Jean-Georges Vongericthen has created a spiffy special breakfast you can order with your buffet or ala carte in the morning. It's a nice little treat that gives you a change from the usual fried egg-toast-bacon staple.

This is a breakfast within a breakfast. You trip over to Latest Recipe to stuff your face with croissants and all the poached egg you can eat. And then on top of that you can order up special signature breakfasts created specially for Le Meridien by 3-Michelin star chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten. If you don't fancy a buffet and just want to try the JGV dishes, you can order it ala carte from the menu.

My three favourites here are the Smoked Salmon and Steamed Silken Tofu, the Croque-Madam and the Spiced Irish Oatmeal Souffle with Fresh Berries. A fan of smoked fish for breakfast what makes this Smoked Salmon dish quite delicious is the fact that textures are layered with the soft tofu. However what I liked best is that it has a nifty afterbite from pickled chillies. The heat of the chillies simply melts into the juices from the tofu and salmon. Said to be a healthy take of the salmon-bagel-cream cheese combo, the super slimming tofu subs for the cream cheese.

The Croque Madame is a top favourite (who does not like hot toast with melted cheese afterall?) Soft cheese is sandwiched between toast and a round hole is cut in the top bit. Then a runny egg is poured in the middle, soaking into the toast (so eat it while it's hot). Then it's finished with a yummy chilli hollandaise. Jean-Georges loves his chillies, and often inserts spicy notes behind Western standards. Each day there are juice shots in front called the JG Eye Openers. My favourite is the mango-chilli-lime-shot. I liked this so much, I think I might try recreate this at home.

My top pick of the JGV breakfast is the cunning oatmeal soufflé. Your dull oatmeal is perked up by making it into a light soufflé with lots of brown sugar and cinnamon and then berries to tart it up. Why oh why can't all oatmeal taste like this? Perhaps if I had a star chef whipping my oats into shape, I'd eat it more often.

"Perhaps it's time to rethink the humble oatmeal"

Other things on the menu is such as the gruyere custard- a warm quiche-like creation with a shot of cold cheese on top. I'm not a fan of sharp cheese hence this did not make my top three. There's also espresso steamed eggs which are eggs steamed with a high pressure espresso steamer. However this just tastes like soft scrambled eggs to me. There's also the uber healthy buckwheat crepe with spinach that goes against all my sensibilities of gorging at breakfast. Again if you are in the mood for something healthy, you can just order this alone.

I took a round of the buffet which in itself a very good spread. A good Indian section (I remember this from the dinner buffet here last year), a Japanese section and a tasty porridge spread. I am a porridge in the morning kinda gal. At each breakfast buffet in any hotel, I actually go for this first before the rest. Porridge here is a thumbs-up.

Also a nice touch here is that they have individually wrapped nasi lemak in banana leaf. Each basket of nasi lemak has different things in it. You can have it just with sambal ikan bilis or sambal sotong or sambal ikan masin. And they even have bowls with cucumbers, nuts, fried ikan bilis and hard boiled eggs if you want more. There's also a very tantalising selection of croissants and pastries on offer.

For ala carte, the JGV breafast items ranges from RM18-RM32 per item


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Almond croissant, coconut pastry, pain au chocolat... mmm...