Birthday Special: Holiday in New York Sweets Buffet at the Conrad Osaka
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If you know me, then you know there’s three things I love:
1) Getting points/miles and discounts from my credit cards
2) Hilton hotels
3) Stuffing my face like a big fat piggy
and I guess 4) would be coffee and 5) would be my wife (just kidding honey, you’re number 1 always please don’t make me sleep on the couch). I combined all 5 of those things on my birthday this year with a trip to the Holiday in New York Sweets Buffet at the Conrad hotel in Osaka.
The Conrad Osaka is a bit of a walk south from Umeda, and its location is more suited to business travelers than tourists. The lobby has some fantastic sculptures and views, and the staff was very friendly and helpful (they also spoke English, which was great). I’m a hardcore Hilton stan, and this place absolutely met my expectations. We had to wait a bit for our afternoon tea to start, so we walked around the lobby and took pictures until it was time to file in. We first had to give our temperature and take some hand sanitizer, and then were shown to a table where we gave our coffee orders and waited to check out the insane buffet.
This was an afternoon tea buffet that went from 2:30-4:00pm. It was standard (read: high) hotel-buffet prices, but since I have status with Hilton and a Hilton Honors credit card that you should absolutely get via our referral link, I got a 25% discount as well as a bunch of Hilton points.
The theme of “Holiday in New York” meant all the foods were American or New York-themed. Some of the renditions were more successful than others (I don’t think the Japanese understand what pastrami is), but it was all wonderfully laid out into a sumptuous spread.
One had to put on gloves and wear a mask when at the buffet due to COVID protocols, and the areas were divided among sweet and savory. We started off by trying one of everything to get the lay of the land, and then sat and drank coffee and felt like horrible beasts for a bit before going back for more. It wasn’t too crowded so it was easy to just go up and grab whatever we wanted.
Overall, I would say there was an imbalance between sweet and savory, as after our first round we felt overwhelmed by sugar. I wish there had been some more pizza choices or something to bring the sweet/savory numbers in line. Some things were definitely better than others, which is standard for a hotel buffet, but considering many of these desserts are hardly ever seen in Japan, I think they did a bang-up job.
I have ranked everything we ate in order of how delicious it was. Some things are missing because I couldn’t remember what they tasted like. Deal with it.
The stuff we ate, in order of goodness:
Peanut butter fudge (2 kinds)
Stollen
Soft chocolate chip cookies
Pizza
Carrot cake
Apple pie (Eriko very much liked this)
Special birthday stuff I got for being the birthday boy (chocolate, gummy, little tart deal)
Chicken wings
Macarons
Cheesecake
S’mores Tarts
Bagel & lox (taking Eriko’s word on this one since I didn’t try it)
Cronuts
French fries
Waffle
Pastrami roll
Mac & Cheese
Galaxy cake
I’m not the buffet monster I used to be, so I only went back four more times over the course of the hour and a half we had. Definitely an awesome way to spent my birthday, although it would have been better if we’d been staying at the hotel and could have just gone upstairs to nap instead of having to wait until we got home. I will dream of that fudge and stollen.
Oh, and before we left, I visited the bathroom again and saw this:
No yawning like a big ol’ bear? But that’s how I yawn!
The toilet seat had this message on it warning you against leaning back and breaking the toilet. I didn’t know how to feel about this, because after all, this was an American buffet, and not only are Americans like myself larger and therefore more likely to break a toilet, but I kind of see breaking the toilet as the whole point of going to a buffet. Anyway, the Conrad Osaka doesn’t have a bathroom anymore as it’s now a crime scene. I can’t wait to come back next year and do it all over again.
