M’sia – Jogoya, T3, Relish floor, Starhill Gallery, 181, Jalan Bukit Bintang, 55100 Kuala Lumpur

There was a promotion going on at Jogoya’s recently so we decided to try it out. Usually, it’d cost up to about RM100 all inclusive for lunch (per person), for an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Arriving there about 12pm, the place was almost empty if not for a table of about 7 young kids next to ours. These kids must have been averaging about 12 years of age, but they had the appetite of sumo wrestlers. Man, could they eat. They were there before us, and just about ate the restaurant out.

On the way in, I kinda went a little over-snappy. Within 10 minutes, I had taken a little under a hundred pictures, and that was before I’d even started taking any food from the buffet selection.

As the saying goes,
‘a thousand pictures say a few words’.

After all that, it was finally time for the actual eating of the food. There was another photographer there after me, but somehow I think he was the official photographer; there to take some pictures for a promotion or something. Me, I was just there for the food.

The strategy (not many people have strategies for buffets, but we do) was to go slow on the raw fish, like maybe just a few slivers of everything on the plate, and to then move on to the hot dishes after. The plate above achieved that, though actually, the amount of rice on the sushi pieces make this plate only B+ in terms of strategy.

Now this looks more like it. Lots of bowls and shells and things like that on the plate, but the ACTUAL edible bits weren’t that much. Strategy-wise, this is almost an A. The squid was wrapped around some slightly sweet (weird?) seaweed thing, so I had to remove that with each squid piece I had. The jellyfish in the bowl was really nice; slightly sweet, sesame-seed included, and very crunchy. The escargot was slightly chewy, and the squid on the left of the plate were oh-kay.

Not the same plate, though you wouldn’t have been able to tell if I hadn’t said that … Raw pieces of fish were nice.

Oysters are only nice when they’re small to medium in size. These little dudes here were huge. Each piece took about 2 bites to be completely eaten, and it didn’t taste of much. So, kinda like, a big chewy piece of bland (slightly) oyster-tasting jelly piece.

Second plate – looking more experienced now. Strategy has been put in place, tried and tested methods applied.

On to the hot food. We took the sukiyaki from the counter all the way towards the other side of the restaurant. Bowls (cling-filmed) were filled with raw slices of beef, vegetables, mushrooms and an incredible amount of mung bean noodles (glass noodles). The noodles were just endless. There was a big metal vat of sukiyaki sauce (soup?) next to the bowls from which you could fill the bowl with, after which you bring the filled bowl back to the table, and cook the food over a bunsen-burner style cooker on the table. It took so long for the soup to boil, not ideal if you’re hungry, but eventually, when it DID boil, the little bowl of soup continued bubbling on happily.

Mid-way through the meal, I decided to break the monotony of all that savoury food with some sweet stuff. The sesame mochi came from the dessert counter, and were small, delicate little bites of soft, chewy morsels of delight.

There are little silver clips on each table which you have to bring with you when you go to the hot food counter to place the order. The clips have the table number on them, and when you drop the clip in the little bowl in front of each food label, the chef then knows where to deliver the food to.

The downside of this ordering method is that if you order something by the end of a counter (like I did), the chef tends not to notice the clips sitting forlornly in the glass bowls, and so won’t cook the stuff you ordered.

They did cook that crab above, so I’ll let them off.

A buffet restaurant which charges for any excessive leftover food brings out the creative side of me. For example, the crab (above) wasn’t nice. So, where did the crab go to? Well, since we had an empty egg shell (used in the sukiyaki), I decided to put crab in egg shell. Very embarrassing, I know, but I decided to amuse you with this story anyway.

Prawn tempura which was didn’t seem like tempura, although the radish and sauce were put next to it, giving me the impression that it was tempura. Tempura or not tempura, that is the question.

Then, on to more sweet stuff. The Portugese egg tart was really cute, small and nice. Flaky and sweet. The scone (really small) was also okay, though it could have been slightly more moist by being a little bigger than what it was.

Not really sure what this is.

Ooooo these little cakes were awesome. When I took them, I was all for sharing. Taking every cake which looked good, I had these great intentions to share them out, thinking, what is four little pieces of cakes when shared out. Then when I had the first bite, and the second, I continued to eat them all by myself. Favourite one was the chocolate brownie, and the chocolate mousse.

Not really sure what this cooking style was, but we took the claypot of lamb from the fridge, added some black pepper sauce to it, and took it back to the table to cook.

Easily the favourite dish of the meal. This was the grilled lamb chops which we ordered quite a few times. Portion-wise, it was generous. Taste-wise, it was really good. The tender lamb chops were really well-marinated, making each bite a BBQ-flavoured delight.

Some mushrooms which we ordered, which were nice.

That was quite alot of food we managed to get through there, but nothing compared to the table of little sumos sat next to us.

Would I recommend this place? Not for frequent dining (expensive, but also, alot of food) but for those occasions when you feel like having a long, leisurely meal without having to choose anything in particular, most definitely.

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