Todai Restaurant: Buffet of Crabs

In Asia, buffets have gotten a bad rap for being places where people waste food. And in Singapore in particular, this is probably true judging from the strict limited time you are allowed to eat even in fancy Casino Hotels.

Todai Singapore is different. This seafood buffet restaurant offers you lots to eat with no time limit. As an international food chain, Todai has to protect its reputation for offering great eats worldwide.

Since opening in the Marina Bay Sands Casino Resort, they have stole much of the thunder form MBS in terms of Las Vegas Style Buffet offering.
They open early and close late for patrons and that's a good thing.

Now here is the bad news, just coz you get to eat lots of stuff, that doesn't really mean you're getting good stuff.

First, let's get into the Alaskan crab buffet. There are three varieties on offer, the Red Crab from Japan, and the King and Snow crabs from Alaska. Great eats no doubt. But shame about the taste.

The reason for this is quite obvious. Crabs are thawed and offered as is. No attempt to convert them into tasty dishes. Just eat all you want crab meat and they taste pretty bland.

The best tasting crabs are always fresh but you can't ship fresh crabs to Asia without those creatures dying on you. So what's your best shot? Freeze them for export.
Once you have cooked them and freeze them for export, you gotta expect some quality problems. The sweetness of the meat has been leeched out during the cooking process and it could be placed in freezers for months before being thawed out again. So it's no fault of the restaurant for the crab to taste that way, instead, they should have come out with a sampling of dishes made with those crabs.

The buffet itself is wide, with roast meats, salads, pizza, sushi and sashimi all thrown in. Nice. I found the pizza to be best but the roast meats, that sort of disappointed me.

Even the roasted beef tasted bland. Now that's bad. I know it's not a signature dish but it can't taste this bad when you have a spread that is that good. Fortunately, I found something to eat everywhere I went so it was not a bad thing.

Drinks were free flow, dessert was good but not great. The staff was attentive and I could forgive them for the oversight on the crab dishes. What I find hard to swallow is the price. At $80 per person with tax, that roughly translates to nearly US$55 per pop.

For that, its fucking expensive. I know they have priced in the cost of the Singaporean glutton and that makes it very unlikely for then to be aiming for the casual diner. I'd be hard pressed to go back unless I suffered from some crab deficient syndrome that required me to load up on copious amounts of crab meat.

But having said that, it is the only place I know that has a crab festival in sunny Singapore. So this must be in someway cheap since you can't get it anywhere else.

For me, having tried similar experiences in Macau, I think I would rather go back there, take the two hour dining limit and load up on the buffet tables. It's money well spent there compared to Singapore.

Todai Singapore