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Blue Diamond Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City offers a wallet-friendly lunch buffet priced at 120K, featuring over 50 dishes. Dive into the detailed review below!
Hey everyone, I'm Minh Ha, a final year law student at Ho Chi Minh City University of Law. Last Friday marked our final day of classes, so my classmates and I decided to indulge in a hearty feast to celebrate the end of our student life. After much deliberation, we settled on having lunch at the Blue Diamond Hotel buffet for 120K.
I brought my camera along this morning to capture some snapshots with my friends, so I'll be documenting and reviewing the buffet spread at Blue Diamond Hotel for you all.
Food at Blue Diamond Hotel is conveniently segregated, making it easy to locate.
Worried about limited seating due to the crowd, we decided to call ahead and reserve a table at Blue Diamond Hotel, just to be on the safe side. After securing our seats, chaos ensued as we all scrambled to pick our dishes. I opted for crab soup as my appetizer, scooping up a generous bowl filled with plenty of crab meat and quail eggs to tantalize my taste buds.
The gigantic crab soup pot caught my eye during my lunch buffet experience at Blue Diamond Hotel.
The crab soup here is quite delightful, with a perfect balance of sweetness and freshness from the crab meat. It has a creamy texture that's just right, not too thick nor too thin, almost as delicious as Aunt Bong's crab soup at the Thiếc market.
My friends are currently selecting appetizers.
After finishing the crab soup, I indulged in some baked oysters with melted cheese. Since the oysters were freshly baked, they were still piping hot, and the cheese on top was perfectly melted without becoming runny. Personally, I prefer the cheese to be slightly browned when baking, but the oysters here are so fresh, sweet, and not at all fishy. The cheese is rich and creamy, so if you're on a diet, you might want to skip this dish as it's quite indulgent.
Baked oysters with creamy cheese
The slightly chewy texture of the baked oysters with cheese prompted me to switch to salad to refresh my palate before moving on to other dishes. There are various types of salads to choose from, such as dried squid mango salad, dried beef papaya salad, lotus stem salad, and so on. While I sampled a bit of everything, the dried squid mango salad stood out the most. The crispy mango salad paired with chewy dried squid and fragrant roasted peanuts creates a harmonious blend of flavors; this dish is particularly well-seasoned and delicious.
And here's the dried squid mango salad.
Being a bunch of broke college students, we seldom get to indulge like this, so everyone was eager to fill their plates with seafood. Here's what I piled onto my plate: three grilled shrimp, two grilled razor clams with scallion oil, two razor clams with tamarind sauce, and one fried fish with roe. In no time, all that remained on the plate were empty shells.
A lineup of golden grilled shrimp, all long-legged beauties.
Razor clams with tangy tamarind sauce are quite a treat; don't miss out on them when you visit Blue Diamond Hotel.
Still not feeling full, so I decided to have another bowl of fried rice with scallops just to make sure. The fried rice looked vibrant green, quite appealing, with grains that were moist and firm, not dry. The scallops were fairly large but diced into small pieces. I found the rice a bit bland, probably because I'm used to salty flavors at home.
In addition to the fried rice I ordered, my friends also chose Singapore-style fried noodles, Tomym fish balls, crab noodle soup, Szechuan fried chicken, etc., to eat. No one uttered a word to each other because we were all too busy eating, and also because the food was so delicious that we ate with gusto.
The tables and chairs at Blue Diamond are divided into several separate areas, so diners have their own space.
By now, we're starting to feel full, so I switched to desserts. There are a total of fourteen desserts, including fruit desserts. The mung bean sweet soup with lotus seeds is my favorite because my mom makes it so well at home, so I scooped up a bowl to see how it compares.
My bowl of mung bean sweet soup with lotus seeds at Blue Diamond Hotel buffet
Add a few ice cubes to keep it cool and it's ready to enjoy. The mung beans are simmered until soft, so they melt in your mouth, very smooth and sweet without being overly strong. The lotus seeds are crispy and crunchy, adding a delightful texture to the dessert without turning mushy. As for the fruits, there are watermelon, dragon fruit, guava, apple, etc. I don't know why they don't peel the guava here, but I still prefer peeled guava to avoid the bitterness. Overall, the fruits are fresh and delicious. I particularly enjoy the dragon fruit because it's so refreshing and sweet.
The dessert counter offers a wide variety of fruits, agar jelly, sweet soup, etc.
In summary, when my friends come to eat buffet, they just bury their heads in their plates and only lift their faces to talk to each other towards the end of the meal. Each person had to pay 120k per meal, which is quite cheap for over 50 dishes at this 3-star Blue Diamond Hotel. The air conditioning is pleasantly cool, and the staff here are quite enthusiastic in guiding and serving the guests.
For those who haven't found a buffet spot yet, it's highly recommended to head to Blue Diamond Hotel for a delightful lunch buffet experience. Originally priced at 185K per person, but thanks to the restaurant's promotional offer, we only had to pay 120K per person. Make sure to book your table in advance to enjoy the discount just like us:
>>> Blue Diamond Restaurant – 48-50 Thủ Khoa Huân Street, Bến Thành Ward, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City
Reviewer: Minh Ha
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