura were generally so so

We totally ignored the noodles and rice.

We loved this place, and returned with a huge food coma. Needless to say, it was a very unproductive afternoon that day.

Ikoi Japanese Restaurant

Hotel Miramar Singapore
401 Havelock Road
Singapore 169631

Lobby, Main Wing
Phone (65) 6887 3788

Cafe 2000 Seafood and Barbecue Buffet

I love barbecues. Like really really love barbecues. As a teen I was always trying to connive my friends to go chalets because I want to eat barbecues. Or drag them to the now-defunk Marina Bay steamboat barbecues for my birthday dinners. Now, I resort to Korean and Japanese table barbecue restaurants. So when I walked pass this place and smelled the grilling meats, I was besotted. I had to go there. What's nicer than barbecuing your own food? Having others grill it for you and delivered to your table! In unlimited quantities!

So Lynn, her mom and I went for our little tai tai dinner one Friday night. The BBQ buffet is only available on Friday and Saturdays. I made reservation and hung up, didn't even remember to ask about the pricing. Thank goodness it wasn't too unaffordable. The spread was decent. Not a huge variety, but decent. We didn't like the server though. A very snobby guy, who gave us instructions in a very talk-down manner, as if we are stupid. All because Lynn innocently asked if the food outside is the same. We really thought that the BBQ happens outside the restaurant.

So let me try to go through in a more course-sequence correct manner (we took our food in a haphazard sequence actually). Cold dishes first. The cold food section was fresh, served on beds of ice. Prawns, mussels, oysters, Hokkaido crab claws, scallops and crab halves. The prawns were fresh and sweet. I usually dislike oysters that are too fishy, but theirs was fine. The Hokkaido crab claws were sweet, but too troublesome so we didn't go for seconds.

Cold food section

Now the BBQ section. Their system is pretty cute. We were given clips with our table number. So we basically go to the raw food section, take whatever we want, clip the number to the plate, and pass it to the grill staff. They will grill our food, and deliver it to our table. The BBQ food variety was pretty good. Crayfish, prawn, salmon, otah, squid, lamb, beef, chicken, pork etc. It was only during our second round that I notice that what we initially took to be 'decorations' on the ice around the bowls of raw food, were actually real corn and gong gong. So I started picking the 'decorations' to be grilled. And true enough, they were cooked and delivered to us. Gong gong are not often seen, so I was going crazy with picking the decorations. Haaaa. Sorry they aren't very apparent in the photos. I took this photos after a few rounds of picking. =D

Raw seafood to be grilled

Squid and otah (spot the gong gong)

Poultry (spot the gong gong)

The clips with our table number

And tadaa.... our cooked food. I stole the sticks from the chocolate fountain to use to dig my gong gong flesh out. Haaa

Grilled lamb, gong gong and scallops

Now the cooked food. They have a decent spread, and seems to be having some crayfish special. There's crayfish in the cold food, in the BBQ, in the cooked food, and in the yong tau foo section. We found the roast section one of our favorite. We spammed the sausages quite a few times, as well as the ribeye. The guy at the roast section isn't very generous, and only gave us one sausage at the time. So we had to go back a few times.

The other cooked food was quite passable. Lynn's mom love crayfish, so we hung around the crayfish tray until the salted egg crayfish appeared.

Ribeye

Ribs and sausages

Fried fish in sweet and spicy sauce

Pizza and satays

Cereal prawn and roast pork

Salted egg cray fish and crackers

Their noodle section is seafood yong tau foo. You choose your own ingredients, and the type of noodles, and the type of soup. The chef then prepares it your way. I opted for Laksa gravy. Skipped the crayfish though, because I think I had a crayfish overdose.

Seafood yong tau foo

Laksa yong tau foo

Their array of desserts was pretty impressive. But I was too full to explore too much of it. Lynn's mom loved the durian mousse. We tried some of the chocolate fountain. It's... chocolate fountain lor.

Durian mousse

Overall it was a very good meal. We ate til we were stuffed. Lynn feels that she would never be back. It didn't impress her so much that she would want to return. I felt it was ok, and may consider bringing my family back just to try. And for the gong gong. Lol...

Cafe 2000
81 Anson RoadSingapore, 079908+65 6500 6112

Marriott Cafe High Tea

It's SS's birthday, and M suggested a high-tea instead of the usual dinner. A quick google search suggested that Marriott Cafe is a good spot to go. I've been to its dinner buffet before, and my last high tea there was eons ago. Roughly had a good impression of it, so off we go for our tai tai high tea session. No photos for this post, cos when its 5 hungry girls and a buffet spread, the camera is forgotten very quickly. The variety was quite wide. The buffet cost included free-flow juices, soft drinks and coffee/tea.

Appetizers were some limited choices of sushi, salad and cold fresh oysters and boiled prawns. The oysters were fresh, but pretty small. There was yong tau foo with a good variety of choices and three soup bases to choose from - laksa, mee siam or clear chicken broth. Maybe the labeling wasn't good enough. S and M ended up getting bowls of the chicken broth, thinking it was soup for our drinking. Finger food included seafood dumplings, seafood balls, otah, chicken nuggets, chicken sticks, teriyaki chicken wings, and some dim sum. Dim sum was forgettable, but everything else were okay. My chicken wing was not thoroughly cooked, so I barely ate it and made a feedback to their staff. There was a oyster omelette station, a chicken rice station, a popiah and kueh pai tee station and the usual fried noodles, rice, curry vegetables and a selection of sandwiches and pizza.

Juices included calamansi and cranberry juices, and soft drinks were mainly pepsi and pepsi light. Desserts was a good selection of cakes, fruits and 6 flavours of ice creams with a good variety of toppings (though no sauces). Our first jug of milk for our coffee/tea was weird. It was curdled and when I poured it into my tea, I had what looked like soya bean curd floating around my tea. I asked for an exchange and got back only a new jug of milk. Had to make another request for a new cup of tea. The staff here wasn't extremely helpful, and S's utensils kept getting cleared away. She made at least 3 request for new fork or spoon etc. At one point the waiter came back with a fork and asked not-so-patiently whether we needed anything else.

Overall, the buffet had a good spread, but wasn't fantastic. Staff could have been more helpful. But it was a good catch-up session with my girls for a good 3 hours. Moreover, there was a UOB deal of 4 for the price of 3. Nothing here to attract me back for a 2nd visit though.