Cafe-Restaurant of the Yuan Shan Club

Visit: Mar. 3, 2012
Address: 台北市中山區中山北路四段一號 (The Grand Hotel)
Number: (02) 2886-8888 ext.1700~1703
Website: http://www.grand-hotel.org/main/Club/Article.aspx?a=125&lang=en-US

 After a few not so great dining experiences at the Grand Hotel, I now tend to stay away from there. However, this weekend, my grandparents insisted that we go dine at the Cafe-Restaurant, the buffet at the Grand Hotel or Yuan Shan Club. I'm not completely sure what the difference is.

Instead of taking pictures of the buffet set-up, I got shots of the food I took from the buffet.

Salad

Salad

The salad area was really simple with just various types of vegetables as well as a wide selection of dressings. For dressings and the side items, they had thousand island, caesar Italian, Japanese, anchovies, raisins as well as nuts. It was a pretty standard salad bar.

 The rest of the buffet...

The meats

 Clockwise from Sashimi: sashimi, fried fish, mac&cheese, creamed fish, roasted chicken, pork knuckle, Chinese cold chicken.

Nothing was bad except for the sashimi. For the most part, the sashimi okay and mediocre...except for the pink piece (don't know the name of the fish) peeking out from behind the salmon. I have never had a nastier piece of sashimi. When I bit into it, the texture wasn't just spongey...it was as if I were chewing a piece of sponge. You get the picture.

more food...

Clockwise from the sushi: Burdock sushi, roast beef, cream potato, lamb chop


As a result of the large flow of customers, the restaurant ran out of their usual roast beef, and instead served this lump of meet. Trying to chew on the meet was like chewing on rubber. It just wasn't very pleasant. Expecting their usual dishes to be okay, the lamb was still a disappointment. I was still chewing on rubber.

Dessert

Clockwise from the cheesecake: Cheesecake, chocolate cake, brownie.

The cheesecake was average but good, the chocolate cake was a disappointment, and the brownie was chewy, but still not as chewy as I would have liked it to be. Other than these, the panna cotta was mediocre, but the chestnut cream filled mochi as well as the chestnut cake were both pretty good. However, my favorite part of the desserts was the XJEB COJIB ice cream. The chocolate peanut butter ice cream was really really good, especially if you eat it with a piece of the brownie. Yum~


Overall, I would not recommend the Cafe-Restaurant. The restaurant was really small and cramped, which made it really awkward and uncomfortable when you make eye contact with a random stranger sitting a table down from me. The food was pretty low quality and even the dishes that tasted acceptable, were just simply mediocre.