Shangri-La’s Rasa Sentosa launches themed buffets at their three restaurants: Wednesday is “Meet the Meat” buffet at Silver Shell Cafe ($58+ for adults/$25+ kids); “Seafood Trail” buffet at Barnacles on Thursdays ($68+/$25+); and “A Night in Morocco” buffet at Casserole ($58+/$25+).

Surprisingly crowded on a weekday at 6pm, the decor is easy, casual and comfortable with dim lights. The layout of the buffet spread is a straight row, separating the food into six sections, so you won’t miss any dishes.

Meet the Meat

Available every Wednesday night. An amazing array of meats. Roasted, grilled, bbq-ed, pan-fried, tandoori, chicken, duck, lamb, beef, pork: you name it, they (probably) have it. The german sausages (spicy or with cheese) are crowd-pleasers. Special highlights include slow-roast Tomahawk veal, imported from Australia, (succulent at medium rare, and can be paired with three different sauces);  duck confit; german pork knuckles (request for the crackling skin which adds a saltiness to the otherwise bland pork); and a personal favorite, chicken roulade (or chicken with sweet stuffing served in a roll).

After highlighting the highlights, let’s go-stunt (reverse) and look at the other five stations.

Cold Dishes/ Starters/ Salads

Includes mussels, prawns, smoked salmon and various salads with bread and cheese. It’s a normal spread, nothing amiss.

Kids’ Corner

A unique feature of Silver Shell Cafe is that they have a station for children. The table is set especially low and children are encouraged to take themselves to learn independence. The food at this station is catered to both kids and adults such as onion rings and mac-and-cheese!

Chinese Food

The dim sum (har gow and siew mai) isn’t particularly attractive but the roast meats are yummy, especially the siew yok (roasted pork belly), with a good proportional of fats to meat to the crackling skin.

There are also some Chinese dishes such as yam ring and gong bao chicken, which are ok. The scene-stealer, unexpectedly, turns out to be the simple fried wanton: the brittle skin wraps an entire prawn.

Singapore Food

No buffet these days is complete without the iconic Singapore dish, chili crab, which an angmoh kept taking. But the dish that shines is the laksa. Usually, for buffets, laksa sucks partly because it is not the focus and partly because the taste is diluted to suit everyone. But this laksa with less coconut milk–not so rich and heart-attack-inducing–has fire and spice: got kick! We wanted to share but ended up having a bowl each. Highly addictive.

Desserts

The desserts are good and myriad including—these are our favorites–durian puff, macarons, blueberry bread pudding, crepe,  and strawberry shortcake.

After the tasting, Ms Atas and I had a postmortem: we both agree that the buffet is excellent, with pleasant surprises in each station. If the buffet is situated in Singapore mainland itself, the place would be packed nightly. “Meet the Meat” buffet is guaranteed to be your most relaxing meeting ever!

Silver Shell Cafe

101 Siloso Road Level 3, Shangri La’s Rasa Sentosa Resort, Singapore 098970
T: 6371 1966/ 6371 1970
Buffet Dinner: 6-10pm daily (Meet the Meat on Wednesdays)

Rating: 3.788/ 5 stars

ps: Thank you, Rae, Zen, Ching, Margaret and Shangri-La, for the invite.