Still deciding where you should host your Christmas fete or office year-end bash? There are plenty of reasons to give Curate at the Four Seasons Kuala Lumpur a consideration, as we’ll go on to prove with our review of the restaurant’s latest festive offerings.
Christmas buffets are largely formulaic by nature—anchored around the traditions of a typical Christmas dinner, where a choice selection of meats or poultry serves as the centrepiece to a varied medley of worldly culinary inflexions. This is also to suggest that, for the most part, I do find year-end buffet lines to be a mostly evitable affair and tend not to splurge on them as a consequence.
Review: Four Seasons Kuala Lumpur brings Yuletide buffet to Curate
With that said, I also had the pleasure of enjoying a sumptuous Christmas tea with a good friend at the Four Seasons Hotel along Ten Trinity Square during my stay in London two years ago, so my expectations concerning what would constitute Four Seasons hospitality are markedly high when I received an invitation to sample the offerings at its Kuala Lumpur counterpart during the Yuletide season.
Hosted in Curate, the hotel’s all-day dining destination, this year’s festive menu reads, at first glance, as most other festive menus in the city’s five-star establishments do. You can expect your choice of roast beef, chicken, or duck, as per mandatory holiday dinner rules dictate, served alongside your usual continental spread comprising a generally predictable assortment of pasta dishes, Halal cold cuts and cheeses, and of course, soups.
Then there’s the greater global culinary map at their varied stations for those who tend not to enjoy conventional European fare. As is usually the case, I spotted a noodle station for all of your laksa needs across the Northern and Southern regions of the Peninsula, a Middle Eastern affair by way of succulent morsels of lamb kofta served with either a crisp round of pita bread or cashew-festooned mandi rice, and Chinese staples of wok-dishes by way of fried rice and noodles paired, served with a chafing dish of Singaporean curry crabs.
As a part-time Anglophile myself, I made a beeline for the Continental proteins upon my arrival – three slices of roast beef, which upon initial inspection appear to be meticulously cooked to a satisfying pink tinge, draping gently onto the plate when carved. This was followed by a serving of roast chicken that similarly sported all the right indications of a tender and moist roast.
Enjoying both with a drizzle of giblet gravy, I am willing to readily attest that insofar as a Christmas roast dinner is concerned, Four Seasons Kuala Lumpur does it justice. Regardless of whether you opt for red or white meats, all are prepared with due consideration that results in a thoroughly flavourful bite that mercifully doesn’t extend into a dry, fibrous chew. That said, I personally feel that the choice of pan-roasted greens such as rounds of brussel sprouts and asparagus stalks could benefit from more minutes in the oven for a softer, more yielding texture.
Any good Asian parent who did right by their child would have raised them with the necessary know-how to make the most of every buffet meal: by avoiding the cardinal trifecta of rice, noodles, and pasta. While I omitted the former, I did enjoy a little of the latter with two generous ladles of tomato-coated fusilli, delightfully flavoured with chunks of still-crisp celery, carrots, onions, and a dusting of Italian herbs.
Topped with a heavy-handed spoonful of grated parmesan, I was swiftly transported back to a more innocent time, when some of life’s greatest pleasures consisted of spending a weekend afternoon with a plate of bolognese prepared by my best friend’s mother over a game of Gran Turismo 4 on the PlayStation 2.
Buffet seafood stands tend to have a reputation for being rather dicey, even at the most eminent establishments. After all, when you’re serving nearly raw dishes en masse, a few pieces of shrimp or oysters that have passed their prime after being left out to sit isn’t unheard of. But mercifully during my buffet session, neither the crayfish, the oysters, nor the sliced salmon sashimi, betrayed any inkling of poor refrigeration. Oysters are supple on the tongue, the crayfish bouncy, and sashimi yielding in its buttery tenderness.
What blew me away, however, were the dessert offerings at Curate. Another typical afterthought in most conventional buffet lines stocked with dry cubes of cheesecake and crumbling brownie squares for the sake of it, pastry chefs here have spared no expense to ensure that we haven’t been left wanting for variety or quality. I’m talking financiers, baubousas, minced pies, fig choux, and your choice of pies ranging from pecan to apple crumble. Some French bakeries don’t have an assortment half as comprehensive as Curate’s dessert buffet line.
Am I a buffet convert? Not necessarily, but I am convinced that if you are looking for a place to host a Christmas dinner that has a little bit for everyone that wouldn’t result in frowns at the table, Curate at the Four Seasons Kuala Lumpur should rank pretty high on your list of considerations this year.
You can now book your slot through OpenTable here.