Dining Review: Lunch & Dinner at Carousel, Royal Plaza on Scotts Singapore
Keywords: Dinner - Lunch - Sit down buffet - Halal - International - Carousel
Month of visit: December 2020
Carousel buffet at Royal Plaza on Scotts, Singapore.
Situated within Royal Plaza on Scotts hotel, Carousel is one of the most popular buffet venues in Singapore. Prepared in Halal certified kitchens, Carousel offers unlimited selections of international delicacies from the comfort of your table. During our visit, the hotel served as a SHN facility and so only those with valid restaurant bookings were allowed to enter the hotel. Temperature screening was also performed at the entrance of the hotel.
Entrance to the hotel restaurant.
Immediately after we were seated, we were briefed on the ordering process, which was to look through a contactless menu in a web application and add the dishes we wished to have into a shopping cart. Once we were done selecting, we were told to checkout and a receipt of our order would then be sent digitally to the chat feature in the application.
The lunch and dinner menus were priced differently, with the lunch being priced at $55++ on weekdays and $65++ on weekends while dinner at $75++ and $85++ on weekdays and weekends respectively. It is worth mentioning that the dinner menu has more premium inclusions than the lunch menu such as Maine lobsters and Canadian oysters. Similarly, the weekend menu had additional inclusions like Teppan salmon as compared to the weekday menu. Guests may consider their festive menus on Christmas and New Year days and eves. A sample of the dinner menu is provided below but you may find the complete menu here.
It is highly recommended to make your reservations well in advance as this buffet restaurant is well sought after. A credit card deposit is required to reserve a table and the restaurant has the right to charge guests 50% of the total bill for a no-show or if the booking is cancelled within 48 hours of the booked slot.
Sample dinner menu.
For dining up till 31 December 2020, enjoy 20% discount when you make your payment with selected credit cards. For those aged 60 and over, take 50% off your bill for weekend lunches.
We had experienced both their lunch and dinner menus and so this will be a combined review of these two meals. Hence, do note that some items may not be available for the lunch sitting. For both sittings, the gastronomic journey begins with a seafood and sushi platters. All the items served here were extremely fresh and we had ordered multiple rounds of the seafood-on-ice.
Welcome seafood and sushi platters.
The seafood-on-ice selections were fabulous. With free-flow Maine lobsters, lobster claws, crayfish, Canadian oysters, Australian black mussels, tiger prawns, scallops and Alaskan king crab legs, seafood lovers will thoroughly enjoy this generous spread. The seafood were served promptly and had not run out even when it was close to the end of the buffet. All the seafood items were fresh too.
A generous spread of seafood-on-ice.
Other dishes to start off include a fresh sashimi platter (salmon, tuna and tako with tobiko) as well as a cheese and dried fruits platter accompanied with biscuits. There was also pumpkin soup available which we enjoyed.
Sashimi and cheese platters as well as pumpkin soup.
We tried a variety of fish dishes, namely grilled red snapper cooked with vegetable medley, steamed seabass in garlic oyster sauce and sambal sting ray. All items were delicious. We also tried their cereal prawns and prawns fried with XO spicy sauce which were not bad either. For lunch, a seafood stew cooked in shellfish stock was available.
Fish and prawn hot dishes.
While we were largely anticipating the Singapore chilli crab with mantou, the dish turned out to be disappointing. The chilli crab sauce was good and spicy but the crabs had an odd texture and taste to them. Hence, we recommend you try a small portion first to see if they suit your taste before ordering more.
Singapore chilli crab with mantou.
A few other items of note were the slow-roasted beef sirloin, seafood truffle risotto and chicken tikka.
Sirloin beef, seafood truffle risotto and chicken tikka.
Regular customers of Carousel will know that the highlight of every buffet is their desserts. While the selection for these sit-down buffets were limited as compared to traditional buffets, they had brought back their classic bread and butter pudding with vanilla sauce and chocolate lava pudding. Waffles with vanilla, chocolate and chendol-kaya ice cream were made available too. In addition, some festive desserts like creme brûlée, assorted cakes, fruity snail meringue tart and mini magnum were brought to our table in a carousel candy cart via a gueridon service.
Assorted desserts available during both lunch and dinner buffets.
Concluding remarks: Carousel was one of the later buffet establishments to reopen and so had plenty of time to gather feedback from others. It is likely due to this that the organisation and execution were commendable. Unlike many other buffet restaurants, Carousel had an efficient and convenient contactless ordering process with prompt service throughout the dinner or lunch. The wide variety of fresh seafood was the highlight and we highly recommend this buffet especially so with the discounts currently available.
Location:
Carousel, Royal Plaza on Scotts hotel
Website:
http://carouselbuffet.com.sg/carousel/#
Price:
$55++ (Weekday lunch), $65++ (Weekend lunch), $75++ (Weekday dinner), $85++ (Weekend dinner).
