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A bit overpriced
2014-06-30 1356 views
Love their service. The waitress greeted us with a great smile and the service was very fast. Requested for a change of table as we find the table was too small, the waitress changed for us immediately. As we went on a friday for dinner, the amount per person was $50+.I was expecting for lots of choices. However, there were not many variety. We had oyster but it was not fresh at all. I feel that it was quite overpriced that I paid $50+ for such buffet as there are much better ones outside.
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Love their service. The waitress greeted us with a great smile and the service was very fast. Requested for a change of table as we find the table was too small, the waitress changed for us immediately. As we went on a friday for dinner, the amount per person was $50+.
I was expecting for lots of choices. However, there were not many variety. We had oyster but it was not fresh at all. I feel that it was quite overpriced that I paid $50+ for such buffet as there are much better ones outside.
(The above review is the personal opinion of a user which does not represent OpenRice's point of view.)
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Decor
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Date of Visit
2014-06-27
Dining Method
Dine In
Spending Per Head
$50+
Level1
2
0
New Japanese Buffet in Westgate
2014-01-29 1459 views
The pretty exterior was the first thing that caught my eye when I passed by the restaurant. There was a large tank displaying some fresh seafood and a huge tako, one of my favorite seafood. Being a Jap food lover, I just got to give it a try and the pricing seem affordable for a buffet dinner, 39.90++ comes with a premium grill as well. Ordered a prawn mentaiyaki and it’s yummilicious. The mentai sauce goes very well with the grilled prawn with a smoky flavour due to their charcoal grill. As i
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The pretty exterior was the first thing that caught my eye when I passed by the restaurant. There was a large tank displaying some fresh seafood and a huge tako, one of my favorite seafood.

Being a Jap food lover, I just got to give it a try and the pricing seem affordable for a buffet dinner, 39.90++ comes with a premium grill as well. Ordered a prawn mentaiyaki and it’s yummilicious. The mentai sauce goes very well with the grilled prawn with a smoky flavour due to their charcoal grill. As it’s a premium grilled item, each guest is only entitled to one portion. I could have 5 of this...

My next top favorite would be the Teppanyaki with butter shoyu sauce, the sauce is fragrant with a slight salty buttery which enhance the natural sweetness of the ingredients but they could be more generous with the sauce.

Some other items that leaves me a deep impression are their Sake Kabuto, Tebasaki , Shiitake agemono and the chicken karaage. It’s fresh, flavourful and gets wiped out rather quickly. A plus point, food gets top up pretty quickly. I find their fish fresh and love the way they prepare the dish, sprinkled with salt and grilled. Apart from that, it feels quite good to see the chefs grilling the items in the transparent glass counter smacked right in the middle of the restaurant. It’s just cool!

One last highlight, the chocolate fountain, imported from UK, the first time I have seen this very unique fountain that resembles a waterfall. The chocolate sauce is creamy and rich, hits the right note.

Overall, the experience was quite good apart that the air-con was kind of freezing. I love the cozy and casual setting in the restaurant. Generally, a great place for gatherings.
(The above review is the personal opinion of a user which does not represent OpenRice's point of view.)
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DETAILED RATING
Taste
Decor
Service
Hygiene
Value
Date of Visit
2014-01-23
Spending Per Head
$47 (Dinner)
Recommended Dishes
  • Teppanyaki
  • Grilled food
  • Chocolate fondue
  • prawn mentaiyaki and sashimi
Related Review
Reviews submitted by the same member to the same restaurant within 30 days.
New Japanese Buffet in Westgate
Level1
2
0
New Japanese Buffet in Westgate
2014-01-29 963 views
The pretty exterior was the first thing that caught my eye when I passed by the restaurant. There was a large tank displaying some fresh seafood and a huge tako, one of my favorite seafood. Being a Jap food lover, I just got to give it a try and the pricing seem affordable for a buffet dinner, 39.90++ comes with a premium grill as well. Ordered a prawn mentaiyaki and it’s yummilicious. The mentai sauce goes very well with the grilled prawn with a smoky flavour due to their charcoal grill. As i
Read full review
The pretty exterior was the first thing that caught my eye when I passed by the restaurant. There was a large tank displaying some fresh seafood and a huge tako, one of my favorite seafood.

Being a Jap food lover, I just got to give it a try and the pricing seem affordable for a buffet dinner, 39.90++ comes with a premium grill as well. Ordered a prawn mentaiyaki and it’s yummilicious. The mentai sauce goes very well with the grilled prawn with a smoky flavour due to their charcoal grill. As it’s a premium grilled item, each guest is only entitled to one portion. I could have 5 of this...

My next top favorite would be the Teppanyaki with butter shoyu sauce, the sauce is fragrant with a slight salty buttery which enhance the natural sweetness of the ingredients but they could be more generous with the sauce.

Some other items that leaves me a deep impression are their Sake Kabuto, Tebasaki , Shiitake agemono and the chicken karaage. It’s fresh, flavourful and gets wiped out rather quickly. A plus point, food gets top up pretty quickly. I find their fish fresh and love the way they prepare the dish, sprinkled with salt and grilled. Apart from that, it feels quite good to see the chefs grilling the items in the transparent glass counter smacked right in the middle of the restaurant. It’s just cool!

One last highlight, the chocolate fountain, imported from UK, the first time I have seen this very unique fountain that resembles a waterfall. The chocolate sauce is creamy and rich, hits the right note.

Overall, the experience was quite good apart that the air-con was kind of freezing. I love the cozy and casual setting in the restaurant. Generally, a great place for gatherings.
(The above review is the personal opinion of a user which does not represent OpenRice's point of view.)
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DETAILED RATING
Taste
Decor
Service
Hygiene
Value
Date of Visit
2014-01-15
Spending Per Head
$47 (Dinner)
Recommended Dishes
  • Prawn Mentaiyaki
  • Teppanyaki
  • Chocolate Fondue
  • Grilled Sake Kabuto
  • Grilled Tebasaki
Related Review
Reviews submitted by the same member to the same restaurant within 30 days.
New Japanese Buffet in Westgate
Level1
1
0
The price paid wasn't worth what you get
2014-01-02 820 views
My friend was interested in this new restaurant which is located at Westgate, and we decide to make a early reservations on Christmas day. Literally very early, like a week ago. However, they decided to serve us the seating near the entrance telling us that "Sorry sir, those at the back are reserved." That is horrified enough because we made the reservation too. I would like to applaud the Manager's for his flexibility to make a change for us later on, which supposed should be the case.The ambia
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My friend was interested in this new restaurant which is located at Westgate, and we decide to make a early reservations on Christmas day. Literally very early, like a week ago. However, they decided to serve us the seating near the entrance telling us that "Sorry sir, those at the back are reserved." That is horrified enough because we made the reservation too. I would like to applaud the Manager's for his flexibility to make a change for us later on, which supposed should be the case.

The ambiance was great, with the lightings and perhaps some old Japanese song playing at the background. But I happened to see a few of their staffs adjusting the Santa hat and combing their hair in the common washing area. Shouldn't they have prepared before that? The servicemen are not well trained enough too to serve the customers, from standing posture, to the way how they hold the trays. It is very disappointing.

The food serves a varieties of food, but their main attraction dish of teppankayi allows only one serving per person. This is bad enough, as it creates false impression that you paid for 50++ and you are able to get more than one serving. If you are thinking the one serving is a big one, but no, it wasn't.

The gyoza taste like those ordinary frozen supermarket kind; the chocolate of the fondue was bad as the chocolate do not harden itself like a normal fondue; the pre-prepared food on the tray was just exposed to the environment leaving the food become cold etc. The good thing about them is they served rather fresh salmon and oysters (limited to 3 pieces per customer), and some raw foods.

They have quite a wide choice of drinks for us, so there is no complaint over the drinks.

The last thing that irked me is the amount of time you could spend in this restaurant. They told us the time limit is 2 hours. But we did not stay that long as the food could not satisfy our taste. So practically you will not stay for 2 hours that long to enough all the food.
(The above review is the personal opinion of a user which does not represent OpenRice's point of view.)
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Date of Visit
2013-12-25
Spending Per Head
$53 (Dinner)
Level4
217
81
Average tasting buffet meal which failed to wow
2013-12-24 691 views
Due to photo upload restrictions, please visit http://www.makeyourcaloriescount.com/2013/12/sg-robata-robata-average-buffet-meal.html for full review, complete with pictures.In Japanese cuisine, robatayaki which literally translates to 'fireside-cooking', a cooking technique, similar to barbecue, whereby food are slow-grilled over hot charcoal on skewers. Robatayaki originates from a centuries-old country style of cooking by northern Japanese fishermen around a communal hearth. that serves both
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Due to photo upload restrictions, please visit http://www.makeyourcaloriescount.com/2013/12/sg-robata-robata-average-buffet-meal.html for full review, complete with pictures.

In Japanese cuisine, robatayaki which literally translates to 'fireside-cooking', a cooking technique, similar to barbecue, whereby food are slow-grilled over hot charcoal on skewers. Robatayaki originates from a centuries-old country style of cooking by northern Japanese fishermen around a communal hearth. that serves both as a cooking area and a source of heat, found in Hokkaido.

We were visiting Westgate, the new shopping mall at Jurong East and while all the other restaurants had long queues, we stumbled upon Robata Robata and decided to give it a shot since it was about the only restaurant without a queue on a Friday evening. I was highly conspicuous that the quality of the buffet food might not live up to standard and having requested a walk-around to see the buffet spread, we decided to settle for filling meal.

Payment was taken prior to being shown to your table and the weekend dinner (Fri - Sun) was priced at S$44.90/++ per person, which came to about S$53/- per person inclusive of GST and service charge.

Having been shown to our table, our hungry stomachs decided to get the better of us and we started our buffet rounds!
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 The middle section of the restaurant is the Robata Grill area where customers are able to see the chefs in action.
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 This is the section where the restaurant displays the Robata items but there was a mix of deep-fried food such as onion rings, chicken etc.
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 The salad, sashimi and seafood corner
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 Pizza corner - freshly baked thin-crust pizzas which we felt were the best food in the entire buffet spread.
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 As part of the festive celebrations, there was a corner which offered pasta and some seafood dishes. We felt that they were not the most appetising-looking though.

While I was taking quick snaps of the environment around the restaurant, I was abruptly stopped by the owner (I presumed him to be, or at least the manager) and even after explaining that the photos were for my own personal usage (i.e. for my food blog), he insisted that such promotional efforts should go through the company's marketing department. I did not quite understand the correlation but decided to let it go and enjoy our food. Admittedly, the episode was rather dampening on my mood since he did not quite approach us with the nicest tone.
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 Both the soba and udon were pedestrian tasting to say the least.
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 We also ordered a dish of teppanyaki, whereby one would have the choice of the types of vegetables and sauces to complement. There were also a range of protein choices such as fish and chicken to add to the dish. Do take note your table number as it would be served to your table when the dish is ready.
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 One could also choose to have freshly cooked pasta in addition to the teppanyaki. Quite frankly, I felt that both the pasta and pizza were the highlights of the restaurant.
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 On the sashimi, we felt that the quality was mediocre. Do not expect it to be 'melt-in-your-mouth' type of quality for the seafood and for the crustaceans, each diner was limited to three pieces of oysters per round of serving. Usually a fan of fresh oysters, I did not even finish my first serving. In fact, I stopped short of trying the second piece for the flesh looked limp and lacked the 'puff' look. Taste-wise, I certainly had much better quality oysters elsewhere.

Ordering of the Robatayaki dishes had to be done through giving of pins, with limited issue of one pin per person. Essentially, you exchange one of these pins for your choice of Robatayaki dish of ribeye steak, lamb chop and tiger prawn with mentaiko sauce and at one serving per person.

Robatayaki - Ribeye Steak
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 I opted for the ribeye steak and the lady who took my order (or rather pin) did not even ask how I wanted my steak prepared. I informed her that I wanted my beef served medium rare and unfortunately, as the cut above revealed, it was closer to well-done than anything else. The steak was actually a decent piece of protein but certainly mishandled and should have been cooked better.

Tiger prawn with mentaiko sauce
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 While I did not order the lamb chop, we felt that the tiger prawn with mentaiko sauce was the better robatayaki among the two tried. The savoury sauce had a balanced level of sweetness which complemented the natural freshness of the tiger prawn. The only shame was that we were only limited to one prawn per person, at the expense of trying the ribeye steak and the lamb chop.

While the chocolate fountain and the freshly made waffles were the highlight at the desserts corner, it failed to tantalize our taste buds. I even witnessed one of the servers tending the waffle machine (not the two shown in the picture) using his bare hands to arrange the cooked waffles on the plate. Seriously, you do NOT handle food with bare hands and certainly not in front of your customers at a buffet.

The petit fours and brownies were all of mediocre standards and not really worth a shout-out. Ice cream too were passable and nothing impressive.

Overall, while the service was okay, more often than not, they tried to clear our plates before we even finished the food. What I did not enjoy was the 'noisiness' of the restaurant which made it not quite the romantic place to go with your other half. It would probably suit group gatherings or family outings a lot more than a cosy meal. The quality of the food was largely average with the pizzas, pasta and grilled tiger prawn with mentaiko sauce being the most memorable. Despite calling themselves 'Robata Robata', the range of robatayaki was highly limited to just the three mains (ribeye steak, tiger prawn and lamb chop) and a handful of other mains such as the grilled fish out on the buffet deck.

At slightly above S$50 per head, I might look elsewhere if I am in the area again. It was surely not the best buffet I have had but in all fairness, if you are after a filling meal, this would fit the bill neatly.
(The above review is the personal opinion of a user which does not represent OpenRice's point of view.)
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DETAILED RATING
Taste
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Spending Per Head
$53 (Dinner)
Recommended Dishes
  • Grilled Tiger Prawn with Mentaiko Sauce
Level1
1
0
Robata Robata Japanese Dinner Buffet
2013-12-19 451 views
1st time dine @ Robata Robata. Oyster limit to 3 pcs per serve. After you finished the oyster, then take another 3 pcs. They do not allow 4 pcs or more of oyster per take. Very troublesome. The oyster are small. 1 person is ONLY ALLOW for 1 Tiger Prawn (Name is Tiger Prawn but size is Normal Prawn) OR 1 Ribeye Steak (less than 100g, small portion) OR 1 Lamp Chop. Cannot order for a 2nd serving. Robata means Grill. Buffet means unlimited of food supply but there are limitation of food supply. Not
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1st time dine @ Robata Robata. Oyster limit to 3 pcs per serve. After you finished the oyster, then take another 3 pcs. They do not allow 4 pcs or more of oyster per take. Very troublesome. The oyster are small. 1 person is ONLY ALLOW for 1 Tiger Prawn (Name is Tiger Prawn but size is Normal Prawn) OR 1 Ribeye Steak (less than 100g, small portion) OR 1 Lamp Chop. Cannot order for a 2nd serving. Robata means Grill. Buffet means unlimited of food supply but there are limitation of food supply. Not much grill food. Mostly all deep fried food. The name of the restaurant does not match with the food supplied. For those who like buffet type and don't mind to eat rice or pasta, then will be full. But for me, I spent $93.92 for 2 person and for such standard of food, only for the experience and I will not patronize again.
(The above review is the personal opinion of a user which does not represent OpenRice's point of view.)
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DETAILED RATING
Taste
Decor
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Date of Visit
2013-12-18
Spending Per Head
$47 (Dinner)
Recommended Dishes
  • Oreo Cheese Cake
  • Mocha Ice Cream