Kitchens On Kent — Restaurant in Sydney

Kitchens on Kent is an upmarket hotel buffet, where they have spared no expense on the cultivation of your comfort. The plural in the name comes from the presence of multiple different chef stations, allowing you to eat cooked-to-order dishes rather than the usual row of cloche-covered dishes sitting over a bain-marie. Australian buffet has really taken a giant leap forward to where it can now deliver a piping hot garlic naan plucked directly from the tandoor and placed directly onto your plate.

This buffet has a bit more of a boutique feel, like wandering in an upmarket food court, trying to decide between Indian and noodles, except here you’re able to avoid making such arduous decisions. My dining companion dabbles in an aromatic rogan josh curry with long tender strands of lamb, before moving on to the Italian kitchen. Here you’ll find slightly less successful pizza, easily bettered by bowls of silky, paper-thin pappardelle intertwined with a bright, cherry tomato-dotted lamb ragu. In between these two stations there is an Asian kitchen turning out stir-fried noodle dishes, bamboo steamer-baskets of dumplings, and reshly made bao with a variety of fillings.

You’ll find the attractively arranged cold bar set off to the side from the hot food stations, decorated with artfully arranged fishes resting on ice. There are four sides of pleasure to this counter, though my eye is immediately caught by the sliced-to-order sashimi counter. Here you can nominate your pleasure, or hit up everything as I did, including raw scallops, kingfish, salmon, octopus, cooked prawns and egg. My only complaint is the chopsticks are too crude to easily pick up the slender sashimi cuts this station delivers.

Making your way around the raw bar you’ll find nori rolls, nigiri sushi, prawn-topped chirashi bowls and all the accoutrements you need to make it great. The other end of the cold bar is given over to mounds of fresh seafood: mussels, shucked Sydney rock oysters, split Balmain bugs, king prawns and spanner crabs are all yours for the taking. They go down a treat with the 2017 Giant Steps Chardonnay ($90/bottle).

There's also a very attractive looking salad section, where you can create your own Caesar salad, and top it with hard-boiled eggs, smoked salmon or charcuterie. It all looked great, but ain’t nobody got time for salad when there's suckling pig to be had. The final hot station is a Japanese robata grill and carvery. You can either get stuck into the three roast selections on offer for immediate eating, or you can order wagyu at the butcher’s counter and watch it contorting on the robata grill over charcoal while you wait. I enjoyed suckling pig, roast pork with crackling, and a lovely slab of strip loin that just lacked for seasoning (well it did until I found the salt station).

What I particularly liked about the Kitchens on Kent buffet is how it was staffed. Where a chef is necessary – like at the sashimi counter – there is one. Where a chef is not necessary, like at the cheese station, you can help yourself as you see fit. If you can draw your eyes away from the Willy Wonka-esque dessert station, the cheeses are impressive. Throw in all the cracker styles a cheese board fetishist can dream of, plus cubes of quince paste, marmalade, and dried or fresh fruit to really set it off.

Cheese is only going to be interesting if you can drag your eyes away from the dessert bar, and even for a savoury-focussed seafood eater like me, it was difficult. Decorated with chocolate sculptures the inhouse chocolatier created earlier in the day, it’s pretty spectacular. My eyes were instantly caught by the ice cream counter, where your selection of ice creams and sorbets can be topped with anything your heart desires. While I don’t want to spoil your sense of discovery, there’s everything from mini pavlovas, to countless tiny cakes and hot puddings.

Floor staff are attentive and friendly. While this meal did set us back $108/person, it was easy to leave feeling like you had a quality experience...

Hearing a lot of reviews about the buffet at Kitchens on Kent I was very much inclined to try it out. All the food bloggers rave about it. So I took my family over the weekend.

At first, upon entering, I suppose the atmosphere feels high-end, especially with other customers also appearing quite well dressed.

But lets talk about the food options and the quality overall.

1. Selection, I don't think they should be labelling this a Buffet, at all, the selection is actually very small, it's akin to when you're staying at a hotel and they throw in a selection of food for breakfast. The area of food, after going around just shocks me at how limited the selection was compared to other buffets at the same price point.

2. The food quality, and speed was also quite average for a buffet of this price point. The fruit selection for example was laughable, as the quality of the fruits were extremely poor, and the varied selection was very small as well. I thought it was quite hilarious that they had to dice up the kiwi like it's some special caviar that needs to be reserved. Also requesting items from the grill area as well as the the stir fry area was very slow, you definitely would have forgotten you ordered something from there until you see someone eating the dish.

3. Some areas just didn't feel clean and hygienic enough, largely to do with how they have laid out the area, lets be more specific, the deserts area is in a very large bench space, but some utensils are shared between every other piece of desert, so if you're picking a piece of cake using the tongs for chocolate, then you use it for he other one as well, so then the tongs become mashed up with 3-4 different flavours. Also the scooping of ice-cream was cumbersome, I just kept seeing people getting ice cream on their arms, and toppings on their sleeves.

4. Although the decor is nice, but honestly it's just so poorly planned out the space and the way people line up to get food, that when everyone's up getting food, all I have was a crowd of people standing behind me having a chat, this might have been because I was seated right snap bang next to the sashimi bar.

5. Did I mention how dirty a lot of plates were? Insane, how can you put plates out that are dirty? Even going to a cheap restaurant they won't give you dirty plates with food marks and crusts still on it, it's also not unique to one area of plates, it was around everywhere!

Then inside some of the confectionary jars, there's melted chocolate that's cross contaminated from the chocolate fountain, what on earth?

6. Staff also lack a lot of enthusiasm and are quite robotic, the only thing they are quick at are taking your plates away, but when it comes to drink service, they often forget to bring what you've ordered.

All these points were collectively felt by the family, and children definitely don't lie or hold back when it comes to their opinions as well.

Overall I think what irked me the most was the price point, it was definitely not value for money. Epicurean at the Crown is miles ahead, and I can't believe that even the Harvest Buffet at The Star beats Kitchens on Kent hands down.

This place definitely should not give themselves a title of luxury buffet. It's far from luxury, and way far from being...

Took my partner for dinner on her birthday with the $138 menu.

I'll break down the review into sections

Service: wait staff were excellent albeit few in number. Always with a smile and were attentive in clearing tables between plates as you'd expect from such a nice hotel. Chefs were generally very good also although I would say that later in the evening the hot food area was left unattended on a few occasions.

Food: Cold cooked seafood overall were decent. (Blue swimmer, oysters, mussels, prawns, bugs). However, the mussels and the bay bugs that I had were quite overcooked and dry. Oyster were good, but the presentation is not so nice when you've just stacked all of them on top of each other so even though they're cleaned they end up with shell from the oyster above it. Some straight fell out of the shell and just lay there. There was aburi salmon and prawn nigiri available. Tuna, salmon and kingfish.

Grilled seafood was really solid but it's so easy to miss it as an option if you're just glancing about the hot section. Steamed dishes were fine

Didn't try the stir fry noodle section.

The carvery: plus side: Man they nailed that pork belly.. wish I could take that block home with me. There was a roast chicken there that had been there long enough to begin mummifying I think it was looking exceptionally dry. The roast beef also looked quite dry despite the nice pink interior suggesting it was cooked perfectly initially ( I didn't try either of these)

Dessert station. Cakes were quite nice. cheeses had been there long enough to also start drying out. The fruit unfortunately had started to attract fruit flies. The chocolate sauce fountain was quite impressive to watch although I'm not a big dessert person at buffets

Coffee Tea: One of the strangest things. There's no mention of this anywhere and I was unaware until I asked. Black Tea and Coffee (one of either) is included per person. However if you'd like any other teas or milk with your tea / coffee that's not included in the buffet price. Which I find to be such a strange thing given the price you're paying for the buffet. How many coffees / tea with milk could you conceivably have anyway? Surely not enough to dent the profit margin

Also FYI that the "order off the menu" that other reviews mentioned no longer exists and lobster is only available on Monday nights. You'll have to order from the staff directly

Overall: The Langham is a beautiful hotel and the dining area is stylish and seating was comfortable and spacious. Unfortunately I did not feel that the buffet was worth the price unless you're consuming your bodyweight of sushi /sashimi / cold seafood away. The hot food section (aside from the pork belly and the grill) seemed lacklustre compared to other locations. The dessert bar only used one side of its island.

Perhaps this is due to me dining on Sunday evening but I think you'd be able to have a more enjoyable dinner elsewhere for the same price tag with...