When it comes to food, everything’s about being fresh and healthy these days. Restaurants like Marche offer the market dining concept where you can pick out your own produce – and now even hotels have jumped on the bandwagon.

Serena Brasserie@ Intercontinental Kuala Lumpur recently unveiled their new ‘Fresh Market Buffet’ dinner concept – so instead of serving you pre-cooked dishes, they’ve transformed the restaurant into a marketplace, where diners get to pick out fresh produce and watch them being cooked on the spot. There are over 25 types of veggies, seafood, meat and poultry items to choose from!

Some juices to quench our thirst before we went heavy duty.

There were bottled ones like carrot/orange and watermelon/celery – but you can also choose to customise your own drink from a bunch of fruits and veggies from the salad counter.

The salad station had loads of vivid green veggies, cherry tomatoes, condiments, pickled items and cheeses.

The market concept is really clever because its a full sensory experience – the bright colours entice a diner’s visuals, and the smell and sounds of cooking at the live stations make you hungrier before you can finally tuck in!

Kicked off with some cold appetisers from the sashimi and sushi section. There were soft, raw tuna plates, salmon, inari (sweet tofu) and crab meat rolls with wasabi.

Extensive selection of seafood : Crabs, shrimp, mussels, oysters and scallops as big as my palm.

More catch from the sea; tiger prawns, mackerel, blocks of Norwegian salmon, squid, clams, and more. True to their concept, everything was fresh and the seafood was fleshy and firm.

At the live cooking stations, guests can choose from 10 different cooking styles, such as stone-grilled, tempura-battered and bouillabaise. We opted to get our seafood done tempura style and bouillabaise (French-stew). The fried stuff turned out yummy, without being too oily while the bouillabaise had a strong flavour of tomato. Consistent, quality wise.

Bread with soup is my comfort food, so I made a beeline for the freshly baked bread counter and got myself a bowl of creamy pea soup. They had breads in little silver buckets, which had a hard crust but was soft and fluffy on the inside. The most amusing thing was the butter though.

Titty butter. 😀

Fat slabs of poultry, beef and New Zealand lamb rack. We got ours stone-grilled. The meat was perfectly seared on the outside with just a hint of pink on the inside, while the lamb was tender and great with mushroom sauce. I really liked the sausages: thick, juicy and flavourful, thanks to its blend of herbs and spices.

Highlight of the night was their giant block of Grana Padano cheese, which was bigger than my head! Shaped like a bowl, the chef would prepare risotto with mushrooms before tossing the everything into the cheese bowl. They also had paella.

The risotto al Funghi was awesome – Generous bits of mushroom, al dente rice + a smooth, creamy texture.

Also tried their Sang Har Meen; fried noodles topped with prawns, veggies and an egg sauce.

For those lazy to wait, there are a few pre-cooked traditional items like roast chicken, ikan bakar (grilled fish), rendang and curries.

Dessert time! A whole counter of sweet stuff awaits with cakes, Malay kuih, mousse, tarts and chocolate fondue tub. They also have a mini fridge full of premium chocolate and vanilla ice cream.

This looked too pretty to be eaten, but was so sugary I could feel my enamel melting off lol.

The Fresh Market Buffet Dinner is available from 6pm daily and is priced at RM138 (Sun – Thurs) and RM178 (Fri & Sat). For reservations, call 03-2782 6228

SERENA BRASSERIE

Lobby Level, InterContinental Hotel Kuala Lumpur,

165 Jalan Ampang, 50450 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.