Bistro on the Bund     灣畔餐廳  

I bought half-price vouchers from Groupon to give this place a try. Note to Groupon users – This deal was not as good as advertised because the restaurant now has a 25% off deal going on without drinks. Overall, we probably saved only 40%, not the 50% advertised. Who was being misleading, Groupon or the restaurant? Another annoying pricing issue is that when my wife asked for a glass of water, she was told she had to purchase the beverage package for $58! All the sugary soft drinks you want are free, but $58 for water?

On to the review:

First of all, this place is a bit hard to find. You need to go out of the hotel, turn left from the main entrance, walk past a wine bar/shop, a Shanghainese restaurant, a convenience store, a sign for the place spot-lighted high up on the wall, and towards the end of the building and the container port. Despite what the name implies, it is not on the harbor side of the building. Also, I thought the sign in the hotel lobby said that it was on the 1st floor, not the ground floor, so we went up and down several flights of stairs.

As for the environment, the title of this review sums it up. Instead of fattening up cows on corn as they stand crowded in a pool of their own s**t, this place packs people in and gives them plates of meat and vegetables as they await their demise. It is much more crowded than a typical hot pot restaurant and the tables are packed tightly together. This is perhaps because they seem to cater more to couples and small groups, rather than large parties. The big problem with this setup is that here you need to leave your table to go get your food and then you have to squeeze your way back to your table carrying plates of wet and raw food.

The food is set out on tables that are a mess. The overwhelmed staff didn’t seem able to or interested in cleaning up after rampaging crowd. The only saving grace is that the meat and seafood are safely kept out of reach of the starving hoards in a refrigerated cabinet, portioned out by a staff member. If not for this bit of civility and order, the place would be chaos defined. Also, I am not sure as to why they bother to have cooked food. It didn’t look very appealing, and there must be concerns regarding cross-contamination with the raw food.

The hot pot selection was quite limited in my opinion: Besides 8-10 meat and fish selections, there were 4 or 5 different greens, 2 or 3 kinds of tofu, corn, fried fish skin, various noodles, wontons, fish balls, and a selection of what Bourdain refers to as “nasty bits”. Overall, there were probably only 25-30 choices in total. The major disappointment was that we arrived at 8 pm thinking the place was open until 10. However, it seemed that by 8:30 the food was running low and was only selectively refilled. By 9:00-9:15, the wontons and corn had run out and they were very slow to restock the noodles. At least the lady at the meat counter was friendly! I have always been under the impression that starch is cheap and protein is expensive. This restaurant seems to think otherwise...

In summary:
Negatives:
1. Hygeine
2. Limited selection
3. Limited quantities of said limited selection
4. Beer service stopped early
5. Szechuan ma la soup had no ma la
6. Our clothes didn’t smell like hot pot when we left*

Positives:
1. The meat was good and fatty, especially the lamb and pork
2. The lady at the meat cabinet had a very heavy hand and dished out liberal portions of said fatty meat
3. Beer – the $58 the bottomless glass of draught Carlsberg was a good value and the beer girl kept my glass topped-up, until she left 30 minutes early!
4. Our clothes didn’t smell like hot pot when we left*

*My wife usually doesn’t like to have hot pot because of the smell. I don’t mind this because it means the soup was really aromatic and flavorful.

Overall there were more negatives than positives to our meal, so I should probably give this place a negative review. However, I give it a “pass” because I should have known better before buying the vouchers. What the f**K was I expecting for ca. $200 per person? The place is what it is, and judging by the satisfied looks on the faces of our fellow diners, it caters adequately to its market niche. In summary, I think the concept is good, but the execution here leaves a lot to be desired. Not to be a snob, but perhaps if the Peninsula or Four Seasons offered a hot pot buffet and charged $880 per person, such a restaurant would work better to my tastes and standards.

蝦丸彈牙 but not rich in prawn taste
Cheese cakevery creamy and rich in butter and cheese taste, texture is abit hard
Oystervery clean and fresh, but not big enough
Fruit (watermelon, pineapple, ha melon)quite sweet and I know they didn’t put syrup in it
Icecream lo mai zi only芋頭 is offered
Rocky road icecreamI think is diary farm product, but it’s not soft enough to use the spoon to get it
Cakes (seasame, 芋頭)just soso, can ignore it, not too sweet and cakes are spongy
Pudding just ok, not too sweet either

Food is constantly refilled~ but the problem is the soup in pot is difficult to boil!!!

Service is good and they provide free drinkscoke, fanta and 7-up

Following a tired working day, my boyfriend and me went to restaurant for dinner that our friend had suggested. Saying that they are doing a seafood hotpot buffet.
As we are a seafood lover, although we’re not a fan of hot pot and their variety is all right, not a lot but the experience had been very awesome.

Once we sat down we can choose our own soup based, we started off with some cooked appetizer. Then we took different choices of seafood and vegi. But I would like to mention is their dessert made my dinner the prefect period of all. Have various kinds of desserts, portion are not too big but just enough. And also they have my favorite MOVENPICK ice cream. GREAT !

Actually the location was quite far for us but the environment and the atmosphere was great, so definitely worthwhile. We spend like 3 hours enjoying our dinner then we moved to the bar lounge area next door and had a drink there.
I would like to mention about their service at the restaurant, staffs were fantastic, very kind and nice.

We enjoyed very much, and definitely will recommend to our friends !

16 ppl went there last night for birthday dinner. To my surprise, the food quality and the enviornment is excellent!!! Must try are oysters (claims from Tasmania and sashimi (scallop and salmon). Especially so for the oyster as its freshly open. Other are above average (spagetti and chinese hotpot stand). Only downside is the ice-cream selection, having the brand in Move-n-pick should be outstanding, but the selection of flavour is pooring... only chocolate, caramel and pistachio to choose from and the last flaour should be the worst I have ever came across... a more popular selection like strawberry/vanilla is preferrable....

Overall highly recommend as u won't get this type of quality buffet food for 238 pp. Especially having a buffet dinner @ cafe one (3XX) the previous night, too big the difference.