Dining Review: Dinner at StraitsKitchen, Grand Hyatt Singapore
Keywords: Dinner - Sit down buffet - Halal - Local - Grand Hyatt Singapore
Month of visit: November 2020
Dinner at StraitsKitchen, Grand Hyatt Singapore.
Situated within the Grand Hyatt hotel, StraitsKitchen offers a unique experiential dining amidst this pandemic. Instead of the conventional buffet, the buffet spread is brought directly to your table. Guests get to enjoy a generous selection of local delicacies simply my making their choices known to any one of the service crew.
StraitsKitchen, Grand Hyatt Singapore.
The restaurant features a rustic wooden theme with dim lightings covering a large floor area. The dinner menu includes a wide range of local ethnic dishes and is priced at $69++ per adult. The lunch menu is exactly the same as the dinner menu but costs $10 cheaper.
Immediately after we were seated, we were briefed on the ordering process, which was to look through a contactless menu (available online) and inform any one of the service crew to make an order. As you can expect from a local inspired menu, the mains can be divided into three broad categories; Malay, Chinese and Indian. On top of that, there are appetisers, staples and a selection of desserts.
Lunch and dinner menu.
Impressively, there were good beverage options. We had opted for coke and iced bandung at the start but eventually went on to try most of the drinks on the menu.
Free-flow drinks which include coke and bandung.
We had began our food journey with one of each item under the appetiser section. This included rojak, popiah, gado-gado and Spencer Gulf wild king prawns on ice. The rojak and gado-gado were accompanied with the same peanut sauce. The rojak was amazing and the chilled prawns were extremely fresh. However, we were slightly disappointed that there were no other chilled seafood on the menu. We had also ordered mackerel otah which was spicy and really good.
A selection of appetisers to start the buffet.
Probably the most appetising items on the menu were the barbecued items; chicken, mutton and beef satay and chicken wings. These mouth-watering dishes tasted as good as they look and should not be missed if you're dropping by StraitsKitchen.
Barbecued satay and chicken wings.
Other notable dishes from the Malay section were the Australian grilled lamb cut of the day, ayam buah keluak and slow braised Australian beef rendang. The lamb was marinated with savoury spices and was grilled well done. We also really enjoyed the Peranakan style ayam buah keluak.
Malay inspired dishes like ayam buah keluak, australian grilled lamb and Australian beef rendang.
The Indian cuisine served were not any less appetising either. We tried the garlic naan which can be paired with different gravies like butter chicken and tandoori chicken. We had also tried the chicken murtabak which was tasty.
Garlic naan and murtabak.
The Chinese selections included wok-fried chilli mud crab which was moderately spicy and carrot cake which we found delightful. Other tasty items of note were their sweet sour chicken and HK style barramundi.
Wok-fried chilli mud crab and carrot cake.
A good variety of staples were also available. The rice options included hainanese chicken rice, seafood fried rice and roasted duck rice. As for the noodles, there were laksa, prawn noodle soup, chicken noodle soup and char kway teow. In truth, we did not cover all the staples because they were very filling. However, we really enjoyed the hainanese chicken rice as the steamed chicken was tender and juicy.
Hainanese chicken rice and seafood fried rice.
To sum up our dinner, we opted for a sample of each of their dessert. The sweets were sinfully good. The soft serve chocolate and coconut ice cream were served in a glass mug with wafers. Some nonya kueh like lopes was available. Other local desserts like mango pudding, pulut hitam and sago gula melaka were made available and served in a small bowl suitable for one person. We also enjoyed the pandan kaya cake which came in a slice. Of course, if you prefer a healthier dessert, various fruits were available.
Dessert selections to sum up our meal.
Concluding remarks: As restaurants offering buffet lines have scrambled to adapt to the current norms of a pandemic, StraitsKitchen impressed us by keeping their extremely large spread of food. There were about fifty food items to choose from and it was difficult for us to sample each and every item. The quality of food was top-notch and if you are craving for a bottomless serving of local dishes, we would certainly recommend this venue to you. There were also many service crew present to fulfil our order requests. Overall, a largely positive dinner experience at StraitsKitchen.
