Rubbish Eat Rubbish Grow

There is a rule I keep coming back to, usually somewhere between a hotel lift and a dining room: a buffet’s price is a promise about its weakest tray, not its best one.

At S$70, you forgive a lukewarm curry. You paid for range, and range has casualties. At S$130 you forgive less. Past that, the old excuse that this is simply how buffets work starts to run out. A kitchen charging a premium is telling you it has solved the problems cheaper rooms live with: the tray that cools, the station nobody is minding, the bread baked for breakfast that is still sitting out at lunch.

Colony tests that rule at the very top of the range. Its Sunday champagne brunch starts at S$230++ per adult. Nothing else in this series asks for that much.

So the question is not whether Colony is good. It is whether it is S$230 good, which is a much narrower thing to be.

Colony already sits on our shortlist of the best buffets in the city. Until now, though, it has never had a full buffet review behind it. This is that review.

One-Line Verdict: A polished, well-rated room whose weekday lunch is easy to justify and whose Sunday brunch has to prove it is something more than a dinner with champagne poured over it.

The Room

Colony is on Level 3 of The Ritz-Carlton, Millenia Singapore, at 7 Raffles Avenue, Singapore 039799. The hotel is operated by Marriott International, and the restaurant’s own site is colony.com.sg.

The room is themed on late-18th-century British trade with the East Indies. Naming a buffet after a colony, in a city that has spent two centuries working out what that word meant, is a choice. The hotel has made it, and I will leave it there.

Buffet Sessions:

• Breakfast: 6.30am to 10.30am
• Lunch: 12pm to 2.30pm
• Dinner: served, though I could not confirm hours I would stand behind

Reservations go through +65 6434 5288 or rc.sinrz.restaurantreservations@ritzcarlton.com. Unlike many hotel buffets, Colony publishes a booking email. That is a small thing, and also the kind of small thing that tells you how a hotel thinks about its guests.

Now the fact that settles the question for many readers before anything else does. Colony does not publish any halal certification. If you are booking for a group that needs halal food, this is not the room, however good the lunch or the address.

As of May 2026, Colony held 4.6 stars from nearly 3,000 Google reviews. I treat numbers like that the way I treat trophies. They trail, and they average out the good nights and the bad ones. But nearly 3,000 people do not land on 4.6 by accident. It suggests a floor that runs steadily, which is exactly what you hope for at this price.

The Kitchens That Matter

Colony is built around seven open kitchens: local, Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, Malaysian and Western, plus a bakery.

Seven open kitchens is a staffing claim before it is a food claim. Every open kitchen needs a cook who is actually watching it. The number tells you about payroll and floor plan. It tells you nothing about whether the rendang at 2pm is the rendang you would have had at noon.

It is also, word for word, the claim Carousel at Royal Plaza on Scotts makes. On a weeknight the price difference is smaller than the reputations suggest. In mid-2026, Carousel’s premium seafood dinner ran at S$92++ from Sunday to Thursday. Colony’s Sunday to Thursday dinner is S$98++, as of September 2026. That is six dollars apart. On Friday and Saturday, the gap widens to S$102++ against S$128++. Carousel is halal-certified and Colony is not, which for some families ends the comparison there.

The brunch is where the comparison stops being polite. S$230++ buys you more than three of Carousel’s S$72++ weekday lunches. Same number of kitchens. Very different bill.

I do not have a dish-by-dish record of Colony I would put my name to, so I will not invent one. What I can do is tell you where I would point my attention, and what I would be checking when I got there.

The local, Malaysian and Indonesian kitchens

Three of the seven kitchens cook food from this part of the world. That is a statement about where the hotel thinks its strength lies, or where it thinks its guests’ expectations are highest. Probably both.

This is where a Singapore buffet gets judged most harshly, by people who have eaten these dishes all their lives and paid a fraction of the price for them at a hawker centre. A hotel kitchen cooking local food is always cooking against the stall downstairs. At Colony’s prices, it needs to win that contest outright, not just draw.

My test is simple. Visit these kitchens once early in the session and again in the final half hour. If the trays look tired by then, three local kitchens are three chances for the same problem to show.

The Indian kitchen

An open kitchen promises one thing: that cooking happens in front of you, not just serving. The Indian kitchen is where I would check whether Colony keeps that promise. Is anything being made as you arrive, or is the kitchen “open” only in the architectural sense, a counter with a view of some trays?

I cannot tell you which it is from what I have. I can tell you that the answer matters more here than at a cheaper room, because the price has already assumed the better version.

The bakery

The bakery is the seventh kitchen, and the one I would watch most closely. It is not the showpiece, which is why it is useful.

Kitchens put their care where they expect to be photographed. A bakery that is still turning out fresh bread at the end of a lunch service tells you the care goes past the headline stations and into the corners. Breakfast, from 6.30am, is where a bakery should be at its best. Lunch is where you find out whether it bothers to keep up.

The Western kitchen

I mention it last for a reason. At a buffet this size, the Western line is often where a kitchen goes through the motions: roasts carved because a hotel buffet is expected to have them. I have no record that Colony does this. I am simply telling you where I would look first for filler.

Which brings me to the cost of your own decisions. Every buffet charges you twice: once at the till, and once in stomach space. At S$230++, that second charge gets expensive. A plate built from whatever is nearest the entrance is a plate you have paid brunch prices for. Walk the whole room before you pick anything up.

Best Bites

I am limiting this list to what the record actually supports, which means sessions and kitchens rather than named dishes. Any review that names Colony’s best plates without having verified them is guessing.

• Weekday lunch: S$96++ (as of Nov 2026) for the same seven kitchens. The best value Colony offers, by some distance.
• The bakery at breakfast: the session where a bakery should show what it can do, and the one where you are most likely to see it at its best.
• The local kitchens, early in a session: the strongest test of the room, best taken while the trays are fresh.
• The booking line: a published reservations email and phone number. It sounds minor until you are trying to sort out a group booking.

Misses

• No published halal certification. For many families, that ends the search before it starts.
• The brunch is not explained. S$230++ is a “from” price, and what I can verify does not break down what the extra spend buys beyond the champagne in the name. At this price, that should be spelled out.
• The weekend dinner jump. S$98++ to S$128++ is a S$30 rise for Friday and Saturday, on the same seven kitchens. Some of that is demand. Not all of it is food.
• Seven kitchens, one claim. Carousel makes the same promise for less on every session. Colony has to earn the difference on execution, and the record does not prove that it does.
• The theme. Easy to walk past. Not for everyone.

Worth It If / Skip If

Worth it if:

• You can go on a weekday lunch, when the price sits close to the rest of the market.
• You want a polished room with a steady floor and a reservations line that works.
• You are marking a genuine occasion and have already decided the brunch is part of the gift.
• You will walk the whole room before you start and eat with some discipline.

Skip if:

• You need halal food. None is certified.
• You are comparing kitchens on price alone. Seven kitchens costs less elsewhere.
• You would rather spend S$230 on three good meals than one long one.
• You book buffets for the quantity. At this price, quantity is the least of what you are paying for, or should be.

Buffet Prices

All figures below are ++ prices. Lunch prices come from a May 2026 visit, and dinner and brunch prices from a September 2026 menu. Hotel buffet pricing moves monthly, so treat these as a guide, not a quote.

Session	Days	Price per adult
Lunch	Weekdays	S$78++
Lunch	Saturday	S$82++
Dinner	Sunday to Thursday	S$98++
Dinner	Friday and Saturday	S$128++

Now the brunch. Is it defensible?

Take the arithmetic first. S$230++ is S$132 more than a Sunday to Thursday dinner and S$102 more than a Saturday night. Whatever the brunch adds, it has to be worth that gap, before service charge and tax push the real figure higher still.

Then compare it with the same operator. Crossroads Buffet at Singapore Marriott Tang Plaza is also run by Marriott International. Its 2026 Sunday champagne brunch was S$99++, or S$146++ with free-flow champagne, wine and beer. If you want the full picture, the Orchard Road comparison is reviewed separately, along with its own quirks on the bill. Colony’s starting price sits S$84 above Crossroads’ top tier.

My honest position is this. The brunch might be worth it. I cannot prove from the record that it is. Before booking, call +65 6434 5288 and ask three things: what the S$230++ includes, what the higher tiers add, and which kitchens run on Sunday that do not run at dinner. If the answers are specific, you will know what you are buying. If they are vague, you will know that too.

Closing Line

RERG has set out to cover most of the hotel buffets in Singapore that people actually book, one review at a time, and Colony was overdue. It is a well-run room with a steady reputation and an honest weekday price. The brunch is a different proposition, and it asks you to trust that the extra money is going somewhere you can taste.

Book the Tuesday lunch. Save the Sunday for when someone else is paying, or when you have asked enough questions to know exactly what the champagne is costing you.

---

J.C. Yue is often in transit, and hotel buffets are her most reliable in-between meal in Singapore. She reviews them for RERG on what the room actually delivers: what is worth returning for, and what is not.

---