Tummy Prosperity: Heavenly Bloated at Asia Restaurant at The Ritz Carlton Mega Kuningan

Located right at the center of Mega Kuningan business district, The Ritz Carlton is indeed an ideal choice for the business people whose activities mostly take place around here and fancy a luxurious place either to stay or to dine in, or even to do both of them. Not only that, it’s just few blocks away from several well-known shopping malls and casual restaurants. Lucky me, it’s also located just 10-minute walking distance away from my boardinghouse. Call me luckier, I got the chance to have food-tasting with my fellow foodie friends last Saturday there at their Asia Restaurant.

There are 3 dining places available in The Ritz Carlton Mega Kuningan. First one is Lobo which brings out the concept of contemporary fine dining, next is Tempus which basically is a bar and lounge, then the final one which I tried, Asia, which offers all-day buffet. It was actually not my very first time dining in Asia Restaurant. I’ve once been there when I had my office meeting at the hotel and continued having lunch with my colleagues.

Fulfilling my expectation, my friends and I were immediately welcomed by the warm service from the waitress once we got there. We were then directed to the table we chose, which as always was the one close to the window. Having made sure that everything’s complete, she then left us to start our big feast!

Looking at the venue, I could immediately tell that the selections of dishes were like REALLY A LOT! The place was very spacious with many long big tables, allowing the restaurant to accommodate more than 100 people I guessed. It’s much bigger if compared to the Pacific Restaurant and Lounge, the one offering the same buffet concept in another Ritz Carlton hotel located next to Pacific Place. The design itself was classic yet elegant, delivering the luxurious atmosphere of dining in 5-star hotel. There was even a corner for live music, however at that time it’s not available as I was told that they only performed every Friday and Saturday evening as well as every Sunday Brunch.

Couldn’t hold the hunger any longer, I then started to walk around and visited each of the stations to see the arrays of dishes served. Similar to the saying of “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover”, you also shouldn’t judge Asia Restaurant by its name. Despite it’s called Asia and it did serve Asian foods like Chinese, Malay, Indonesian, Japanese, Indian, and Thai; it also provided the ones coming from Western countries like Italy and France.

Kick-offing the lunch with fresh and raw ones, my choice went to the salad with crispy parmesan cheese from the salad bar, prawns from the seafood bar, and salmon and tuna sashimi from the Japanese station. Besides, I did take some sushi to complete my starter plate. For the salad, the veggies were all fresh and crispy and the dressings mixed with it simply made it an enjoyable combination of healthy food. The most exceptional part of it was the crispy parmesan cheese! It was so good that I wish I could just take the parmesan cheese from each of the salad cup on the showcase *LOL*. Another one I fancied from my appetizer part was the salmon sashimi that was actually served in typical way as in other places, but it’s just hard to stop munching it.

Moving on to the next one which was coming from Chinese station; the station serving Dim Sum, Chinese porridge, Chinese soup, roasted duck, Hainanese rice, and even Bak Kut Teh. Well, I guessed my pick was kind of mainstream as I chose Dim Sum. Honestly speaking, at first I thought the Dim Sum would just taste so-so looking from its appearance, which to be blunt didn’t have anything special compared to any other Dim Sum. Surprisingly, I was proven wrong by the luscious flavors brought by each item in the wooden tray. Another plus point was the abundant selections of sauces to enjoy with your Dim Sum starting from the sweet less-spicy ones until the savory and spicier ones.

Ok, keep going on, now it’s the turn of the station that I thought was the ‘main course of the main course’, the carving station. From this one I picked the grilled beef with mushroom sauce, which I combined with Nachos and potato chips topped with cheese sauce and other common condiments for Mexican dishes. The juicy and tender beef was properly seasoned as the flavor was not too strong, allowing my taste bud to enjoy it when combined with the mushroom sauce that had stronger taste. Thanks to the cheese sauce, the companions I added by myself here were also coming as perfect complements.

In addition to all the foods I’ve mentioned before, Asia Restaurant did serve many many more to make all the guests heavenly bloated when they left the venue. They included various types of noodles with various choices of broth; traditional Indonesian signature dishes like Oxtail soup, Karedok, Nasi Uduk, Satay, and Meatballs; various types of pasta with various choices of sauces, various types of Indian bread with various choices of curry, various types of bread, and plentiful assortment of cheese.

Having shared with you so many things about the appetizers and main courses, now we arrive at the part, which is mostly forgotten by majority of people or mostly skipped due to too many prior dishes had. Well, if you just said DESSERT, yes you’re absolutely right! Despite the fact that people less prioritized this station, as a dessert lover this was definitely the first one I would check in any buffet I went to, just to make sure I leave enough space in my tummy to try them all. If you did do the same thing as me, then WELCOME TO THE FAMILY! Looking at the desserts station for the very first time, my heart jumped and danced straightaway. Seems like Asia Restaurant knew me so well that the desserts station was the biggest among all stations and the varieties provided here were also the richest compared to others. Fruits, pastries, sliced cakes, mousse, panna cotta, traditional cakes, chocolate fountain, ice cream, and churros; geez, I got sugar-high!

You might think I was quite over-exaggerating, but I couldn’t deny that it was indeed a huge dilemma for me to pick which ones I decided to end up on my plate. If only my tummy could handle everything, I simply wanted to try all! However, since it couldn’t, so there I was with my final choices. Consuming all these calories, basically I think all of them were so mouth-watering and were indeed sinful indulgence. Nonetheless, the ones to which I was most willing to spend my intake of the day (read: my personal fave) were the silky and moist Oreo Panna Cotta, the scrumptious combination of the base pie and the blueberry jam from the Blueberry Crumble, the classic yet all time favorite Mixed Fruit Cheesecake, and the neither too sweet nor too milky Pistachio Ice Cream!