Cham Charm
Having traveled to Vietnam for years, I have visited a series of international buffet restaurants. Rarely, I will be disappointed. However, there will always be an exception.
I always wish that I could find the time to travel all the way to District 7 to visit Cham Charm, having seen amazing photos of the place and its deco, I finally got the reason to be there with my clients.
It took us more than half an hour to travel from District 1 to District 7 due to bad traffic (nothing unusual in Vietnam especially in the main districts). Having reached there, I was amazed by the place. A standalone building well sculptured for fine dining and an international buffet. We started taking photos before we even approach the reception for our reservations.
I must say that the place was well decorated with a good ambiance, giving you a vibe in theme from the Cham period in Central Vietnamese history.
Thereafter, this was when the nightmare began. We made our first rounding to check out the dishes, I was quite impressed with the selections they might have but guess what? Most of the food trays seemed emptied or leftovers. It was a weekday and we arrived at 7:30pm. The place was ¾ filled. There were only 2 reasons for such situations to happen; Either the servings aren’t enough to cater to unexpected hungry customers or they are simply too slow in filling up the food trays.
I am always hungry for seafood such as crabs and lobsters. There aren’t any apart from those on cold ice which some of us can’t take cold and raw food. Furthermore, they said that they do not warm the food up for customers. (For some reason, felt Singapore was much better in terms of favours).
I tasted more than 50% of the dishes and seriously, I threw away more than half of them. They were cold and blend. It just seemed like leftover food. I started becoming grumpy and turned off. My clients were getting worried.
Services were bad as well. They needed to pass down messages from 1 person to another person till someone who understood English to get back to me and I waited more than 30 minutes for the bill to reach me.
The best part of the night was when I asked why lobsters and crabs weren’t available at the buffet spread when I saw others having them. They said that I must tell them at the reception counter at the start. Let’s get this straight, how would I know there were several packages when I weren’t even briefed on it?
Rating: 2/5 stars
Cham Charm
02 Phan Van Chuong St., Phu My Hung New Urban, Ho Chi Minh City 70000, Vietnam
