If there’s such a thing as The Buffet Olympics, Bangkok as a city should easily be ranked in the very top and eminent league. After all, Bangkok dwellers are always overwhelmed with buffet choices. Mostly from hotels, but also from some well-respected stand-alones. For the hotels, a typical track would go like this: Monday to Friday, ample buffet lines – covering everything anyone would want to eat – salads, cold cuts, a bit of seafood, tables of cooked and covered food, some place may also showcase a roast (typically chicken, beef or whole fish) on the carving board. Then, there are freshly made noodles, pastas, followed by lines of desserts and fruits.
But Sundays are a different story. This is the day when those hotels will lay out their big guns. The seafood items will be more elaborate and luxurious. Lobsters and King Crabs instead of prawns and run-off-the-mill mussels, for example. The cheese items more bewildering. Sushi and sashimi seem endless with fancier choices, pastas are available in multiple forms and colours and tossed fresh upon orders. They call this humongous offerings the “Sunday Brunch” – the thing that has become a super indulgence for eaters around town. More hotels are now racing to offer more and more elaborate food + drinks on Sundays and it seems that we (the eaters) are never going to get enough of it, too.
Last week, we were at the Up and Above restaurant of the Okura Prestige Bangkok for their Sunday Brunch. As you might be able to tell from these selected pictures, the food choices here are huge, ranging from Alaskan king crab legs, mud crabs, oysters, prawns, clams, endless sushi, sashimi, good bunches of appetizers (with my favourite Burrata cheeses!), very very good selections of hams and cold cuts, freshly made, cut and tossed pastas, arrays of tasty Thai dishes, bewildering collections of cheeses and all the trimmings. Plus, a gigantic division dedicated to desserts, that include not just cakes, mousses, Thai desserts (highly recommended), but also the ice cream corner where the waffles are made fresh with fruits and berries on the side for you to scoop upon your scoops.
All these and some additional freshly prepared dishes you can order at your table: poached eggs if you are still hinging on the breakfast side, or half a Maine lobster served with yuzu beurre blanc and asparagus (my choice), foie gras with carrot puree, Dutch veal loin with potato mousseline, ratatouille, and black olive jus. This all for the basic price of Bt2,300++ per person including free-flow soft drinks, juices and mocktails (but not mineral water). For those who wish to drink well, there’s another option of Bt3,000++ per person with selected cocktails, sparklings, wines, and beers. Or if you wish, you can order a bottle of Jacquesson Cuvée 738 for another Bt2,900++ on top. I have also included the pictures of this menu at the end of this post.
Well, we were there for the full three hours, trying to eat everything, but failed. There are just too much to choose from. The food quality was great. Everything on the delicious side for a hotel. And here’s my opinion.
I love the choices! So many many items to choose from and all in good quality, too! Since I am a cheese lovers, I kinda flocked their burrata table a lot. Which was so very creamy and rich yet refreshing (all my love to the cheese:) with cold cuts and cured salmon and all the condiments on the table. On their aged cheeses table are also more than 20 different choices with quite a number of blue cheeses which are another of my indulgences.
For oyster lovers (again, me included), you will find the tables of freshly-chucked oysters your ultimate spot. And then, you’ll need a glass of sparkling, if not Jacquesson Cuvée that will set you back for another Bt2,900++. 😀
For seafood, I am OK with it. They are in heaps and piles and good enough quality of chilled items. Mud crabs were so fresh and sweet. Alaskan King Crabs not too salty as eaten in other places. Must be the imported salt 😀 But then, they could have more variety of freshly-cooked seafood items. We could only eat so much of the chilled version, and the only cooked item (seafood) is the Maine Lobster which we could only have just half a portion per person. I mean, there could be some fish freshly cooked? Or some prawns freshly grilled and not just sitting on the ice?
Having said that, this is a very grand buffet. The dizzyingly arrays of delicious choices easily put them right up in the top league of Bangkok’s Sunday Brunches. For three hours, tons of seafood, sushi, some Thai dishes, the burrata (I ate one whole palm-sized piece myself!), half a lobster, and loads of cured cheeses, we were exploding at the seams in the end. So, come hungry, skip breakfast or dinner the day before, and enjoy!
For reservation, call The Okura Prestige Bangkok at T: 02-687-9000.
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