Yue at Aloft’s new weekday semi-buffet: Free-flow salad bar, soup, duck confit and a zi char dish, all from just S$15.90

Free-flow salad bar, a soup of the day, dessert, and a zi char main of your choice — all for under S$20, and at a hotel restaurant no less? It sounds like the kind of deal that comes with fine print, but after trying the spread at Yue at Aloft ourselves, we can confirm: There isn’t any.

The Novena hotel restaurant’s new weekday semi-buffet starts at S$15.90 per person (minimum two to dine) — and if dinner is more your speed, there’s a version of that too, from S$19.90.

An updated weekday tune for Yue

If Yue at Aloft is the casual Chinese restaurant tucked within Aloft Singapore Novena’s West Wing — easy to overlook unless you’re a hotel guest, but worth a detour if zi char is what you’re craving.

Its name comes with a small wink: “Yue” (乐) means “music” in Mandarin, a nod to Aloft’s music-loving brand identity, and the restaurant leans into that, with a soundtrack that’s a notch more curated than your average neighbourhood zi char joint.

It’s also got a quieter side worth knowing about — an al fresco section overlooking greenery, and since Aloft properties tend to be pet-friendly, your dog is welcome to join for that part of the meal.

On the food front, Yue at Aloft’s regular menu plays it fairly straight — cereal prawns, claypot beancurd, sweet and sour pork — with the occasional contemporary touch (duck confit, for one) thrown in to keep things interesting.

The new weekday semi-buffet builds on that foundation and feels less like a limited-time promo and more like a standing weekday fixture for the area.

Here’s how it works: At dinner (Monday to Thursday, 6pm to 10pm, minimum two diners per table), S$19.90 per person gets you the free-flow salad bar, soup of the day, and keropok, one zi char main of your choice (from 15 dishes), and the dessert from the buffet line — homemade beancurd, pancakes, and mango sago.

Three of the mains carry a small top-up, namely the spring onion & ginger sliced beef, cereal prawn, and curry pork rib, will cost S$2 extra, while the steamed cod fish will be S$5 extra — but everything else on the list, duck confit included, comes at no extra charge.

Diners who’d rather skip the main course altogether can opt for the salad bar and dessert spread alone for S$10.90, and a S$1.50 top-up adds free-flow Chinese tea, coffee, juice, and soft drinks.

The weekday semi-buffet lunch runs along similar lines, just gentler on the wallet: From S$15.90 (Monday to Friday, 12pm to 2.30pm), it bundles free-flow salad and desserts with jasmine rice and one zi char main of your choice, from a narrower range of 10 options. 

It’s the same spread as dinner, less the claypot seafood beancurd, sweet & sour monkey head, Szechuan deep-fried chicken, duck leg confit, and steamed cod fish. 

The same three proteins — pork rib, prawn, and sliced beef — carry the extra S$2 top-up here, while the noodle options (char kway teow, Penang-style, KL thick rice noodles, and Yue’s signature Limpeh bee hoon) come without the rice. The salad-and-dessert-only option for lunch is just S$9.90.

Satisfying zi char staples

The buffet line opens with a free-flow salad bar that doesn’t overreach — cherry tomatoes, shredded carrots, pickled vegetables, chickpeas, corn, and capsicum, dressed with either Thousand Island or Japanese sesame dressing, depending on your mood.

It’s not the star of the show, but everything tasted fresh, and there’s enough variety here for anyone who likes to get their greens in before the mains arrive.

Alongside it sits a pot of carrot and sea clam soup as the soup of the day (which rotates according to ingredient availability) — a light, faintly briny broth that’s less about making a statement and more about warming you up for what’s ahead, and it did that job well.

Mains-wise, diners get to choose one dish out of a range of zi char options, of which we tried the spring onion & ginger sliced beef, duck leg confit, Penang-style char kway teow, sweet & sour monkey head, and steamed cod fish.

The char kway teow was the most familiar dish on our table, and also the one that left us wanting just a touch more — specifically, a deeper, smokier wok hei, which is really the whole point of a good plate of char kway teow.

That’s not to say it was bad; Chinese sausage threaded punchy, salty notes through the noodles, and the cockles (that can be left out on request) brought their usual brininess. The portion is generous enough that two people could comfortably split it — we just wished it had a little more oomph.

The spring onion & ginger sliced beef, on the other hand, delivered exactly what we were hoping for. The beef slices were impressively tender, with barely any chew, and a gingery zing ran through every bite.

If you’re after something heartier, this is the one to order — easily one of the evening’s better dishes.

Then came three (of the five) dinner exclusives that surprised us the most. The sweet & sour monkey head — yes, a vegetarian dish — had us converted within a couple of bites, and we’d order it again without hesitation.

The monkey head mushroom cubes had a texture so soft and yielding that, blindfolded, we’d have guessed tofu or a very delicate fish. The sweet-and-sour glaze clung to each piece just right: Sticky, well-balanced, and tying the whole dish together.

Not the one we expected to be talking about afterwards, but here we are.

The duck leg confit was the other standout — not a dish you’d typically find on a zi char menu, and served here smothered in a kung pao sauce that’s been dialled down on the heat and leaned into savoury, almost molasses-like territory.

It worked beautifully against the duck’s gaminess, and the meat itself was tender and juicy throughout — hard to fault.

For those after something lighter, the steamed cod fish is the gentler option: A noticeably smaller portion, dressed simply with bok choy and mushrooms, and flaky enough that it didn’t need much else.

To round things off, the dessert line has mango sago, tau huay (soy pudding), and a DIY pancake station. The mango sago is the one to fill any remaining gaps — pile on extra mango, grass jelly, and glutinous rice balls (also available at the buffet) for a properly substantial bowl.

Its sweet-and-sour balance doubles as a decent palate cleanser, which is handy after a really delicious, generously portioned meal.

Worth your weekday spend

For a sub-S$20 weekday spread, Yue at Aloft’s semi-buffet — the dinner, in particular, punches well above its price tag. The mains alone, particularly that duck confit and the sweet & sour monkey head, would hold their own even outside a buffet context.

If we’re being a little greedy, a small rotating side or two — think stir-fried vegetables, fried beancurd, or even a scoop of ice cream alongside the mango sago — would round out the free-flow portion and push this from “great deal” to genuinely hard to walk past.

But that’s also where the maths of a semi-buffet gets tricky: Push too far on the free-flow side, and the low price point — the whole appeal here — starts to wobble.

As it stands, Yue at Aloft’s new semi-buffet sits in a fairly sweet spot where it’s generous enough on the mains to feel like a proper meal, yet financially modest enough to keep the price honest.

For a weekday meal in Novena that doesn’t ask much of your wallet, we feel that’s a trade-off that’s easy to live with.

This was a hosted tasting.

For more ideas on what to eat, check out our review of Cookboys by Han’s, a new British-Hainanese concept by the well-known casual eatery, and these 12 spots for really good sandwiches in Singapore.