This review is brought to you in part by The Brasserie.

If you’re looking for KL’s best Sunday brunch, the spread at St. Regis Kuala Lumpur will certainly need to be on your short list. In a city whose embrace of life’s more decadent pleasures has grown exponentially in the past decade, it’s oftentimes hard to do something that will stand out. After all, a number of KL’s top hotels offer indulgent high teas and jaw-dropping Sunday brunches. So what does one of the city’s finest new hotel additions need to do to make a splash? In the case of St. Regis, their philosophy wasn’t to go bigger, but to go better.

Focusing on the right Q

In many of KL’s top brunches, the spread is lavish and extensive – at times to the point of being overwhelming. After all, you really can only eat so much in a two- or three-hour window. So rather than continuing this theme, the team at St. Regis opted to change directions. Let’s not offer a huge buffet with a galaxy of choices, they thought, but instead create an intimate and refined experience that highlights top quality rather than extensive quantity. It’s the right call, and even the venue is relatively small.

Tastefully furnished, The Brasserie at St. Regis is host to its refined Sunday Brunch, which is held from 12 to 3pm. In fact, it might be more appropriate to call it lunch, as traditional breakfast items are scarce, if even on offer at all. Here, you’ll find no porridge or nasi lemak assembly lines, nor the seemingly ubiquitous brunch omelette station. What you will find is a carefully curated selection of uncommonly fine foods, most of them imported. Nothing I had was bad, almost everything was very good, and three items in particular were the best I’ve ever had in Malaysia – more on that later.

Wining and dining

We took our comfortable seats in a dining room which only accommodates 50-60 patrons at the very most, and even that would be a tight fit. Perhaps no more than a couple of dozen were on hand on the Sunday we visited, and that seemed to work well enough. It doesn’t seem that any great consideration has been given to where certain foods are placed, nor to the ‘traffic flow’ for diners helping themselves to the buffet, yet it works reasonably well nevertheless.

The popular seafood section would almost certainly be better presented on a round table, accessible from all sides. Its current placement right near the entrance to the dining room – on a line that’s really only accessible from one side – caused a minor few delays early on, but since the venue’s limited seating precludes any real crowds, this was never seriously problematic.

The brunch is available with or without alcoholic beverages and those choosing a tipple-free experience will still find their thirst beautifully quenched with premium still or sparkling waters, sodas, fresh-squeezed juices, and a range of top-shelf coffees and teas. Choose the other option and your beverage list will expand to also include free-flow Veuve Clicquot Champagne, red and white wines, and cocktails including the signature St. Regis Asam Boi Mary – a take on the classic Bloody Mary – and a curated libation that changes each week.

When we visited, we found little favour with the Apple Martini cocktail, sadly, but had high praise indeed for the E. Guigal Côtes-Du-Rhône wines offered. These lovely French wines are typically mid-range in price, but punch above their weight class when it comes to taste and pairing ability, serving as outstanding complements to the French-Mediterranean food that dominates the brunch selections.

First impressions

We began with the seafood spread, which was fairly comprehensive. Cockles, mussels, bamboo clams, jumbo shrimp, traditional smoked gravlax, and a creative beetroot gravlax were all offered, the latter sliced to order from the full side of salmon. the big standouts early in the buffet, however, had to be the sweet, tender Royal Alaskan Crab Legs and the astonishingly fresh Fine de Claire oysters, flown in from Brittany just hours before and shucked in-house. I usually have a fairly tepid reaction to oysters, seldom finding them to be all that inspirational. These, however, were exceptionally fresh and outstanding, taking their place as the best I’ve ever had in Malaysia. I proceeded to eat a half dozen of them with ease.

Mussels on Ice | Fresh Fine de Claire oysters

Next on the line was what might be called the salad station, but one unlike any I had seen at KL’s top brunches. A gorgeous display of imported heirloom tomatoes and fresh field greens was followed by bowls of fresh house-made buffalo mozzarella and impossibly creamy, decadent burrata. The staff on hand were happy to combine these, along with premium olive oil and balsamic vinegar, pine nuts, and basil leaves, into a lovely fresh caprese salad.

Absolutely amazing, and the burrata – a cheese made of a mozzarella ‘shell’ cradling a smooth interior of stracciatella cheese and cream – was sheer bliss, and also the best I’ve had here. Both the seafood selection (particularly the oysters) and caprese salad were beautifully complemented by the chilled Veuve Clicquot Champagne, which was always kept topped up with a smile from the floor staff.

Deeper into the meal

Pan-seared Foie Gras on toasted brioche

A trio of shiny chafing dishes around mid-way on the buffet were easily skipped. These contained single-serve portions of tasty-looking dishes, some of which were centred around rice and noodles. Though I’m certain they largely lived up to the standards seen in the rest of the meal, I was not keen to waste precious stomach space on these dishes once I saw what featured next on the buffet table: Seafood Bouillabaisse, a glorious Provençal stew rarely seen in Malaysia and known for its remarkable depth and delicacy of flavour, achieved by first boiling and then simmering the liquid as each portion of seafood – selected fish and shellfish, usually – is added.

The St. Regis version was sublime, once again nabbing ‘best I’ve ever had in Malaysia’ honours, and is served in the traditional style with grilled thin bread slices, perfectly seasoned. The bouillabaisse paired splendidly with the selected white wine, a lovely blended effort from the E. Guigal Côtes-Du-Rhône 2014 vintage.

Black Angus prime rib, sliced to order

The carving station also shows a thoughtful restraint – typically only two or three selections are available. Showcased during our visit was a beautiful en croûte Salmon Wellington, oven-baked to perfection and offered with a light dill sauce, and a Black Angus prime rib, served with a nicely made béarnaise sauce. The prime rib in particular, though perhaps slightly overcooked, was well-complemented by the red variant of the E. Guigal Côtes-Du-Rhône, the time-tested regional blend of Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvedre working well with the beef’s flavours.

Adding to this was a selection of perhaps five or six imported cheeses of sterling provenance and quality. The bread on offer here was a bit disappointing, but like most people, I’m sure, we weren’t at such an elegant buffet to eat dinner rolls, so this was taken easily in stride, and I was plenty happy with the excellent cheeses.

Imported cheeses

In addition to the self-serve options displayed, an à la carte menu offers a modest, but impressive selection of made-to-order dishes, including risotto, eggs Florentine, and a couple of others. This menu changes from time to time, and ours included a brilliant pan-seared foie gras, served perfectly on toasted brioche with a bit of pear chutney. It was a painfully small portion, but there was no problem in ordering seconds (and, I must confess, thirds), so that worked just fine.

The à la carte addition

Massive buffet spreads are virtually always wasted on me, so I am a big fan of the St. Regis approach which favours quality over quantity, and an even bigger fan of adding a nicely curated à la carte addition to a small, high-quality buffet spread. If I were to design the brunch of my dreams, it would look remarkably similar to what St. Regis has done here.

Beef salami and various accoutrements

A proper charcuterie platter would be amazing, but I realise hotels in Malaysia are largely obliged to be pork-free, so that wish will go forever unfulfilled here. Rounds of beef salami and a lovely sliced-to-order bresaola (air-dried beef, sliced very thin) offer partial recompense for the absence of prosciutto and serrano ham, I suppose.

A perfect finish

Raspberry cheesecake tartlets

The desserts were, like the buffet as a whole, restrained. Personally, I would have liked to see a good crème brûlée offered, or something prepared to order (crêpes, perhaps?), but what was on the table was still very nice for those with a sweet tooth, which is typically not me. A selection of beautifully made sweets and a variety of fresh fruits were hard to resist, though, so we sampled a bit and enjoyed an outstanding selection of teas and coffees to wrap up what was a very enjoyable and exquisite brunch.

Whimsical macarons

Sunday Brunch at The Brasserie at The St. Regis Kuala Lumpur is available from 12 to 3pm on Sundays. The price is RM298 nett per person for non-alcoholic beverages and RM468 nett per person for alcoholic beverages. Though admittedly not inexpensive, the quality of the food is undeniable and the comfortable ambiance and outstanding service admirably complement the top-flight food and drink on offer and make this an indulgent brunch well worth its premium price tag. Thanks to the Brasserie at The St. Regis for having us.

Location & Details

Address: The St. Regis Kuala Lumpur, Jalan Stesen Sentral 2, Kuala Lumpur Sentral, 50470 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Hours: Sundays, 12:00 to 3:00pm
Tel: +60 3-2727 1111
Find: View directory for The Brasserie at St. Regis here.

* Reservations advised