Shabu-sushi Buffet Restaurant @ Nex

Address
23 Serangoon Central, B1-38/39/40 Nex Mall

I've never felt this cheated of my money from my meal before. It sure was a tempting option to me because I was extremely hungry, was looking for a halal option and was craving for Japanese food. and Tada! Shabu-sushi Buffet Restaurant appeared while I waiting for my glasses from Owndays.

So here's the price:
Adult
weekday lunch: 17.90 ++
weekday dinner: 19.90++
weekend lunch: 20.90++
weekend dinner: 24.90++

The layout of the place was... terrible. signages were put up with A4 paper and clear tape, paint was peeling off... it was so bad I didn't bother taking a photo of it.

I was given a choice of 4 soup bases, of which I could choose 2. They included beef soup, chicken soup, suki-yaki and tom yam soup. I got the tom yam soup which was decent, and the chicken soup which tasted no different from boiled water.

The service was poor. When I went in, the waiters just stared with this blank look and did not even ask how many people were dining together. They did not even bother putting the induction cooker and the pot into the in-built hole on the table. Instead, they chose to leave it on the table for us and the table was just crammed. I looked over at the other tables and they actually had their pots nicely fitted into the hole. :(

They served sushi and tempura. The sushi rice was hard, tasteless. I have never, in my entire life, eaten such terrible sushi. The tempura was stale, disgusting.

The shabu ingredients were delivered to us on a conveyor belt. Basically the shabu only served cabbage, once in a blue moon some mushrooms and spinach appeared. Regarding meat, most of the time chicken was seen, but we stopped eating the chicken after our first serving of it because it was stale and tasted like crap. The beef shabu was the only consolation, but it only appeared thrice on the belt throughout the 1.5 hours I was dining there. Then there was sutchi (dory) slices... which I got sick of eating because it was the only decent food there.

There was a free flow of drinks and ice cream. There were only two choices of ice cream flavour, and the restaurant did not even bother to provide ice cream scoops. Instead, they provided metal ladles placed in a cup of water that was saturated with old ice-cream.

and to round it off... here's what I saw on hungrygowhere:

And this sums it up. I have NEVER eaten such horrendous food before, not to mention i paid around 22 dollars for it. Just don't make the same mistake as me. Really. For two people, I sure regretted not buying $45 dollars worth of sushi from cold storage.

The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf Beanstro @ Takashimaya

The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf - Beanstro
391 Orchard Road
Ngee Ann City #B1-37
Singapore 238872

Opening Hours: 

0800 to 2300 Daily

The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf has recently set up its first bistro restaurants in Takashimaya and Marina Bay Sands! On a side note, I absolutely love how the place has been aptly named 'Beanstro'.

More importantly, it is one of the rare places which served Eggs Benedict and is halal-certified! I have been dying to let the Malay boyfriend try how my all-time favourite tastes like and I was thrilled to find out that Beanstro served its Classic Eggs Benedict for $17++.

The establishment actually serves a wide range of food including salads, sandwiches, all-day breakfasts, mains, desserts and of course, all of The Coffee Bean's signature drinks. We went on a weekday evening when it was almost full. Service was relatively fast, but the waiters/waitresses were slightly unfriendly and were not at all apologetic for serving us a wrong drink.

At $17++, the Classic Eggs Benedict has been served with salad tossed in citrus dressing. The generous serving of turkey ham  was really fragrant without being overly salty which usually comes with having too much ham. The broad was toasted with butter to a perfect crisp and taste. The only downside was that the hollandaise sauce seemed to be lacking in its lemon juice which made the whole dish very heavy. Overall, it was still one of the better Eggs Benedicts i've ever tried. 

For $18++, the serving of the lasagna was enormous. The bolognaise sauce itself was light and taste, with sweetness from both the beef and tomato that made the dish very delightful initially. While the dish was hot, the cheese (perhaps a bit too much of it) and the pasta complemented the sauce well. However, as the meal went on, the pasta sheet began to harden and it felt more like eating a raw potato instead, making it progressively hard to down. Finish it fast if you want the meal to be nice throughout. 

  Overall, it was a pleasant dining experience and we would love to return to try mains like the steak which have been reviewed to be delicious. For the two dishes above and a Frozen Lemonade drink, we paid around $50.