The new year always involves a family dinner to celebrate D’s and his mother’s birthdays. With D’s easygoing attitude, where we go is almost always chosen by his mum, and this year it’s at the Harvest Buffet at The Star for their Premium Seafood Buffet ($77.90 per person for 1.5 hours).

The Premium Seafood Buffet operates from Thursday through to Sunday.

There was plenty of crabs and oysters on offer.

The three variety of crabs:

• Alaskan Snow Crab (above, top, pale brown coloured) — this one had the more flavourful, sweet and juicy meat.
• Spanner Crab – (above, right, bright red coloured) — this one had a lot of cartilage and shell to get through before getting to the meat, which was less juicy with a more mellow flavour.
• Swimmer Crab – (above, middle, orange coloured) — this one had juicy meat, but had less meat and sweetness than the Alaskan Snow Crab.

Overall, the Alaskan Snow Crab is the variety with the biggest pay off in terms of quantity and flavour of meat. We concentrated our attention on them.

Cooked prawns and aromatic steamed clams, as well as seafood salad and marinated black Kinkawooka mussels are also available along with a bunch of sauces and salads.

Moving on, the hot food section is extensive.

There are roasted potatoes cooked with aromatic truffle and a vegetable Provencal with Kalamata olives, as well as grilled salmon with salsa.

The clams were fresh and light, while the lack of any heavy sauce allowed the marine flavour to came through. The mussels, though, were a huge miss as they were overly salty.

We were huge fans of the roasted potatoes with their golden brown crunchy exterior and soft and fluffy innards. The salmon was overcooked and rather tough, alas.

Further along, there’s extensive offerings of Asian food from the quintessential Chinese XO pipis and spring rolls to a self-service gua bao station, as well as Vietnamese and Chinese variants of prawn crackers. There was crispy skin pork, but none of the other roast meats, alas.

Pipis are excellent vehicles for sauce and these were no exception, although it did lack in the fiery XO department and quite a few had large granules of sand inside. The spring rolls disappointed by being vegetarian, while the crispy pork lacked a crunchy crackling.

There’s cold cuts as well, and when it comes to pizzas, there’s a margherita and chicken pizza, both cooked in their dedicated pizza oven. We enjoyed the crispy, thin base but the toppings were nothing special.

For the less adventurous, there’s a stir fry of cauliflower and brocolli as well as mac ‘n’ cheese. D tries the lamb osso bucco on the recommendation of his brother and enjoys the tenderness.

D’s a fan of chicken wings but was disappointed that these Buffalo Wings were not crispy, vinegary or the least bit spicy.

There’ a corner dedicated to Chinese style chicken and corn soup, as well as a congee station along with all the trimmings one could ever want. D’s mother enjoys the congee and goes back for seconds.

There’s a corner dedicated to Mexican food with nachos and tacos…

…as well as a various Indian curries and chutneys, along with naan.

Finally, we move on to the desserts!

There’s bread and butter pudding, as well as stolen bread.

There’s an apricot tart, an apple tart, a berry cheesecake, and a strawberry sponge cake.

For the smaller portions, there’s a variety of mousse cakes (front to back, left to right).

• Berry mousse – smooth mousse delivered a fresh sweetness, while the berry compote adds texture and punchy acidity.
• Chocolate mousse – smooth mousse has a rich chocolate flavour but heavy after a buffet.
• Mango mousse – smooth mousse brought a gentle tropical sweetness, while the chia seeds adds texture.
• Caramel fudge – dense and cloyingly sweet.
• Berry sponge – the sponge was light, but the additional layers lacked textural and flavour difference
• Chocolate cake – the chocolate was intense, but the darkness of the ganache cut through somewhat making it more enjoyable than the mousse
• Mango mousse – there was no variation in this cake other than the cookie base, which made it less enjoyable than the mousse

Overall, none of these cakes were worth saving space to fit into my belly.

After a very lacklustre first round of desserts, we try the lighter options:

• berry sorbet – this tasted much like berry flavoured frozen yoghurt
• lemon sorbet – this tasted like an artificial lemon flavour and lacked the zesty, salivating qualities of well-known gelato stores
• orange & lemon myrtle dome – this was kept behind a glass cabinet that required staff to distribute. It was well-worth it, though, as it is easily the dessert they put the most effort into, with the lemon myrtle coming through fragrant in the dome against the restrained orange cake base.

The Harvest Buffet is touted as being the premier buffet in Sydney and it certainly deserves the title amongst buffets. But buffets just aren’t my thing — the food is always decent, but never great, and certainly never beats visiting a restaurant that specialises in a single cuisine. So, unless you’re skilled at de-shelling crab and can make numerous trips to fill up your plate in 90 minutes, the effort required  is simply not worth it.

Harvest Buffet at The Star is located at Level 1, The Star Grand Residences, The Star, 80 Pyrmont Street, Pyrmont NSW 2009