JW Marriott Hotel debuted its stylish new JW Café this past month, the latest all-day restaurant offering indulgent food choices throughout the day. The venue occupies the space that previously belonged to the already-popular Marriott Café, but offers more in terms of food quality, ambience and style.
The interior of the café showcases modern Hong Kong-inspired designs that exude a familiar, comforting feel. Stretching across the walls of the restaurant is a large, 3-dimensional black and white image of the Victoria Harbour created through the use of vertical glass slots and dramatic lighting. The private dining room features a creative installation of organic wooden blocks that, together with dramatic lighting designs and contrasting shadows, resembles the map of Hong Kong.
With an array of international and local cuisines made from only the highest quality ingredients, even the most discerning of diners will enjoy the buffet offerings at the JW Café. Buffet stations include your typical fare of salad, sushi and cold cut stations, as well as a variety of Western selections and Chinese specialties – their famed braised fish maw with supreme sauce, baked stuffed crab and e-fu noodles with Boston lobster claw are not to be missed.
E-fu noodles with Boston lobster claw
Braised fish maw with supreme sauce
Standouts of the lunch buffet include the seafood and siu mei (燒味 – barbequed meat) stations. The prawns, crab claws and mussels brim with freshness and succulence, and motivate seafood lovers to go back for seconds. Barbequed meat is a section often ignored at buffets since it is so commonly found in restaurants around Hong Kong, but the Hainanese chicken, peking duck and roasted pigeon were among the highlights of the buffet. The chicken was especially lean and soft, though the cha siu wasn’t quite as tender as the others and is probably not worth going for.
Those with a sweet tooth should pace themselves and save some room for dessert, for there is much to feast upon. Traditional Hong Kong desserts like egg tarts and wife cake are oldies but goodies, and the egg rolls, which come in green tea and sesame flavour, are thin and crisp. The selection of little cakes, puddings and tarts would have dessert goers swooning, but while they are nice and dainty, some just didn’t taste quite as great as they looked. The JW Café’s signature opera cake was good but nothing to write home about – the tiramisu was rich in its coffee taste, but perhaps the very best was the bread pudding, which was luscious, light and therefore very easy to stomach even after a heavy meal. Overall, the variety of desserts was impressive, but its consistency could be improved.
The buffet is available for breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner, while an international à la carte menu can be ordered from for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
JW Marriott Hotel Hong Kong (Level 5), Pacific Place, 88 Queensway, Admiralty
