cafe TOO Island Shangri-La (Hong Kong, CHINA) ★★★☆☆

Mom's birthday falls on a weekday this year so we are not available to celebrate with her on that day (as she doesn't prefer having dinner). But since the day before her birthday is a public holiday, it immediately makes it the easy choice for an early celebration. As usual, I was tasked with finding a venue and it wasn't going to be a difficult one. As mom loves lunch buffets, all I need to do is to find a nice buffet restaurant with a wide selection of Asian and Western food. And timing just couldn't get any better; last week I was reading about a "Buy-two-get-one free" promotion from cafe TOO at Island Shangri-La, and I decided to jump all over it.

It's been almost two decades since I last visited cafe TOO, who used to be the grand daddy of all hotel buffets back in the early 2000s. Since then, it has been surpassed by a number of more glamorous hotel buffets but I am sure it still has a special place in some of our hearts. 

While cafe TOO doesn't have the best quality of ingredients, they always win with quantity, starting with free flow of bubble milk tea and juice!

The sushi/sashimi counter was next to our table but I wasn't paying much attention to their Japanese food.

But this little kid was circling around the Japanese food station all afternoon. In fact, He broke his person record with 19 takoyaki today!



For myself, I spent loads of time at the seafood counter right next to the sushi counter where I found great selection of seafood like fresh crab, prawns, mantis shrimps, sea whelks etc. No lobster unfortunately.

Here are the mantis shrimps which are rarely seen at buffet restaurants.

Look at the roes on this crab!

The selection of hot dishes wasn't great but they did have a collaboration with Yat Lok Restaurant (一樂燒鵝) and they had a section dedicated to their super juicy roast goose.



We had to wait for an hour for the double-boiled soup which I thought was a good one.

The dessert station provided another highlight to our lunch and while mom managed to sample most of the pastries, I only checked out the macarons myself. My self-imposed ban on pastries is still on full gear.

The mini cakes and tarts did look lovely so it should make mom pretty happy.

I did squeeze in an egg tart from Tai Cheong Bakery (泰昌餅家), which was another collaboration that was going on at cafe TOO right now.



I thought we all enjoyed our lunch buffet this afternoon. Mom had a really great time too and that was all it mattered. Now that I was so stuffed, I probably needed to skip dinner tonight. 

Food Rating: 6/10

Price: $$$

Address: 7/F, Island Shangri-La Hong Kong, Pacific Place, 88 Queensway, Admiralty, Hong Kong

Closest Metro Station: Admiralty

Tel: +852 2820-8571

Opening Hours: 12:00pm - 2:30pm, 6:30pm - 10:00pm daily