Essence — Restaurant in Islands District

The in house buffet restaurant in Novotel Citygate Tung Chung, boasts one of the biggest breakfast spreads ever seen. At a cost of under £10 per person, there's no reason why you cant fill up (and out) on breakfast. The lunch buffet, is a somewhat muted affair, and given that the price difference for the dinner isn't far off, I'd go have dim sum and save your belly for the dinner buffet. Dinner bookings are a premium, expect to book upto 2 months in advance for weekend slots, especially in peak holiday seasons. The selection for dinner justifies the extra £4/£5 over the lunch, and its a bustling and at times jostling affair, with the bus loads of china tourists that flood the Citygate outlet centre and make use of the buffet for their dining needs. But dishes are rapidly replenished, so fret not. Like the breakfast and lunch buffet, there is a chef at hand to make fresh desserts, omelletes and whichever speciality is on offer that evening. The downside of the ever popular dining place, is that quaility of the choices on offer have drastically changed. When first openned it was not a rarity to see live oysters, snow crab legs and crayfish, now its replaced by greenshell mussels (previously frozen) and if your lucky an escargo or two. But seafood or the lack thereof aside, there is a modest selection of other mains to temp the taste buds. desserts are popular, what is less admired is the way 'self service' of the cakes means the last few slices resemble more of 'eton mess' and most of the toppings have been cherry picked off by the inconsiderate. Although ice cream is available, a self service ice cream machine would be a welcomed addition. Tea, coffee and various hot beverages are included, as well as some fruit juices. Soft drinks and alcohol as ecpected isn't in the perks of the reasonably priced dinner buffet. Overall its a 3.5 (i'm feeling a tad generous) out of 5. And i'd at least recommend it. Best value for breakfast, but avoid lunch times here, theres better...

Dinner buffer and Breakfast buffet bundle with my birthday staycation. During my stay the restaurant is overcrowded. I don't know if it affects the staff's attitude but overall it gives a strong sense of "instant made". Frozen food like sushi, sausages is so so. Dessert of dinner buffet is highly not recommended: bean curd dessert seems been put there for hours and began to swell with a bit sour taste; the "bread pudding" you can notice it's made from triangle shape toast that makes you associate with toast that left over from morning breakfast buffet. Breakfast buffet have even more customers and got even worse, long queue for fresh egg that when I got mine, my seat was clean up that staff thinks that I've already gone. Hot food gone warm and cold meat also gone warm. As it's freebie with room I can't have much to talk about but I think I won't pay for...

Good variety of food. They had special promotion of abalone where you get 1 steamed abalone & vermicelli per diner. The abalone was nice but wasn’t anything to rave about. Sashimi included salmon, tuna & a white fish, the white fish was very liquidy, tuna & salmon was fresh and they were not stingy with the carving but was simply sashimi. Other seafood included small crabs, cooked prawns, clams, welch, mussels. They had various salad bar, grill bar, beef rib roast, ramen noodles, abalone congee etc. Movenpick ice cream dessert and tofu fa & sesame sweet soup was my favourite. Kids would love the chocolate fondue, various cakes, jellies & Portuguese tarts. Service by the staff was impeccable. Was nice to get a smile from staff as sometimes is rare in Hong Kong. Not a super high standard buffet but was good...