Chiso Zanmai 馳走三昧 @ Central

First of all, I'm not a professional food blogger. I don't go around with a huge DSLR to take those mouth-watering shots of food but I admit to taking pictures of what I eat outside usually with my phone's camera or sometimes with my digital camera. If people close to me are eating with me, chances are, I'll try to sneak in a quick shot before letting them lay their hands on the food. :-p

I was running out of ideas of where to have dinner with a friend and decided to go to Central's website to check out what new offerings they have. Chiso Zanmai looked quite interesting and having heard good things from another friend who had been there, I decided to head there for a visit.

First up, typical of a Japanese buffet, the usual sushi that I eat, the pink and white kamaboko and some tempura. Since it's still January, there's an Osechi corner there just beside the sushi where you can take items traditionally seen in those Osechi sets. The sushi was quite good while the tempura was a bit lacking. And I loved the kamaboko so much that I went back for more.

If it isn't for the fact that this is a Japanese buffet, eating sushi and tempura could have easily cost quite a bit if you order it ala carte at some of the more expensive Japanese restaurants. Then again, I didn't pay a lot for this buffet so I wasn't expecting a lot from it anyway, in terms of variety and quality. It was a series of hits and misses along the way but generally, it was a pleasant experience for my palate.

Ramen remains as one of my favourites whenever I go to a Japanese restaurant. There are two options here, one is the shio version while I got the tonkotsu type. By the way, I added the kamaboko and the spring onions so what the chef gives to you only consists of the noodles, the char siew and the menma. The good thing is, it doesn't taste powdery or watery. Although a bit on the salty side, I think it's a credible attempt at offering ramen even though Chiso Zanmai obviously does not specialise in it like those famous ramen shops. I didn't get to try the shio version though so it could have been that this might fare better than the tonkotsu version. Gives me another reason to return for another visit, I guess.

And more kamaboko from the osechi set on my plate! Plus the deep-fried stuff and some yaki-udon. Frankly speaking, save for the corn cream croquette, the others were not really to my liking. Then again, if I had eaten them straight after it was cooked and served, it might have been a different story altogether. The yaki-udon was acceptable but I'm of the yakisoba type so the texture of the udon took some time to get used to.

Chicken curry but where's the chicken? By the time I got to this, there were only carrots and bits of chicken so it was rather disappointing. The curry sauce was OK but without the key ingredients, I couldn't really tell if the sauce and its ingredients were in perfect harmony or effectively going their separate ways in terms of taste. Maybe I should get to the curry section earlier next time or risk having to eat curry sauce rice and not curry rice.

By the time we got here, it was proving a bit too much for us to bear so we shared what we had here. Japanese-style mochi, western desserts with a Japanese twist like matcha cheesecake, matcha tiramisu and matcha swiss roll. Generally nice to eat although I have to note that I didn't taste matcha in the tiramisu. Skip the chocolate pudding, go for the Japanese desserts and fruits instead.