Sunday, November 08, 2009

mid-year term review - Momo Cafe, Courtyard Hong Kong, Western District, Hong Kong

Sometimes we need to occasionally re-visit some restaurants for periodical check-up. So with the Marriott Gold card, and for a Saturday we can sleep until noon time but not yet have an appetite for a lunch. A tea buffet is a good idea and you can combine 2 meals into 1. So cost-wise, HK$80 (after half price discount from 128+) can get you 2 meals in a daybreak. Saving money in this way is not bad.

1. The tuna melt on the right front is still good. The mini hamburg steak is also nice. The sesame dressing for the green salad is pretty special. 2. Momo Cafe uses some very nice Cantonese wonton noodle and their soup base is also quite classic with the "Big Earth" fish and shrimp roe and spare ribs to boil it. However, the shrimp dumpling is so so.

3. dim sum and some hot food. Among all, the mini sticky rice dumpling on the right bottom is good. 4. Putting the HK classic street stall in a tea buffet is quite thoughtful. Fish mini-patty with lettuce in soup. The fish patty is very nice and fresh, and the soup base too.

5. All of a sudden, there came a crowd of foreigners from a country west of Hong Kong. In customs, they use hands to eat rather than fork/chopsticks. So half of them asked for a drink from A-La-Carte and half of them chose the buffet. However, those ordering the drinks even went out to the buffet table and take the food as much as they can. They picked up some bread rolls with their hands and smelled them at a 0.1 cm distance from their noses. Then the waiter politely reminded them to try the tea buffet, but their answer "you need to dumb all these food anyway. So we just help you not to waste food.". When the manager showed up and further explained, they just didn't care about it. Furthermore, they even used their fingers to dip in the cheese cakes and tasted it. When they were asked for not doing so, their answer is "we just need to check if the food has pork.". So a cheese cake with pork? Of course, it's not only me who saw this incident. It turned out half of the customers immediately left. As I just took only 2 plates of food, at a very critical time of this "leave or stay", I promptly got those food they didn't touch yet. So that's why from this photo onward, it's all about sweet. After all, this comment is not on any prejudice but maybe to some extent they are right, especially when the majority do the same thing, then it's considered to be right. 6. Herbal jelly - very nice and you can put the syrup to your preference.

7. Ok, these 3 pieces of cake are the refugees I saw on the table. Too bad, I can't try their blueberry cheese cake and NY cheese cake. 8. bean curd sweet - I need to dig the bottom part of this one. Sorry about that but I had no other way.

9. The first time I saw the back of my Marriott Gold card, I really didn't figure out how they count the times of visit. As you can see the "2" & "3" have been crossed out on the 1st row, then the 2nd row is for 16 times but only crossed for "1". 10. When the card was returned to me, I saw another cross on the 2nd row "2". The person who came up with this marking system must be a very cautious and his mind is very sophisticated. The first row is for the JW Marriott HK's use of maximum 8 times. The 2nd row is for the Courtyard HK's 16 times use. So JW Marriott's 1 time use is equal to 2 times use of Courtyard HK. That means if my next time is JW Marriott, the "4" would be crossed out and leaving the 2nd row "9" onwards allowance for uses for Courtyard. I somehow relate this kind of complicated system to certain culture of a Country in Asia. They are very good at "calculation".

7 comments:

Stella said...

This tea buffet is really for me as I wake up every Sunday at 12 noon.
And I like to combine 2 meals into one for many reasons(it is efficient to "merge" breakfast and lunch together, also cost effective).
Merger is the trend after all.

For the Marriott Card calculation, US people can never figure this out.

Paranoid Android said...

Brunch Buffets have not really caught on in KL. That is a good idea. Why didn't the management kick out those peasants? Spoil the mood for for a good meal! Sheesh!

Thailand Club said...

well it is no difficult for the waitperson, all she/he hv to remember is just which line is for the restaurant

btw, 16 times not only for Courtyard, but combine with other overseas premises (from Thailand) other than JW Marriott HK and JW Marriott BKK's New York Steak House

in the sea said...

It's good about JW Marriott and Courtyard serving tea buffet from 1pm; so you can just eat all the way to 5pm and chatting with friends.

TC, correct, but they also need to check on the lower row and see which part they need to cross out. However, I really don't know why they just use a computer to scan all the data instead of putting it on a card and making it like a "prison card".

Anonymous said...

Why the hotel don't push those people out of the buffet. if they eat the buffet food, they should pay. but I know those kind of people have many reason not to pay. they are very clever to do that.

in the sea said...

BTW, forgot telling you those people should be staying at that hotel since they told the manager not to be rude to them as room guests. Wouldn't it be ironic - who been rude?

Re the Marriott card, I think I need to be more straight clear. Why don't the creator just put the 16 marks and telling one use at JW Marriott's outlet would be for 2 marks and one use at Courtyard would be for 1 mark. So it shouldn't be that complicated. Why making simple things to be that complicated, especially for such a high grade hotel group?

Anonymous said...

Haha. correct, I also got confused. yes, the simple way is to mark 2 times for Mariott and 1 time for courtyard.