Breakfast at the Kitchen Table was good and featured many items different from the typical hotel breakfast buffet. But it’s priced the same as the Capella Singapore’s breakfast — not cheap.
The W Singapore – Sentosa Cove serves its daily breakfast buffet at its Kitchen Table restaurant. We felt the breakfast buffet was good overall. Basics like eggs and breakfast meats met our expectations. We especially liked the noodles in soup made to order either with chicken or laksa broth. The problem is that we don’t think the breakfast buffet is competitive after taking its high relatively price into account. It’s priced the same as our best reviewed breakfast buffet — the Capella Singapore’s — which we feel is far superior. The restaurant tends to get crowded and some guests may be seated at the SKIRT restaurant instead, though it’s just a few extra steps from the main buffet area.
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.
The American breakfast items here featured some interesting tweaks. Our omelette from the live station for eggs made to order was filled with peas, spinach, and bacon — a refreshing change from the usual peppers, mushrooms, and ham. The pot of scrambled eggs at the live station was also creamy and luscious. These paired superbly with the pork sausages which leaned a little on the sweet side and packed a flavour punch of thyme. But that wasn’t all. There were also juicy and peppery lamb sausages — a rarity in hotel breakfast buffets.
Other items were less impressive. The grilled cheese tomatoes were exactly that and little more. We thought the streaky bacon could have been streakier with more fat, but it wasn’t bad overall. The sautéed mixed mushrooms however seemed like they could have used a little more time on stove to soften further. Despite being garnished with whole sprigs of rosemary and thyme, the roasted potatoes seemed rather bland. We’re usually happy when baked beans don’t seem to have come straight out of a can, but that may have been a mistake here: they were hard.
We were quite pleased when we saw some unusual Chinese breakfast items in the buffet line-up. The highlight here was the live noodle soup station — we loved both the chicken broth and laksa versions which we felt surpassed even those at the Capella Singapore’s breakfast buffet.
Beyond that however, the effort spent on variety didn’t seem to have extended to quality. We were intrigued by the youtiao (Chinese crullers) wrapped with Chinese pancakes until we bit into them and found ourselves with a mouthful of oil. The braised ee fu noodles were too mushy for our liking — a shame, as we thought it tasted fine — while the yam rice with dried shrimp was also unexceptional. We found the herbal tea eggs little different from the plain hard-boiled eggs, barely infused with the flavours from the broth. The congee was indeed plain, bland, and unseasoned.
The Chinese food section also featured a few steamed items available upon request from the staff behind the counter. We didn’t think any were especially worth the trouble. The steamed sweet potatoes were exactly that and little more. Like in most hotel breakfast buffets, the har gow dumplings came with a thick soggy skin and didn’t taste especially fresh to us. We also felt there was something off about the filling in the egg custard bao which was a lot more viscous than we were used to.
We were surprised to see a few Indonesian items on the menu — it’s usually Malay food that gets represented. We enjoyed the tasty sayur lodeh — vegetables cooked in coconut milk — which came infused with laksa flavours. There was also a pot of tofu in semur — a soy sauce-based stew — though it wasn’t exceptional. In the chilled section, we found shot glasses of bubur sumsum, a traditional Indonesian dessert made of rice flour and coconut milk, which married salt and sugar quite nicely.
The closest the buffet got to Malay food was its sardine puffs. These weren’t bad, though they weren’t the best we’ve tasted either. We thought it would have been better filled more generously and if its flaky pastry crust were even flakier.
Indian food was barely represented. Still, we were glad to find the appropriately fluffy idli paired with a thick and tasty sambar. The deep-fried aloo tikki (potato croquettes) however was a little salty for our tastes and could have used another minute of boiling to soften further before it hit the oil.
The bakery section was where the hotel’s irreverent spirit crept through — we bet kids loved it. Kids probably also love sugar way more than we do and aren’t as nit-picking as we are. We didn’t think any of it was really bad; we just didn’t think any of it was really good either. Take the rainbow-coloured bread topped with cereal — we suspect it’s Fruity Pebbles cereal, also available in jars here — and a sprinkling of powdered sugar. Filled with a sweet spread which seemed to be kaya coconut jam, it was basically just a sugar bomb with little subtlety of flavour. Again, we bet kids — and the young at heart, no doubt — loved it.
We wouldn’t expect too much of the other items here either. The chocolate donuts were nicely light and airy but could have used a bit more frosting. On the other extreme, the mini sugar donuts were greasy and sugary — a kid’s dream, no doubt. Kids probably won’t mind either that the pancakes, decorated with a smiley face, weren’t very fluffy and were a little dry. The waffles were a little too hard and didn’t have much chew left. The pastries — the croissants, pains au chocolat, and Danishes — were a little stale and the butter cake dry, though the apple turnovers and muffins weren’t bad.
21 Ocean Way, W Singapore Hotel, Singapore, 098374
+65 6808 7268
