Nobu’s all-you-can-eat Sunday brunch ($110 per person, $55 for children 5-12 years old) is sprinkled throughout the second floor of the restaurant. As you’re guided to your table, hot food and carving stations line the walkway, doing a great job of whetting your appetite. Front and centre in the bright dining room is the sushi bar, where a team of chefs continuously turns out maki and nigiri. Off in the corner sits the dessert table, with a ceviche and spicy cucumber salad ice bar tucked in for good measure.

I appreciated how the food stations are spaced out. There’s no dreaded bottleneck of diners waiting, nor that frantic urge to grab everything at once just to avoid lining up again.

Chef Nobu Matsuhisa was one of the pioneers of Japanese-Peruvian cuisine back in the mid-90s. At the time, dishes like spicy tuna crispy rice and yellowtail crudo felt fresh and exciting, while miso black cod became a signature that kept people coming back. These are still dishes I enjoy, but decades later they’ve been copied endlessly, making what’s served at Nobu feel far less groundbreaking than it once was.

If you’re going for the miso black cod, make sure you get it hot. My first bite, taken from a platter that had been sitting, was bland and slightly fishy. A second round, straight from a freshly placed tray, was noticeably better. It’s tasty, but it didn’t rank among the best miso cods I’ve had.

The crispy rice station is a great idea in theory, but the execution falters. The wooden spoons make it awkward to scoop up the rice nuggets, and many of the serving utensils (spring-hinged chopsticks and oversized soup ladles) are poorly suited for a buffet.

Thankfully, the soft-serve ice cream station sits right beside the crispy rice, so I grabbed a simple stainless steel teaspoon. It turned out to be the perfect tool for neatly dolloping finely chopped tuna, salmon, and mashed avocado onto each bite. The crispy rice itself would benefit from being thinner and longer for easier spreading and eating.

Unsurprisingly, the sushi was underwhelming, even when taken from freshly dropped plates. The rice was bland and too cold, though at least the pieces were kept small, letting the fish take centre stage. All things considered, it’s better than most buffet sushi, though I usually steer clear of buffet sushi stations altogether.

Some of my favourite bites ended up being the unexpected ones. Nobu’s Greek salad has a generous feta-to-vegetable ratio that leans salty but spooning it over the garden salad below helps balance things out nicely.

The prime rib carving station also drew me back for seconds. While the meat quality wasn’t exceptional, the variety of sauces made it fun to sample and customize each bite.

Despite not having a big sweet tooth, I found it hard to resist the dessert spread. The pandan-laced crème brûlée and flan-like matcha panna cotta were standouts. Just do yourself a favour and skip the dry Earl Grey beignets.

Nobu offers something for everyone including the breakfast staples of bacon, sausage, tater tots, and eggs. Just be warned: their scrambled eggs are the ultra-soft, almost runny style popular in many Asian cuisines, which isn’t for everyone.

Nobu’s Sunday brunch is fun and indulgent - just don’t expect to be blown away by anything. It’s worth doing once for the experience and is a great option for an unhurried catch-up with loved ones (they did not kick us out after 2 hours). Some hits, some misses, and plenty of options to keep everyone at the table happy. Just make sure you grab the good stuff while it’s hot.

Kyoto Sushi House is surprisingly busy at 3pm on a weekday. I was expecting a private dining experience, but the place was 80% filled. Filled with small tables and several solo diners, many seem to be students filling up on the all-you-can-eat lunch ($21.99) that remains in effect until 5pm.

You’re not going to find amazing food but it’s not terrible either. My favourite item was their chicken udon, which arrives piping hot with chewy noodles, a flavourful broth, napa cabbage and slices of grilled teriyaki chicken. It’s better than having their single order of teriyaki chicken that’s a bit dry without the soup.

I’m glad their carbs come in personal sized bowls. With that said, I’d skip their way too oily fried rice and stick with sushi instead.

Having doubts about consuming budget raw fish, I focused on cooked items like the shrimp tempura and unakyu rolls. The former was fishy tasting, likely because the frying oil isn’t changed regularly, but the eel and cucumber roll was surprisingly good, the requisite combination of crunchy cucumber and meaty sweet seafood.

For the nigiri, I opted to try the tofu skin sushi. Interestingly they don’t stuff the rice into the sweet burn curd pocket, rather binds it on top of the rice. It was what you’d expect… cool, sweet, and juicy.

The only raw ingredient I tried was the crispy spicy salmon roll and the fishy tempera bits made me regret ordering it. In fact, all their fried items we tried - Japanese spring rolls, deep fried dumpling, yam tempura, and fried calamari – are too oily, cheap quality, and tasteless.

I wish the miso soup arrived with the fried platter to have something to wash the oiliness away.

At least I had plenty of room for dessert, ordering a scoop of the red bean and green tea ice creams. They’re like what you’ll find at buffets but satisfies the sweet tooth.

• Anything under 5 - I really disliked and will never go back
• 6 - decent restaurant but I likely won't return
• 7 - decent restaurant and I will likely return
• 8 - great restaurant that I'd be happy to recommend
• 9 - fantastic restaurant that I would love to visit regularly and highly recommend
• 10 - absolute perfection!

• Mr. Miyagi

• Anything under 5 - I really disliked and will never go back
• 6 - decent restaurant but I likely won't return
• 7 - decent restaurant and I will likely return
• 8 - great restaurant that I'd be happy to recommend
• 9 - fantastic restaurant that I would love to visit regularly and highly recommend
• 10 - absolute perfection!

• Myungdong Shabu Shabu

It’s been years since I’ve been to a traditional buffet, where there are food stations to select to your heart’s content. As a child, we’d visit them for large family dinners - our parents were glad there were enough options to satisfy picky tastes and we could leave the table to walk around without them being judged. Somehow, we stopped going as my cousins and I became better behaved and our parents’ appetites shrunk.

With the plethora of seafood options, my first plate was dedicated to crustaceans and fish. A lady stands guard overly freshly shucked oysters, cold sea snails and chilled crab legs, ensuring items like the raw oysters are kept sanitary. From the hot section, the baked garlic scallops in shell were tiny but delicious. 

I had all this before realizing there was another seafood tower on the other side of the room, filled with mussels, snail, octopus tendrils, and cocktail shrimp! The restaurant is a place for seafood lovers, offering even more choice on weeknights when there’s also crawfish and baked oysters (on Wednesday), and stir-fried BC crab (on Thursday).

I’ll admit, the doughnuts smell better than they taste as they’re oily. Perhaps it’s my fault, I had to get the freshly fried ones that just dropped off the conveyor belt. Maybe if I took them from the basket and gave them a chance to drain it would be drier. Nonetheless, adding some red bean ice cream to it and forming a doughnut ice cream sandwich made the oiliness less noticeable.  

• Anything under 5 - I really disliked and will never go back
• 6 - decent restaurant but I likely won't return
• 7 - decent restaurant and I will likely return
• 8 - great restaurant that I'd be happy to recommend
• 9 - fantastic restaurant that I would love to visit regularly and highly recommend
• 10 - absolute perfection!

• KAKA All You Can Eat
• Colette Grand Cafe