(Shanghai Star)
Updated: 2007-02-09 09:01

A good buffet should have not only delicious food but also a great variety of food choices, even though diners can not try all of them at one time.

Accord-ing to this criteria,the buffet restaurant in Shangri-La Pudong is really impressive.But the one I have s a m p l e d this time is not Shangri- La but the other one in a newly opened hotel called Eton, also located in Pudong.

The buffet restaurant, named Eton Cafe, is located on the 3rd floor of the hotel, with a grand dining room. What it serves is the so-called international cuisine, which includes Chinese, Japanese, Southeast Asian and, of course, Western dishes.

With separate counters featuring different culinary styles, such as presenting five to 10 typical dishes of one cuisine, the cafe has quite a lot of food choices, and the price is also reasonable.

For example, on the Japanese bar you can find many kinds of seafood,including shrimp, crabs, fishes,salmon and clams, all kept above the ice with rising vapor.

On the barbecue bar, chefs prepare the beef steaks and lamb ribs on the spot. The bunched beef cutlets with vegetables and onion tasted quite good and juicy, and there were two kinds of sauces to accompany them.

The chefs there have also paid special attention to the presentation of the barbecue dishes. They sprinkle the colorful sauces to decorate the beef stakes and make them even look like a Western-style main course.

My favorite food counters in Eton Cafe were the Chinese and Southeast Asian food. The dish "sweet and sour sole fish" was especially worthy of recommendation.The fillets were sauteed to a splendid golden color and the flavor was rich and appetizing.

The restaurant also serves the traditional Shanghai dish - fried shrimp with soy sauce, which was also very delicious and not too greasy. Noodles are usually a necessary part of a buffet restaurant and, in the Eton Cafe, diners can not only seethe chef prepare the hand-pulled noodles but also try the green noodles made of spinach.

The Tom Yam prawn was a representative dish of the Thai cuisine.The prawns were cooked in the Tom Yam broth with chili and peppers.The taste was actually as strong as I expected but still very nice due to the influence of curry and other seasonings.

A special feature of the Eton Cafe's decoration is that its dining hall is divided into several parts with the "walls" filled with bottles of alcohol.

The Eton Cafe

3F, The Eton hotel Shanghai

69 Dongfang Road, Pudong

Tel: 3878-9888