After having a salad buffet at Javier’s Rotisserie & Salad Bar which was like my first in a considerable lapse of time since the Ponderosa and Sizzler days, it had certainly fuelled my passion for salad buffets again like the good old times. It just makes me feel good (yeah, psychologically haha) that I’m consuming so much fibre and vitamins without having to worry too much about calories (i.e. if I don’t pick my favourite Caesar dressing or pile on the croutons or bacon bits, oops).
But what I truly like about a salad buffet is the variety of vegetables that I can enjoy at one setting. I mean, it’s easy to just buy ingredients from the supermarket and do up a substantial salad at home anytime but it’s almost impossible to buy that many ingredients while keeping cost low. So if the price of a salad buffet is right, it can be really good value for money.
With that, I had been keeping a special lookout for potential salad buffets to go to so when the husband and I came across this wall poster at Suntec City while shopping one weekend, we decided that we would come back the following week for lunch.
Bistro 1855 is a casual-dining tapas and wine bar. At lunch, it serves up main courses that include a salad bar buffet spread. In the evenings, it transforms into a wine bar ideal for after-work chilling out.
They also do wine retail with a cellar that houses more than 500 labels to choose from. You can pick a bottle to go with your meal or just bring it home to enjoy.
We came by on a Saturday for lunch and the restaurant was almost empty but the crowd picked up midway through our meal.
This was the main course menu that required an additional top-up.
The salad bar buffet spread was better than I expected with more than 50 items to choose from. This was the DIY salad section where we could pick from an array of ingredients and then dress up our salad with whatever sauce or toppings we like. The ingredients included beetroot, canned peach, canned pear, kidney beans, pitted black & green olives, bacon bits (a bit tough and chewy), baby spinach leaves, mesclun, lettuce leaves, ham, peppers, hardboiled eggs, corn, capers, onions, canned pineapple rings, chickpeas, cucumber, pickled jalapenos, edamame, kidney beans, cherry tomatoes, straw mushrooms and more.
Quite a good selection of pre-made salads too that included Asian flavours like achar and Thai style glass noodle salad. There were no labels so you would have to figure out every item yourself.
There was soup (prawn bisque) as well as fresh croutons, tortilla chips and a small selection of breads.
Iced water, condiments/sauces and soft serve ice cream that we could help ourselves to.
The prawn bisque was one of the best prawn bisques I ever had. It had a rich crustacean seafood flavour without being overly ‘fishy’. And I liked that it wasn’t over-seasoned too so I could add salt and pepper to taste. The croutons were very crispy and gave a good crunch when paired with the soup.
At the pre-made salads section, there were egg mayo, achar, seafood salad, chicken salad, broccoli salad, spicy tuna macaroni and glass noodle salad. Every salad was tasty – there wasn’t one that I didn’t enjoy. 🙂
The tortilla chips were a bit ‘lao hong’ (lost the fresh crunchiness) since they were left in the open and not in a container. There was salsa from the salad bar to pair with the chips. There were 4 types of bread and butter was provided too. I liked the crustiness of the bread but it was a pity they were quite dry inside. Not worth the calories.
Made my own plate of salad with creamy Caesar dressing. There were also honey mustard, thousand island, sesame and vinaigrette dressings. I loved the canned peaches and pears that really gave sweetness to my salad. Most if not all ingredients were generally fresh with crispness. Loved it.
We only ordered one main to share which was the Seared Snapper Loin (+S$8) with charred tomato and pink peppercorn sauce. The sauce was creamy, rich in butter flavour and extremely moreish. The mash potato was smooth, creamy and very well seasoned too. The snapper was thick, meaty and firm with a nice crispy crust on the outside; it was fresh with no fishy smell at all. The tomato was the odd one out because it somehow didn’t go with the rest of the food on the plate. But overall, this was a very well executed fish dish that I wouldn’t mind coming back for.
Given that a similar snapper loin dish cost S$26 on their dinner menu, this was indeed a very good deal.
There was only one flavour of vanilla soft serve which we could dress up with toppings like chocolate rice, rainbow rice, chocolate sauce, strawberry sauce and/or ground peanuts. I quite liked the ice cream that wasn’t saccharine sweet or cloying – so good, I had two servings of it, lol.
There were also fruits like watermelon, dragon fruit, orange and honeydew but unfortunately all were not sweet or rather just bland. Fun fact: Succulents are mostly inedible, but the dragon fruit is among the edible succulents.
Overall, it was a satisfying salad buffet with more than sufficient choices to pick from. Loved the variety and the freshness of ingredients. Even if there wasn’t a main course to bulk up the meal, the salad bar is good enough to fill you up and not forgetting the extremely comforting soup too.
For those of you with The Entertainer App, you may wish to know that Bistro 1855 is one of the merchants on the app so if you come by for dinner, you can make use of the 1-for-1 deal. This is not applicable for the salad bar buffet though as it’s already a lunch promo.
Bistro 1855
3 Temasek Boulevard
#01-643, Suntec City Tower 4
Singapore 038983
Tel: +65 6836 5994
Website: http://onionrestaurant.sg/bistro1855.html
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/bistro1855
Opening hours:
11.00am to 12.00am (Sat-Thu)
11.00am to 1.00am (Fri)