Food review: The Carvery

Sunday roast, every day

SINGAPORE — At first glance, The Carvery looks like a restaurant that is still working on its finishing touches — the tall, bare walls are just begging for a piece of hanging art; they also dwarf the buffet counters, making them appear like there should be more food on offer. This is but an illusion. As its name implies, there are some pretty good roast meats and all the accoutrements of a fine British-style roast dinner, and then some. There is nothing lacking in the way of quantity.

At the centre of it all is a daily rotation of three to four meats, which might include a hunk of grain-fed Australian beef prime rib that the kitchen dry-ages in-house, a New Zealand roasted leg of lamb, pork knuckle with crackling, and rotisserie chicken. The night we visited, there were also comely slabs of beef tenderloin and rib eye, both joyously, uniformly dark pink within.

In our gluttonous experience, this is as good as buffet roasts get. Executive chef Robert Chan explained that to get the lasting uniformity (the roasts seem to hold their medium doneness just sitting and waiting on their boards for diners to ask for a slice or three), his team begins cooking the meat at a higher temperature in the oven, before lowering the heat for slower cooking to get the meat to the core temperature required. Before the meat is ready for its close-up, it undergoes a spell in the wood-fire oven (that, incidentally, also spits out some pizzas for the buffet line) to singe in those juices.

The roast chicken is also delicious, having been brined for 12 hours before it is roasted so that it is succulent, if just a tad salty. The roasted pork knuckle is decent enough — its crackling is nice and crisp, but the meat borders on being bland.

A generous selection of sides rounds off the meal — creamy mashed potatoes that don’t stint on the butter, caramelised sweet potatoes spiked with chilli, crispy polenta fries, cauliflower gratin and Yorkshire pudding. Those puddings certainly looked the part — tall, proud and burnished — but they were disappointingly oily.

For all that meat, side dishes, seafood (tiger prawns, freshly shucked oysters, blue swimmer crab, et al), pastas, pizzas, hot dishes (beef bourguignon, cassoulet, seafood bouillabaisse) and dessert, the meal is a steal at these prices. Daily lunch goes for S$38, while dinner from Thursdays through Sundays is pegged at S$52. On Friday and Saturday, when there are more premium cuts on the evening selection, dinner is priced at S$62. ANNETTE TAN

The Carvery

Where:

Level 7, Park Hotel Alexandra 323 Alexandra Road

Telephone:

6828 8880

Opening hours:

Daily Noon to 3pm, 6pm to 10pm

Click to eat

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