Greenhouse

I was really excited to step foot into the Greenhouse- have been reading great reviews of this place. Alas, it was just not meant to be. I guess buffet lunch just isn't as good as its famous Sunday brunch. 

Everything seemed so promising when we first entered Greenhouse- lots of natural light (check), witty quote by Virginia Woolf printed on its cards: "One cannot think well, love well, sleep well if one has not dined well" (check), nice little touches such as the blown glass on the walls (check). What's there not to like about this place? 

Interesting selection of bread. Unfortunately, I left my stomach space for other food instead. I tried the mushroom soup and it was rich, creamy and full of flavour with little chunks of mushroom in it.

I came back to this section again and again. I don't usually go for seconds when it comes to the salad/appetisers part, but the selection here was really quite good. Worthy of mention was the couscous and chicken. The chicken was admittedly a little tough but it went well with the couscous. The mushrooms were also bursting with juice.

The sushi and seafood section had a few hits and misses. I think Greenhouse tends to overcook its food- the cooked prawns were far too hard in some dishes, the char siew in the carving section while tasty, was too hard as well. Even the chawanmushi was lacking the jiggly consistency and instead felt more like Chinese steamed egg.

Talking about overcooking the food, I didn't take a picture of the Chinese food section. The salmon in lobster sauce was far too hard as well. I know you are concerned about us eating uncooked food... but still, this isn't the way to go! Other dishes included buffalo wings, vegetables in XO sauce etc. (all worth skipping).

The Indian food section was pretty good. I loved the pairing of nann and Chicken Curry!

If you dare display your desserts section at the entrance, my bet is that it has to be pretty good! So, there was a wonderful selection of ice cream- Good quality ice cream by the way. Not the normal supermarket chocolate/strawberry/vanilla.

But good times did not last. The kuehs were bad- I'd rather the dessert chefs stick to what they are good at as opposed to trying to make things that are not their specialities. The ondeh ondeh is one of the worst I have eaten in quite a while- extremely thick skin and no gula melaka splashing out at all! The rest of the kuehs were equally subpar.

These beautiful dainty little desserts, while at first appealing, turned out more appalling than appealing. Maybe that's putting it too strongly since the chocolate dessert was quite good. But see that orange thing in the picture, I took a bite of it, made a face and officially declared it the worst thing I have eaten in quite some time. I don't even know what it was because as you can tell, there are no signs!

The chocolate cake was rich and suitably bitter. The hazelnut cake, while acceptable, was a tad too sweet.

At $58++ for buffet lunch, the buffet was a letdown. While we were at first impressed with the service staff (one waitress was especially friendly), we realised that the service staff were a lot friendlier to tourists. This was a far cry from the impeccable service from Summer Pavilion- once we've been there, all service standards pale in comparison. 

The Ritz-Carlton Millenia
7 Raffles Avenue
#03-00
Tel No. 6434 5288