Melt Cafe (relaunched as embu) is the elegant all day dining restaurant of Mandarin Oriental Singapore. The restaurant is probably best known for the well presented Melt Cafe Buffet.
Melt Cafe at Mandarin Oriental
The popular Melt Cafe is in Mandarin Oriental, which should not be confused with Mandarin Orchard in Orchard Road. The international buffet restaurant is on the fourth floor of the fan-shaped hotel in Marina Square.
The tastefully decorated restaurant occupies a very large space but is well segmented so that each section feels insulated and somewhat cosy. You won’t feel like you are dining with another hundred persons in a big banquet.
New Melt Cafe Buffet
We visited Melt Cafe recently on we weekend in December. Due to the prevailing public health situation in Singapore, there are no attractively laid out open food stations and self-service buffet lines. The Mandarin Oriental’s We Care programme, designed to ensure comfort, safety and health of guests and staff, is applied to the Melt Cafe buffet.
The new buffet concept at Melt Cafe will mean that cold seafood platters and the Japanese bento box will be served by the staff to the guests’ table. Beverages will also be served to the table on request. There are still several buffet stations, including a Chef’s Table, all behind protective glass panels. A diner can go up to each station to point out what he wants. The server or chef at the station will plate the food nicely and pass it to the diner.
The new buffet concept is not a bad system. It means that there is no rush for the popular items, no long queue and much less food wastage. Diners can still walk around to see what is available and pick what they like. Most importantly for many Singaporeans, guests can still eat as much as they want.
We went for the Melt Cafe lunch buffet on a recent Saturday. We were warmly greeted and the new buffet concept was explained to us.
Seafood Platter & Japanese Bento
As soon as we were seated, the Japanese bento box was served. It had most of the items commonly found in the Japanese buffet station – including sashimi, sushi and maki.
Next came the fresh seafood platter and oysters. They looked good and the seafood tasted fresh and delectable. The seafood platter and oysters would already make the buffet worthwhile for some people.
Salad Bar
There is a station for salad, cold cuts and cheese. A chef will toss the salad for you.
Asian Delights
The Asian Delights Station features items such as Double Boiled Chicken Soup, Cereal Chicken, Thai Fried Fish and Wok Fried Black Pepper Beef.
It is also the station for the Signature Prawn Laksa which would be freshly made to order.
Indian Delights
Tandoori Specialty, Kebab, Curries and other Indian dishes are available at the Indian Delights Station.
The naan was served hot from the oven. The various curries we tried were all very nice and tasty.
Western Delights – Chef’s Action Table
The Chef in Action would carve the Stuffed Turkey or slice the Five Spiced Honey Glaze Gammon Ham for you. Fish, prawns and scallops are also on the chef’s menu.
Other European dishes are also available. The Beef Cheek and Baked Oysters were excellent and should not be missed.
Pastry & Desserts
Experienced buffet diners would know to save room for desserts. The desserts station at Melt Cafe under the new buffet concept would not look as impressive as the dessert station of per-pandemic era. In fact, the dessert station looked more like a trendy minimalist pastry shop counter – like Leckerbaer. However, there are more than enough desserts to choose from.
There are minced pies, waffle and ice cream.
From the display counter, we could pick Pistachio Cherry Choux, New York Cheese Cake, Caramel Cinnamon Chocolate Cheese, Santa Berry Bavarios Mousse, Praline and other Cakes and Nonya Kuehs.
Great Buffet Experience
Our Melt Cafe buffet experience was a great one. We liked the new buffet concept (and we were given to understand that the restaurant might be making some changes to the buffet concept to make it even better). We liked that there was no rush and no long lines. The place was spacious and had a refined charm. The food was generally very good. There was more than sufficient variety. The service was very good and the staff were friendly and helpful. Melt Cafe has convinced us to go for more buffet meals – but first we must find out about affordable gym memberships.
Ratings:
Food: 4
Service: 3
Value: 4
Atmosphere: 3
Overall Rating: 4 TOPs 
Melt Café
5 Raffles Avenue, Marina Square, Singapore 039797
The Ordinary Patrons | Real Dining Experience of Ordinary People
an independent Singapore food blog
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