Crystal Jade Steamboat Buffet Review

Steamboat/Hot Pot is the choice for gatherings for many of us. Everyone loves it, its like you get to have all your favorite ingredients in one dish, and especially for kids, where they finally get to “cook” themselves.

We usually enjoy having steamboat during big occasions like the Lunar New Year etc. But we started seeing plenty of steamboat restaurants popping up and some Chinese restaurants incorporating the steamboat option into their everyday menu in recent years.

Alvin and I each have our own personal fav steamboat places, which we will do up a review on them in our Singapore Food Blog in time to come! But for today, I’ll be sharing with you one of the place we visited recently, Crystal Jade Steamboat Kitchen @ Plaza Sing.

It’s our first visit there on a Friday evening. The place was relatively packed and we had to wait for close to 20 mins for our seats (*PS they only allow entry when all the guests have arrived). After getting our seats, we were like excited little kids and went over to the buffet counter to scan through the selection.

(Thinly sliced pork)

To be very honest, it was quite underwhelming. I wasn’t blown away by their selection of food, it was just the regular fishball, meatballs, crabmeat, mushrooms and vegetables. Meat was free flow too but it was regular thinly (very very thinly) sliced meat and you could only choose from chicken,pork or beef. There were some fried finger food, an ice cream machine and soft drink machine. I was quite disappointed as they didn’t serve fish fillet or squid/cuttlefish. Prawns were complimentary (100gms per paying pax), which is served when you are seated.

(This was a Panorama shot of their ENTIRE selection. Yes, this was it)

So the food selection was rather disappointing, but we were hungry souls and thought, alright just cook it in the soup and the fresh food will make up for it. We just took our usual favorites and went back to our seats. The soup wasn’t exactly thaaaat fantastic. It pretty much felt like regular chicken stock in my opinion. And we both love fishballs but the fishballs were anything but fresh and bouncy. In fact, most of the food wasn’t all that fresh and I was honestly quite disappointed with it, albeit paying approximately 30 bucks per pax for it.

Well, if it’s a plus point for any of you, 30 bucks comes complete with free flow drinks and desserts. And if you are feeling generous and unsatisfied with your buffet, you can order food off the regular Crystal Jade Kitchen menu (dimsum included but subject to availability).

In summary, the price is not exactly cheap-cheap, the food was just fairly alright and they lack anything special that would have you want to go back for more. For example, Coca has their special chilli sauce, Hai Di Lao has their Tomato base soup, all which regardless if it suits your taste, is still something that stands them out from just a regular steamboat shop. To be honest, if we wanted to, we could basically pay half the price and spend the same amount of money getting the food from a nearby supermarket and cook it at home.

We personally wouldnt be heading back soon and we wouldn’t recommend our visiting friends on our Travel Blog to try Crystal Jade’s Steamboat Buffet, but if you would like to give it a go yourself, Crystal Jade Kitchen @ Plaza Sing #02-32 operates 11am-10pm daily.