For some reason, my darling felt we needed a buffet to celebrate a good year and he found this place called Hokkai Villa via Fave. I’d never even heard of Hokkai Villa before but he managed to tempt me with promises of salmon sashimi and scallops. LOL. I’ve not had much salmon since the time my trainer pal dragged me away (yup!) from Don Don Donki’s sashimi platters just as I was about to get a few of them for dinner. He said pigments are added to give the salmon their attractive color. Apparently, his doctor pal/client had told him about it so… we should always listen to the Doc. Except when a buffet’s calling. 
Anyway, I found Hokkai Villa’s à la carte buffet very strange. Because (1) it’s not like the usual buffets I love where I go around the various stations and pick what I’d like to eat and (2) it’s not really an à la carte buffet either where you select what you want to eat off a menu or fill in an order sheet or something. Basically you get this entire list:
Starting with the salmon sashimi and ending with the garlic rice. It’s like a traditional sit-down kind of dinner in a hotel. Because there’s this line about how “Food wastage will be charged at ala carte price”, we asked if we could have the chef omit certain items. And yes, that can be done. SO we skipped the Yasai Tempura, Shishamo and Tori Karaage. Actually we should have skipped the rice as well. Since it’s a buffet, and we wanted to eat our fill of the expensive stuff, we should have removed the fried items and most of the carbs.
The salmon sashimi was good – very fresh, with no odd smells or taste. Each portion comes with three slices of fish so go ahead and let the wait staff know how many portions you’d like.
The sushi was decent too. Quite enjoyable, in fact, as they’re actually pretty small:
I would have loved to have the rice served together with the Garlic Beef Tenderloin and Simmering Norwegian Fresh Salmon. The Hiroshima Oysters in Batayaki were plump and I wished we actually had raw oysters to eat, which I think would be more enjoyable:
The Garlic Rice was actually quite nice. Like fried rice using Japanese rice. And thankfully, the portion wasn’t huge or else we would not having been able to order more salmon sashimi.
Overall, the dining experience here has been decent. They even provide hot towels, which must have been so welcome during the recent rainy season. There are also really prompt refills of green tea and water. The plates are cleared away really fast too. And this is a first for us: the waitress actually came by to remind us to finish the sashimi within 15 minutes to prevent (further) bacterial growth. We were both preoccupied with our Tsum Tsum mobile games.
We spent about $40 each as the buffet cost $80 for 2 via Fave. And apparently you can get a similar deal via Chope too. Drinks are not included so you’ll have to pay for your green tea or other beverages. Water appears to be complimentary though. I don’t think I’ll be back again very soon, unless something new appears on the menu and I feel it shouldn’t be missed. I really do prefer the ‘walkabout’ kind of buffets – somehow I feel less guilty about eating so much when I’m also getting a bit of exercise standing up, sitting down and walking around multiple times. XD
