Hotel Brunches: The Intercontinental Hotel
Ekaabo @ Intercontinental Hotel
Plot 52 Kofo Abayomi Street, Victoria Island, Lagos.
FOLLY: It's no secret that Nigerians love buffets.
NOSA: And I absolutely hate that we do. I hate how for a lot of us, quantity > quality
FOLLY: It's the preferred dining style when most people want to dine out and so it's no surprise that the top search term on our blog (along with RSVP but today we talk about buffets, maybe on Twitter I'll get into the intersection of RSVP and Eat.Drink.Lagos).
NOSA: I'm tired of mincing words here, buffets are the absolute worst.
FOLLY: Nosa and I reviewed Intercontinental's buffet over the weekend and it was so bleh that neither one of us is inspired to write about it.
NOSA: I don't think I want to see another buffet until next year.
FOLLY: I started with the pepper soup which was just as good as any other buffet's pepper soup. Nothing stood out. At N9500 per head, I definitely expect to find big pieces of fish in my pepper soup and there were.
NOSA: Very low bar you've set.
FOLLY: There was a pasta bar much like at Four Points and Bon Voyage. The pasta was tasteless.
NOSA: For the senrenre about it, I'm actually shocked it came out so bland looking
NOSA: I'll give them a little credit, the BBQ wings were really really good. Might be the only thing I actually ate.
FOLLY: The dessert was a mish-mash of sheet cakes cut into tiny squares. For what it's worth, I really enjoyed the white chocolate cake that I drizzled with milk chocolate.
FOLLY: My issues with buffets are:
- If you don't arrive within the first hour of the start time, the food has been left out too long.
- I am sharing serving utensils with strangers who may not have washed their hands at the loo and I may use those same hands to eat my bread rolls.
- Buffets are unsanitary, again.
NOSA: You forgot this one: the food is never that good.
FOLLY: The biggest misconception people have is that with a buffet you're cheating the restaurant and you will eat twice the amount of food than if you used the same amount of money for an a la carte meal. If you're talking solely about the quantity of the food, you are right and I won't try to convince you otherwise.
If you're particular about the quality of the food, the restaurant or hotel is robbing you in broad daylight. They use the worst quality ingredients, worst cuts of meat, and the worst of everything. Restaurant owners have corroborated this to me in conversations.
NOSA: I don't think people actually care about the quality of the food. Like I said earlier, to a lot, quantity > quality. As long as there's a lot of food to be eaten in one sitting, that particular demographic will always be satisfied. If you've seen your coworker eat pounded yam and Chinese noodles at the same time, I'm sure you'll agree with me here.
FOLLY: If you were actually cheating them, they'd all be out of business by now. The only buffet that you might have the upper hand is Southern Sun because I don't quite understand how they've actually been able to sustain their bottomless mimosas all these years without a champagne tap or a guy that turns water into champagne.
NOSA: It's probably all Andre and we never notice because of the OJ.
FOLLY: Anyway, if you insist and you were one of the 452 people that liked the Intercontinental buffet pictures on our Instagram page, the buffet is N9500 per head for lunch so go and knock yourself out.
VERDICT
