Amata City: Buffet without boundaries

Buffet without boundaries

A strong selection of international options with Asian highlights

Published: 23/04/2010 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: Realtime

Atelier, the Sunday brunch venue of the relatively new Grand Millennium Sukhumvit may look less extravagant compared to other hotels, but this 140-seater is among a few in town that highlights the glamour of Asian cuisine.

The bright and cheery buffet venue highlights its a la minute style of cooking.

From Thai, Chinese, Japanese and Korean to Vietnamese as well as European and Australian styles, this bright and cheery restaurant with the majority of the food stations gathered together in one area offers a boundary-less variety of dishes that are to be prepared to the guests's preferences in a la minute fashion.

To present diners with the choices available, in front of the all-open cooking station was displayed a decent selection of vegetables and meat (various types of beef, lamb, chicken, pork, fish and seafood) for you to pair with your preferred style of cooking. We ordered steamed snowfish with soy sauce, grilled beef tenderloin and river prawn, pan-fried salmon with butter and herbs, Korean barbecue pork and Thai-style stir-fried mimosa (phak krached) with oyster sauce and were very pleased with the quality and flavours.

One of the special things at Atelier was that it had a tapas bar where a mouthwatering selection of Spanish and Italian cured meats and sausages such as chorizo, parma ham, salami and corned beef are displayed and are sliced to your order. While among the likes of Alaskan king crab, Fin de Claire oyster, lobster tails and caviar, its seafood corner also featured a bunch of razor clams which can be hardly found anywhere else.

Italian Parma ham and Spanish chorizo at tapas bar.

Another signature offering here was the steak tartar. Made freshly from scratch with prime grade wagyu beef, the minced rare beef dish was enjoyed with the super-delicious Ceasar salad which I never miss whenever I am here.

Since the hotel doesn't have a Chinese outlet, Cantonese-style noodle dishes, combination of barbecued meats, Peking duck rolls and a dozen choices of dim sum represented the Sunday brunch's mediocre Chinese cuisine, while the Italian cuisine could be enjoyed in forms of cooked-to-order pasta which tasted fair.

Atelier's small sushi station is the place where you can witness the chef in action. Most of the delicacies here, from classic rolls and raw fish sashimi to cone-shaped temaki, are freshly prepared to the customer's request and proved delightful, as did the juicy, freshly sliced roasted lamb leg and grilled prime ribs that came from the carving station.

If you are one of those diners who is more interested in a typical buffet-style ready to eat food, there is a decent selection of hot and cold dishes available, including Indian-style curry, Western-style poached fish and lamb casserole.

When it came to desserts, the restaurant provided fairly pleasant, although not extravagant, choices of Western and Asian-style sweets. Two chocolate fountains were there to luxuriate both white and milk chocolate fans, while the ice cream tappan station thrilled ice cream lovers with the tailor-made dainties made with their favourite choices of ice creams to be tossed on an icy griddle with various toppings.

A free-flow of Asian beer, green tea, coffee, soft drinks and a wide variety of fresh fruit juice and smoothies are also available for all buffet diners. The hotel is now offering 50 percent discounts for parties of four persons or more.