it is best to have a reservation since it's usually packed. we got a reservation at umu because i know my friends love japanese. again, we had a perfect view of the garden so once again we had great seats for a sumptuous brunch.
for starters we headed to the teppanyaki station located opposite our dining area. we got salmon, shrimps and beef. no complaints, the quality of the raw ingredients were good so the finished products were good too.
for my second round just got a little bit of everything from the other side like the gindara teriyaki which has this melt in your mouth texture, this is the only time i liked gindara because i usually find it too rich, i also liked the unagi with rice wrapped in a leaf, and again good quality salmon sashimi. the negima is just alright. the tempura in umu is way bigger compared to the tempura at basix.
next stop, is benjarong. had to go up the spiral stairs to get some thai fix. i got my essential phad thai which we all found to be extra tart so i didn't like this one, got some crispy catfish salad which was ok this was the first time i've tried catfish salad and it's nothing extraordinary for me so it wouldn't be on my thai list staple, the chicken curry was good but it was definitely cold i dunno why they do not keep it warm and we got an assortment of fried food items and the prawn cakes were definitely a hit. got some pandan iced tea too which i liked more than the green tea being served in umu.
by the time we went to tosca, i was full already. i wonder why, i used to have endurance on buffets such as this. nothing really piqued our interest in tosca, the pizza and pastas are too heavy for us. i still wanted to try something so i got a little grouper which was fishy for me, the spareribs was tough and the chicken breast was so so. we got some wine, my friends got black currant and i chose passion fruit, all tasted the same.
so after the quick stop and minimal munching on our tosca food items we headed to basix. i wanted to try the baked seafoods - we got baked oysters and mussels. they didn't come out as i expected them to be they got too watery and the bechamel sauce and cheese didn't have that thick consistency. my friends got some grilled items too like squid and lamb chops which i had to skip because i was full but i tried a little bit of the cured salmon which i find a little salty but still good.
lastly we got desserts, i was a bit disappointed because tosca already ran out of desserts as well as the other restos. we had a limited choice of sweets and i settled for these.
i liked the coffee mousse but definitely too rich, the other mousse like item with the peaches on top tasted like medicine. the other dessert my friend got, i described as lasang lupa (tastes like soil) while accdg to my other friend the crepes had too sour mangoes. too bad the sweets were all wiped out. i suggest you already grab the desserts you fancy at around 2pm otherwise you'll be left out with nil.
among the restos, i liked umu very much, simply because i find the dishes had good quality regardless on when you come in the resto. even during the latter part of the brunch they were still serving a lot of food unlike the other ones. my palate was not satiated most of the time but i couldn't complain because we got 50% off and the hits were still worth what we paid for.
dusit thani hotel
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I never really liked the food at Basix and Tosca, but I was surprised when I saw what you wrote about the food at Benjarong. I suddenly had proof for what a friend said about the quality of the food there having gone down a notch.
ReplyDeleteBut the food at Umu (previously called Benkai when the Dusit was still the Dusit Hotel Nikko) is always good. :)
50 percent off? how?
ReplyDelete@midge - i was wondering why food in benjarong was so so but umu was great.
ReplyDelete@gourmandtales - you need the dusit hotel privilege card which comes with free accommodation and discounts on room rates and restos such as the buffet.