I stayed at the Oriental Hotel in Kobe Meriken Park and had its breakfast buffet the next day. The building looks big, with a very special shape that you rarely see somewhere else. Floors stack one on the other, balconies going all around, and the name of the hotel shows even from far away.
Because Meriken Park sits directly by the water in Kobe, the whole area around the hotel has that bay city feel.
The place for breakfast is named All Flags Terrace & Dining. It is a buffet setup, where you just take a plate and walk picking what you want. Prices are listed for breakfast, lunch and dinner, with separate prices for children and elders.
Breakfast Buffet at Meriken Park Oriental Hotel
Among the first things that I walked past was the bread area. Pastries, baguettes, croissants, everything lined up as if freshly baked. Butter packs and jams too, with strawberry jam, orange marmalade, blueberry jam.
In Japanese hotel buffets the bread is usually very soft and good, and here it was no different.
One table had pieces of omelette, curry mix, and fish pieces. Then salads and chopped veggies, plus cheese and cold meats with berries mixed over them. I took a bit from everything, but really the cold meats pulled me back often.
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Waffles with whipped cream, berry sauce and jam for toppings. They were thick with a crunchy outside and soft inside, just what you want.
Further down the row were sausages with corn and veggies on the side. Pasta, tater tots, bread rolls and bacon. Usual hotel buffet things, but everything looked freshly made.
The sausages had good crunch, different than my food at Gyukatsu Motomura in Kyoto, but yummy in its own way.
Pieces of oranges, apple pieces, pineapple chunks and grapefruit. Next to the fruit were little cups of pudding and pieces of bread with caramel sauce. I took pudding, and it was creamy and smooth.
One spot had omurice with puffy egg stuff and sauce that you pour over the rice. Right next to that was French toast with whipped cream and syrup. The pieces of French toast were thick and soft, and the egg stuff smelled so good that I had to try the omurice too.
It is a Japanese favorite food, where you wrap fried rice in thin omelette, cover it in sauce, and it pops up on many hotel breakfast menus in Japan.
I took a glass of water and then used the coffee machine. It made an Americano right there, coffee pouring in the cup while little screen showed a picture of a steamy cup. Not bad for a machine.
Donuts with different sprinkles and toppings. I grabbed one on my way back to the table.
My plate ended up a big mess. Noodles, rice, curry, toast, sweet potato, steamed bun, pastry, fish and fruit (all squished together). That's the thing about buffets though: you always take more than you should.
Takoyaki and yakisoba at breakfast! Takoyaki is a Kobe thing, those round balls made with batter and octopus inside, so it made sense to see them here. The yakisoba had noodles, cabbage and meat all mixed.
The curry spot had something called Kobe High Curry, with puffy butter rice and a pot of Kobe Hayashi curry. Hayashi curry is a Japanese kind of stew made with beef and a thick gravy sauce, different than regular curry. Extras had fried onions, pickled onions and red fukujinzuke pickles.
I put a little of each on top, and the sweet of the fukujinzuke went so well with the yummy curry.
Udon noodles in a big pot and bowl of yogurt. The udon was hot and slippery and I almost dropped some trying to get them in the bowl.
More desserts and fruit spread along the table. Custard cups with caramel sauce, bread pudding pieces, grapefruit, pineapple and apple slices. I was already so stuffed but took one more custard because it looked too good to miss.
They also had a drink spot with all-you-can-drink choices. Fresh oranges stacked up, glasses ready, and bottles cooling on ice.
A Zumex orange squeezer full of fresh oranges just sat there ready to squeeze. Then two mixers, one with melon juice and another with berry shake and caramel banana mush. I tried the melon juice and it was thick and sweet.
Japan does melon-flavored everything and the fresh kind at this Kobe buffet was really good.
