Ziga Zaga at the Grand Hyatt Taipei (台北凱悅大飯店)
2F, 2 Sungshou Rd (松濤路2號2樓); tel 2720-1200. Lunch buffet: NT$680, from 11:30 am to2:30pm. Dinner is a la carte, 6 to9pm. English menu. Credit cards accepted.
It is probably not enough to say that everything is completely authentic and of the highest quality at Ziga Zaga's Italian lunch buffet. Even more telling is that there is not one single cheap dish of the kind that most buffets use as filler. Putting it more explicitly, they have made the bold and correct decision to forego the omnipresent tray of buffet sashimi, and though they do offer smoked salmon, it is of a slightly higher grade and reasonably consistent with the Italian theme.
Further to their credit, the adaptation of the buffet concept to Italian cuisine has been handled admirably. The extensive selection of cold dishes - including fresh mozzarella and tomato, calimari, prosciuto, salads, and real eggplant, squash, and zucchini roasted and marinated in olive oil - basically serves as a DIY antipasto. Next comes a meat course, like polenta, pork medallions in mushroom sauce, or garlic and chorizo rice. Lastly, there is pasta, which is made to order from a selection of noodles and five types of sauce. Of course, this removes the meal from the realm of pure buffet, but no one*s complaining.
The final bonuses of the Ziga Zaga lunch are freshness and price. The restaurant*s relatively small scale allows it to serve dishes on platters of ten servings, which are constantly replaced during the meal. And as Taipei hotel fare goes, NT$680 is pretty reasonable.
Atrium Cafe, Far Eastern Plaza Hotel (台北遠東國際大飯店)
6F, 201 Tunhua S. Rd., Sec. 2 (敦化南路二段201號6樓); tel 2378-8888. Lunch, NT$820 on weekdays and NT$920 on weekends, 11:45am to 2:30pm. Dinner, NT$980, 6 to 9:30pm. English menu. Reservations recommended. Credit cards accepted.
The Atrium Cafe is a large-scale buffet that, like most Taipei hotel buffets, caters largely to local diners. Since they have many regular customers, resident manager Michael Hendler says that it is necessary to keep things fresh by mixing up the theme, even if that means a complete overhaul of the menu once a month. So for July, the cuisine was American, for September it will enterprisingly focus on the cuisine of Penghu, and for August it is Malaysian, which intentionally coincides with Malaysia's national day a little later this month.
As for the current buffet, with more than a hundred dishes to choose from, it is able to explore the width and breadth of Malaysian food and its various influences, including Indian, Indonesian, and those recipes that can only be called uniquely Malay. Thus you'll find gado gado (a vegetable, tofu, and egg salad under peanut sauce), satay skewers, beef rendang, and black pepper crab. If you need verification of the authenticity beyond your own taste buds, Hendler says that the Far Eastern is able to use its international synergy to outsource recipes from other resorts, occasionally even inviting a guest chef. Lastly, the service is impeccable.
East West at the Westin Taipei (六福皇宮的東西燴)
2F, 133 Nanking E. Rd., Sec. 3 (南京東路三段133號2樓); tel 8770-6565. Buffets: breakfast, NT$600, 6:30 to 10:00am; lunch, NT$850, 11:30am to 2pm; dinner, NT$950, 6 to 9pm. A la carte dining all day. English menu. Credit cards accepted.
As the restaurant's name may indicate, East West offers a buffet that mixes all the best of Asian and occidental cuisine. And even though such a concept could present some potentially odd mixtures for the palate, the restaurant has managed to pull it off. The successful mix of dishes is planned by an executive chef, who draws on the resources of the Weston*s eleven other restaurants, including Japanese, four varieties of Chinese, Italian, Irish, and a New York deli.
East West's weekly highlight, however, comes on Wednesday nights with a special seafood buffet. Though the price is NT$100 higher than normal, it is the restaurant*s highest draw, probably because it offers a whole ocean of seafood all at once. Not that there is no seafood in the standard lunch and dinner buffets. At every meal, there will be someone to shell all the fresh oysters you can eat. There are also delicious hot dishes of Tasmanian salmon (which is less fatty than Norwegian), one variety of which is prepared fresh on a grill in the restaurant's kitchen area.
The kitchen area - where one can find fresh grilled beef, the aforementioned salmon, roast beef, and two types of pasta - naturally means that East West is another buffet-restaurant hybrid. Again, this is completely to the advantage of the diner, who is ensured that everything is fresh. Lastly, don't forget the desserts. Several of them, like the strawberry mousse, stray away from heavy cream and cheese-based standards to provide something a little lighter, though equally delicious.
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