Forest森 is a celebrity chef restaurant, but don’t expect too much from its breakfast buffet. Some of the Chinese food wasn’t bad, but we’d suggest walking to Sessions instead.
The Equarius Hotel houses just one restaurant: Forest森 by celebrity chef Sam Leong, formerly adorned with one Michelin star. We’re not going to mince words: we felt it was overhyped and overpriced. The breakfast buffet was priced more reasonably in line with the other RWS hotels but wasn’t obviously better. The only sliver of celebrity chef magic that made it to our plates was the “Chef Sam selection”: Japanese thin somen noodles with shredded chicken and hon-shimeji mushroom in superior chicken broth. We would highlight this dish as one of the few worth second helpings in this breakfast buffet. It was tasty — so tasty that it reminded us of the “milky chicken broth” we felt we’d overpaid SGD35[2] for at lunch. Almost everything else in the buffet tasted perfunctory to us. Don’t expect fine-dining standards for the service either — we didn’t even get an offer of coffee or tea as we were seated. While we liked having the option of freshly-squeezed fruit juice, even this was self-service, though it wasn’t too hard to use the juicer at the buffet. Our advice: walk to Sessions at the Hard Rock Hotel Singapore for its equally-priced breakfast buffet, one of the best we’ve reviewed — second only to the Capella Singapore’s.
We review anonymously and pay for everything. All opinions expressed here are our own and all information is correct as of our last stay or visit and subject to change without notice.
We wouldn’t expect too much from the American breakfast selection. Our omelette from the live egg station was disappointing — under-seasoned and barely filled with undercooked onions, mushrooms, peppers and cheese. The tray of scrambled eggs on the buffet line-up was also under-seasoned — more salt would have better balanced and masked its strong egg yolk and dairy flavours.
It didn’t get much better away from the eggs. We thought the roasted potatoes weren’t bad — which isn’t all that much of an endorsement. The bacon was chewy instead of crispy or streaky and the chicken sausage was oddly firmer than we were used to. The herb grilled tomatoes had little actual herb flavour — it was more a reference to the dried herbs sprinkled onto the cherry tomatoes. There wasn’t anything special about the baked beans or cold cuts either.
As Forest森 was a fine-dining celebrity chef Chinese restaurant, we couldn’t help but expect a little something special in the Asian food selection. The only sliver of celebrity chef magic that made it to our plates was the “Chef Sam selection”: Japanese thin somen noodles with shredded chicken and hon-shimeji mushroom in superior chicken broth. To its credit, it was tasty — so tasty that it reminded us of the “milky chicken broth” we felt we’d overpaid SGD35[1] for at lunch. We’d highlight this dish as one of the few worth second helpings in this breakfast buffet — actually, just skip the noodles and drink as much soup as you can.
Our expectations of the dim sum selection were a little higher than usual. We suppose what we got was a little better than the usually low standard of breakfast buffet dim sum. The siew mai seemed to have been made fresh rather than frozen (yes, the usual standard is that low). The skin on the har gow wasn’t mushy, though it was still thick and the filling was more like a prawn paste — we couldn’t find a whole prawn in there. Of the two types of available bao, we preferred the one labelled as lotus but actually filled with red bean paste. It wasn’t bad — the bread was soft and the filling a smooth sweet ooze — and better than the other bao. This was the chicken char siew bao, its filling thin, meat all shredded.
A better chicken dish would be the crispy chicken strips — well-seasoned and reminiscent of Taiwanese street food-style fried chicken (yan su ji), though without the chili powder. We wouldn’t recommend the tray of sautéed seasonal vegetables next to it — this was under-seasoned and undercooked. The pomelo salad is a better refreshing choice. If you’re really hungry, there’s plain congee with a good selection of condiments, including minced pork with black bean paste.
The only non-Chinese Asian dish was nasi lemak (coconut rice) — not bad, with a good coconut flavour that paired well with the sambal chili paste. Indian food — almost always represented in other hotel breakfast buffets — was absent during our visit.
The bakery section was nothing to shout about either. The only highlight here was the Portuguese egg tarts. Its warm flaky buttery skin crunched gorgeously with every bite; inside, the egg custard was soft, moist, and smooth like pudding. The banana cake wasn’t bad as well — moist and intensely perfumed with the sweet fragrance of bananas. If you need more sweets, maybe try the pancakes — they weren’t fluffy but at least they weren’t hard.
Other items were just plain disappointing. The chicken char siew “pineapple” bun (bolo bao) was a low point—the bread was stale, the crust on top of the bun lacking crunch, and the filling barely present. The Danish pastries were also barely filled and the bread neither buttery nor flaky. The croissants had some butter flavour but their texture was odd: overly flaky to the point of crumbling outside but stale inside. The crusts on the mini fruit tartlets were enticingly soft but oddly weren’t crumbly or buttery as we would have liked them to be. At the other extreme, the chocolate muffins were dry, with few chocolate chips inside to make them worth a bite.
8 Sentosa Gateway, 098269
+65 6577 6567 / +65 6577 6688
