Kampachi

Way overdue. Paid a visit to Kampachi at Equatorial Hotel for their Sunday lunch buffet about two months back.

If you enjoy mingling with the masses in places like Tenji or Jogoya, then Kampachi is not the place for you.

I guess it's just another case of the Quantity vs Quality dilemma. Which do you want? Variety of passable food (some are just drop-dead awful), or limited selection of delicious ones? Kampachi offers more of the latter, give or take 50 dishes.

Sashimi, as usual. They don't come in cheaplak little small pieces, no.

Thick slices of salmon. Oh glorious salmon, how succulent you are!

Obviously they're not gonna give u the best cut for buffet, but still... marvellous.

Sigh... It sucks to blog about food at midnight when it is not quite so easy to ignore your hunger pangs.

More sashimi. I forgot to turn on the flash... X(

Assortment of sushi. A chef was stationed here to roll temaki. :D

Hey what d'you do for a living?

Oh i'm a part-time temaki roller. Sounds cool in a strange-out-of-place way doesn't it? As opposed to some boring occupations like engineer, consultant etc etc.

My plate of food. I generally avoid sushi for buffet lunches, but they had these beautifully wrapped dragon rolls (or caterpillar rolls? avocado rolls?) that i couldn't resist!

Clockwise from left: Soft-shelled crab temaki (crisp unsoggy seaweed), tamago slices, caterpillar / dragon roll, soft-shelled crab maki, and some.. roe sprinkled on lettuce covering clump of rice, salmon.

I found this orange juicing machine most intriguing!! U see the oranges on top, they'll roll into the machine. The machine slices the oranges in half and squeezes the juice out of them and pops the fleshless orange skin halves out from the back. Canggih leh?

This is what you call freshly squeezed! The oranges used were whatever sunkist ones, and they were divine. Sweet. Fascinating. This goes to show Kampachi's commitment to excellence. They even had this bouncer-looking guy pouring the orange juice. :D

Grilled rice triangles. Not too sure what it's called.

Assorted vege. Bleh.

They had a salad bar as well, quite an obscure one. Nothing too special so i didn't snap a picture (well actually i did, but it was too damn blur). They had a small selection of local cooked food like fried mee noodles, sweet and sour chicken and all that jazz but i didn't touch those.

Fish!

I loved this fish place. They had a whole oven sorta thing right there and they baked pieces of fish..

Cod! The cod was just divine. One of the best i've tasted. They waiters just slapped on a bit of salt and baked (or grilled. whatever) them, and it just turned out marvellous. Skin all crisp and the unctuous flesh melting in your mouth... Sigh.

Best thing of all? Nobody there to rebut with me. Oh my god, ALL MY cod! :D

More fish. Mum would have loved this place. Mum is a major fan of fish heads.. And there they were... Staring back at me. xD

Chawanmushi. Quite good, though not on par with Grandma's. But now that she's (or pretending to be) too frail to cook. Ah well.

Random fried stuff: potato chicken ball & oyster, tofu, tartar sauce and Cod!

The tempura was, most unfortunately, only OKOK la. The ones at Jogoya were still the best ones, and i am willing to fight those crowd people to get at them if i have to.

Udon. @_@! With two swirly-eyed emoticons. Strange, you know, as their udon is flat instead of fat. It's the bouncy ones that i like.

Cold soba was delicious though. :)

There was a "master" chef there demonstrating how to make soba. Apparently some grand chef from Japan or whatever but i've never heard of him and have forgotten his name.

Beef or chicken sukiyaki. Not remotely sucky or yucky. :) It had a heavenly smell wafting all over the pot. :)

Eventually i ventured into the teppanyaki room where two chefs were busy grilling slabs of beef and salmon.

Tss! The chef on the right was really cool, he was able to juggle / flip a pepper shaker bartender style. :P

Ooh-lala! :D:D

Mouth-watering. T_T Magnificent piece of salmon.

Two whole rows of beef with fried garlic. Heaven. I like, man. The amount might seem like overkill, but ... this just makes your day!

Dorayaki. They even branded it with the Kampachi name. :)

There was a waiter there making fresh dorayaki and i went to him and requested that he made a star-shaped dorayaki for me but he ignored me. @_@

Oh well. The peanut butter one didn't taste that good as peanut butter sometimes get too dry. The honey one was great.

Green tea red bean again. The perfect combo. The ice cream scooper guy gave me a whole scoop of green tea ice cream and i was free to spam red bean paste :D

What i like about Kampachi's environment is the distinctive lack of the hustle-and-bustle of kiasu people rushing about to either:

a) cram themselves as much as possible within the time limit or
b) snatch as much oysters / sashimi / Haagen Dazs before the supply runs out or
c) chucking table-number clips for special orders.

Kampachi is more tranquil, in a sense. You can eat in peace without worrying that your favourite dish will run out, or your money's not worth it unless you cram yourself silly. I would give it a 8.5 / 10 rating, which is high enough for my standards.

Definitely worth revisiting, though, in the not-so-near future as i would like to try out more places. Japanese buffets are mushrooming all over, don't you think?