Festive Plates of Pleasure at 10 @ Claymore, Pan Pacific Orchard

People always tell you that "with age comes Wisdom." What they don't tell you, is that reduced metabolism, appetite, and stomach capacity also come along for the ride. I mean I'm not old, I'm just now treading water into "medium adult" territory, but even then I find myself going to buffets less and less because I simply can't whack as much food as I used to.

Nevertheless, a good buffet once in a while is still awesome, just that the goal is slowly shifting from "stuff my face with as much food as possible" to "sample and taste the different foods on offer," ha ha!


Pan Pacific Orchard's 10 @ Claymore Restaurant serves up a relatively limited buffet spread, complemented by what they call "Plates of Pleasure." These plates are basically quarter-sized versions of ala-carte dishes, which you can order unlimited servings of.


Their cold appetizers station consists of salmon and tuna sashimi (nice and fresh), some assorted cold cuts, and parma ham with melon, which was pretty delicious. We ended up eating a lot more parma ham than sashimi. A selection of different breads and cheeses are available for you to mix-and-match - starting from mild cheeses like Camembert and Brie, and all the way up to Blue cheese.


The salad bar has some decent variety although strangely enough, we forgot (subconscious desire to skip the veg? Hmmm) to mix up a salad for ourselves.


The two carving stations for the day were a leg of lamb (pink, moist, juicy and tender), and the mandatory Turkey breast (seeing as it was Christmas eve). I'm personally not a huge fan of turkey because it's often cooked up really dry, but the turkey here was nice and decently juicy. Well, as juicy as an (almost) fat-free poultry breast can be.


For the hot foods station, the only dishes that stood out as being "nice" were perhaps the braised lamb shank, barbecue'd Pork Ribs, and the Singapore Chili Crab. The other dishes were forgettable at best.


Moving on to the Plates of Pleasure for the afternoon - House Pressed Chicken Snail Sausage, Penang Aromatic Spicy Prawn Noodle Broth, Norwegian Breed Wild Farmed Salmon, and Victoria Gippsland Natural Fed Tender Cut Angus Beef.

The surprise of the afternoon had to be the Prawn Noodle, which was delightfully faithful to the bowls you'd get all around Penang island. The steak was also nicely flavored and grilled, and it being served with truffle mashed potato was a bonus. Unfortunately the chicken sausage was rather run of the mill, and the salmon (is there even such a thing as "Wild Farmed Salmon?") was a little dry and overcooked.


Moving on to desserts, we really liked that the fruits counter had more participants than just the 'standard' watermelon/papaya/melon combination. Other cakes, pastries and tarts were overall pretty nice stuff, except for the log cake which turned out to be a durian log cake. We don't eat durian :P


For SGD58.00++ per person for lunch, we thought that the buffet was pretty good value for money. What we don't get in quantity is more than made up for in quality (considering the price we paid, of course). The restaurant was also not too crowded, so it doesn't get cramped or noisy.

10 @ Claymore is located in Pan Pacific Orchard Hotel, and gets its' name from the Hotel's address: 10 Claymore Road. Call up 6831 6686 for reservations. Non-halal.