Sunworld Hotel‘s central location in Dongcheng by Denshikou and Wangfujing makes Sunny Cafe’s newly renovated terrace a superbly private al fresco dining spot. The terrace faces a smaller street rather than Wangfujing Street itself, which is good news for parents like us who want to avoid the smokey bars and overpriced touristy stores lining Wangfujing Street.
Don’t be fooled by the odd selections on their outdoor freestanding menu; ice cream, americano, draft beer and roasted lamb leg are all available because that’s what their buffet lunch and dinners serve as well.
Sunworld Hotel is Singaporean and their restaurant reflects a fusion of Western and Cantonese traditional dishes, with recently added Beijing elements (e.g. roasted lamb leg). Their dishes are light, seafood heavy (fish, prawns, eel, lobster, oysters), and they have a teppanyaki style grill where you can choose raw seafood, meats, and vegetables whipped up on the spot by a young chef. Their salad and soup selection is rather sad, but they do have dim sum for foreigners (baozi, jiaozi, mantou), and a noodle station. Their biscuits and bread are yummy, and best of all, none of their food leaves you dehydrated from MSG.
Their only caveat is that they’re a relatively small buffet, so the kitchen manager seems to have set a daily quota on the amount of fresh ingredients available–a sad reality we had discovered on particularly busy days when they had run out of food for dinner. We have since determined that lunch is a much safer bet!
Besides, not only is the weekend lunch priced the same as weekend lunch, but the dinner prices are the same as well! We prefer lunch these days because the food is more fresh and the lunch manager is far nicer than her dinner counterpart. She borrowed a high chair from another (hotel) restaurant, gave us teppanyaki recommendations, and a last call warning before their kitchen staff cleaned up in a hustle.
Of course, at Sunworld Hotel’s buffet we are never phased by last call or “closing” and this past Sunday we stayed back a whole hour after last call (Sunny Cafe continues to serve coffee and afternoon tea items off the menu), sipping coffee while our little one slowly ate through plates and plates of fruit, biscuits, and mango pudding.
Using Nuomi, Sunworld Hotel’s lunch buffet price drops down to RMB 98 (adult) from 11:30am-2:00pm; dinner buffet RMB 118 (adult) from 6:00pm-9:00pm, with children under five dining for free. For reservations, call 5816 8999 ext 2430.
The kind manager informed us that if we follow their WeChat, we can get the same low price (lunch buffet RMB 110 first time, RMB 100 subsequent times) without the hassle of having to use Nuomi.
Photos: courtesy of Sunworld Hotel and Jessica Suotmaa
