Garden Buffet - The Star, Pyrmont

Last Sunday was a wet one. I can't take my mom around the city as she hates the rain and it is troublesome to sightseeing in that weather. So I decided to take her to have lunch in The Star - Garden Buffet. I didn't expect the place to be so full on a Sunday. Apparently there were a couple of birthday celebrations happening, no wonder the place was pact of people.

Garden Buffet is one of my favourite buffet places in Sydney. Even though it is pricey, but paying a visit occasionally wouldn't hurt :) Garden Buffet serves a variety of different cuisines. Some dishes are fixed such as the Chinese and Italian cuisine as well the Roast meat and the other varies depending on the day. Sometimes they have Morrocon dishes, Indian Dishes and many others I couldn't think of. 

This time when I visited, they have chicken porridge and also Tom yum Noodle soup :) And most importantly, they serve fresh prawns everyday. Sometimes I come here just because I am craving for their prawns, eaten with the creamy seafood sauce.. :) 

The dessert here also varies to keep the place exciting. Lucky for us, that day, they have the chocolate fondue set up.. My sister was beaming with happiness to see the fondue and can't hardly wait to gulp it with marshmallow!

Round no1, I got a bit of everything, to start with is the fresh prawns with seafood salad and marinated mussels in tomato sauce. The I moved on to the Chinese dishes, I got the soy mussels which is uhmazing! fried noodles, Hainanese Chicken and Fried Tofu Crab..

Next is steamed fish fillet with cauliflower cooked in cumin and pine nuts which is another stand out dish, also slowcooked beef which is alright. Last but not least at the bottom right of the pic is from the Italian side, I got the fungi pizza, tried a bit of the pumpkin ravioli with Carbonara sauce and spagbol, can never resist spagbol!

To nearly end my meals, I got some salad. yeah I know, salad should be starter ;P But hey, there's nothing wrong with that ^^ Also tried a bit of the chicken tangine with wild oriental rice, Lamb tandoori which is yuummmmoooo and Osso Bucco (not my fav)... The soup of the day is potato and cauliflower soup but unfortunately, they are heavy handed with the onions that the whole soup got overpowered. 

This is what the Tomyum Noodle soup looks like. The soup is pretty mild and herby, served with rice noodle, beansprouts and a couple of fish ball. And below is the chicken porridge. Didn't taste the porridge just stole it from my sis for the pic :p

And the dessert, I got the pistachio slice cake which I don't have a pic of it. But above is what Bebski got.. Strawberry panna cotta, passionfruit parfait, mango pudding which is delicious and fruity!

Yes the Gondos really know how to eat. We collect the food on our table and then we start diggin' :) And yes, I do need to work out hard to burn those calories off ;p

Always have a good time dining in Garden Buffet despite the crowd and sometimes the queue. The food is well presented, and when you're lucky, you can taste their amazing lamb cutlet which unfortunately I've only came across it once. The staff is attentive despite how crowd the place get. They always take your empty plates the minute you stand up from your seat to get the next one ^^

Until another time buffet ~~

www.star.com.au

Yummy Chinese BBQ, Haymarket

                                    

When the place is first open, I walked passed by it and tempted to try a skewer chinese buffet which I never been in one. But looking at the price and the risk of it being unsuitable to my pallet is something that always made me think twice before entering. Luckily, they once had a voucher in scoopon for their lunch buffet and came back with Bebski for their usual dinner buffet which was great. We love the food, the selections of skewers, hot and cold bar have a great variety of chinese / scezhuan style cooking.

Recently, they offer another lunch buffet voucher in Groupon and I decided to get it again! What a great value for $11 pp for lunch.... So we went on Saturday. The place was quite full of people and without any further waiting, we immediately took the foods and started to eat.

Let me go through each food stations. The first that you will see once you entered the place was the rice and soup station on the right. At the end of path, they have the drinks, cutlery and also noodle soup station.

They have a glass cupboard full of skewer selections when you dine at night. But for the lunch buffet, they only offer the lamb skewer in which they will cook it and bring it to your table instead of cooking on the automated rotating griller located on each table.

The food station is split into two part, first is the entree (Chinese banchan), fruit and dessert and the second one is the hot food bar.

This is what I got for my lunch hehe..
I like most of their side dishes such as the seasoned cucumber, scezhuan beef slices, radish salad and some boiled peanuts... And from the hot food bar, I pretty much get a bit of everything.. The stir fired clams in Ginger and Scallion sauce is sooooo good! The clams are fresh and well seasoned. I have to compete with other patrons to get the dish as it runs out pretty fast..

I also got salt and pepper calamari which I think is cooked perfectly. The calamari being not chewy :) Also loved the pan fried dumplings, poached fish fillet in scezhuan oil (yummeh!) and they also have assorted fish balls in scezhuan oil and the best part is they have the fish ball with fish roe in it!

I also tried their noodle soup which has an authentic szechuan flavour to it, topped with cilantro which I loved and a slice of beef that is well seasoned. The soup is not hot and yet not cold. So I'm a bit confused as to what the dish was supposed to be like? But whop cares, I like it, it tasted great hehe..

Here comes the lamb skewers! 5 skewer per person. What a generous amount! They have been heavily marinated with cumin powder that some people might not like but that's how they seasoned lamb I guess :) Bebski likes it but I think less fat will be better :)

For dessert, they have pineapple cake with caramelised pineapple at the bottom and a not-too moist sponge cake on top. I also got the mocha sponge cake which is mooooisstt and have a nice mocha flavour to it. Besides sweet baked stuff, I also got the fried sesame ball with red bean inside which is a classic chinese dessert you usually see in yumcha :)

Yummy Chinese only have strawberry ice cream for their lunch buffet which has a nice strawberry flavour and not too sweet (but really creamy) ice cream. You have to scoop the ice cream yourself so show your scooping skill people! hihihih,,

Overall dining was good. I particularly like their type of food and a good value with the selections of food that you get from fish, calamari and clams! Not to mention the pork, beef and lamb!
Check the place out :)


http://www.yummychinesebbq.com.au/

Koh-Ya Yakiniku, Neutral Bay

 Its been awhile since we have Japanese Buffet and it has been 2 weeks now that Bebski is pestering me to have dinner in Kohya.. Finally, he's so happy to know that we are going for dinner on Saturday. I booked three spots in advanced as the place is always full on a Saturday night and from past experience, without booking, we waited for an hour T.T

Koh-Ya offer two kind of dinner options. One is the A-La Carte menu and the other one is an all-u-can-eat menu. If you are hungry and wanna try a lot of their dishes, I highly recommend the buffet option. For 39.90AUD per person you have a choice of 60 different dishes.

They also have outdoor seating area :) But I prefer to sit inside as the fire is bigger than the one outside :)

Their rules are you can order as much as you can in the first 60mins and after an hour, the waiter will approach you and ask for your last order. This is the time you have to order your dessert too! And then you'll have 30mins to finish everything up! They also have an offer for refillable Calpico drink for an extra $5 pp..

So lets the feast starts! The picture below is just representing different kinds of dishes that we ordered. But in reality, we order 4x 5 portion of the beef tongue, so many prawn cocktail salads and heaps of seaweed sheet and seafood dishes!

The Ox tongue is really the hero of the buffet dishes! Fatty, chewy and melt in your mouth goodness ~~
Other meats that we ordered includes pork loin, pork ribs and beef ribs. Bebski loveeessss yukhe! Which is the raw beef topped with egg yolk and dressed with soy sauce and sesame oil. Ive tried it once but I don't like eating raw stuff :( He ate like 3 of them! The garlic butter is the special dish of the day along with the Tuna Sashimi, but I didn't get any chance to take a pic of the sashimi as Bebski and Mr.US gulp them hungrily!!

For the veggies.. We ordered seaweed sheet, Prawn cocktail salad (which is my favourite salad ever with fresh prawn, crunchy lettuce, avocado and yummy creamy dressing), Kimchi cabbage and also namuru which is a combination of 4 different veggies and well seasoned with sesame oil :)

Some more dishes of seaweed soup, Gyoza (yummeh!) and fish in garlic butter!

For fruits they usually serve 3 kinds of thinly slices fruits (Honeydew melon, Pineapple and Orange) which is 3 pieces of each per serve. So I recommend to have 2 or 3 serve per person If you really like your fruits :) For Dessert, there are choices of soft serve ice cream and Green Tea Ice Cream. The soft serve usually comes with vanilla ice cream but I've made some modification to mine :) I scooped out the vanilla ice cream, and replaced it with the Green tea!! ~~

Overall experience was great! Great quality of meat and food served. The service was good too usually. But last night maybe it was too busy that our order came a bit slow and it was so hard to get staff's attention.. Time flies so fast too so you have to order as much in the first hour kekeke..

Highlight dish for me is Ox tongue, Prawn cocktail salad, seaweed sheet and fish in garlic butter <3


www.yakiniku.com.au/kohya-syd/‎