Jing, One Fullerton

I usually don't like buffets all that much. The spread is usually of mediocre quality, having been cooked in mass quantities and left sitting in foodwarmers congealing for some time. And the thought of stuffing one's stomach with copious quantities of food just makes me feel sick.

But Camemberu's post made Jing's weekend ala-carte brunch buffet sound so tempting, that I made a mental note to try it out. Alas, more than a year flew by before i got down to this item on my "to-do" list. Last Saturday, to celebrate my dad's birthday, we trooped down to Jing to sample just how good this buffet could be ($38 per adult, there's currently a good promotion with DBS credit cards where one dines free with every three paying adults).

A series of pleasant surprises followed. Decidedly "un-buffet-like" - the food was of high quality and served piping hot. Basically, instead of choosing from a pre-cooked selection, you order the dishes you like from a very wide ranging menu which includes dim sum, soups, cooked dishes (meat, seafood, rice and noodles, vegetables) - and your choices are then cooked to order. The kitchen production rate was impressively fast, and we didn't have to wait long before our food started arriving.

The price includes an extremely value-for-money order of chilli crab or deep-fried soon hock in soya sauce per table, as well as as one order of braised fragrant rice with shark's fin per table. The soon hock was impressively fresh, tasty and moist, while the braised fragrant rice came with a decent topping of small whole shark's fins. I was also very taken with the drunken fresh prawns in claypot because of the tasty piping hot herbal broth (ordered this twice), though E felt that the prawns could have been fresher. Soups - double boiled shrimp dumpling with bamboo pith and shimeji mushroom; braised fishmaw with chicken and carrot reductions - were made from superior stock and had a very refined taste and texture. The few dim sum selections that we tried (steamed glutinous rice in lotus leaf; prawn dumplings, scallop dumplings) were decent as well. Special mention goes to the egg tarts (on the dessert tray) - flaky light pastry, smooth custard of just the right sweetness!

N.B. No photos because we couldn't resist the temptation to start eating the minute the dishes were set down on the table. The DSLR was left forgotten at one side!

Jing
One Fullerton, #01-02/03
www.jing.sg