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| - Hot House is a place I would go to again if I was in the area, but will probably not be a place that I'd actively go downtown for, unless it was the designated meeting place.
Their wait-staff is friendly, the tables, chairs and floor seemed clean, the food was fresh and appetizing, and the live band wasn't so loud to make it impossible to listen to your table-mates.
Shamefully, I did not have the cappelletti; though I was told, by those in the know, that it was The Best. My plate was already full by the time I got to this dish, and even though I had every intention of trying it on the Second Round, I didn't score a second plate of brunch.
Yes, as a lover of all things buffet, this was truly disheartening.
I made the buffet-for-beginners' mistake of piling up on rice; and delicious as it is, that starch will end you. And this is why I couldn't go for that second plate. My bad.
The food I had tried was good though. The vegetables were crisp, and cold. The pasta salads seemed fresh, and the hot dishes were just on the cusp of lukewarm, which is about all you can ask for in a buffet styled meal.
For dessert, there aren't a lot of cakes that I can eat (with that finicky intolerance to all purpose flour), so even the assortment of sliced cake was tempting, I had their crumbly apple crumble instead. The apples themselves did taste fresh, which is obviously a good thing; as there's nothing worse than *knowing* you're eating canned apples for dessert.
We didn't see any ice cream, which thinking of it now, is usually a staple for buffets; even sushi buffets know this rule, with their limited selection of Green Tea, Red Bean or Mango ice cream desserts. But somehow Hot House had missed the day in class that covered "Iced Desserts: Creams, Milks, and Alternatives" (Chapter 4 of Buffet Staples for Beginners.)
Word of wise though: even though whip cream kinda looks like vanilla ice cream in the most basic sense, and tastes just a sweet (if not sweeter), whip cream on top of apple crumble does not a yummy dessert make.
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