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This Review of the St. Regis Maldives Vommuli Dining and Restaurants includes the resort's buffet breakfast at Alba, dinner at Alba, dinner at Orientale, and lunch at Crust, as well as a drink at the Whale Bar. Stay tuned for our full St. Regis Maldives Vommuli review, and how it compares to other luxury resorts in the Maldives.
St. Regis Maldives Vommuli Breakfast Buffet at Alba Restaurant
As part of their STARS benefits, TravelSort Clients enjoy complimentary buffet breakfast for two daily at Alba, the resort's all-day dining restaurant, located by the main pool.
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The breakfast buffet is offered 7-10:30 am daily. Our favorite sections of the buffet were savory, particularly the Maldivian section, which is easy to miss as it's across from the buffet on its own table. Whenever we came over to the table, a friendly team member offered to help make us a delicious plate with roshi (the flat bread), mas huni (tuna with coconut), kulhimas (spicy tuna), a bowl of curry, and condiments. Excellent.
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There are Chinese hot dishes, including stir fries and chicken and vegetable bao, but we gravitated towards the very good Middle Eastern dishes, which included shakshuka and sometimes kibbeh in the hot buffet, and hummus, labneh, and baba ganoush in the cold buffet, near the smoked salmon.
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In addition to smoked salmon, there's beet cured gravlax. There wasn't cream cheese on the buffet, but the team kindly provided some to our teen when he asked for it.
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The fresh fruits weren't as good as I've had at other Maldivian luxury resorts; the cut watermelon and papaya wasn't very ripe and mango, when we ordered it from room service, wasn't very good. There were no berries on the buffet, and cut strawberries as garnishes were often unripe. But I was very grateful that the team was more than happy to provide a plate of fresh passion fruit for me, even though it wasn't on the buffet except as part of a larger plate of fruit. On another morning, I saw red currants as a garnish for a fruit plate, and was able to request a couple sprigs.
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The pastries weren't compelling enough for me to have more than part of a pain au chocolat. It was ok, but not as good as I can get at my local bakery in California. And don't bother with the cinnamon rolls, which aren't good at all. For excellent French pastries, macarons, and other desserts in the Maldives, I haven't found anywhere that beats Cheval Blanc Randheli.
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We enjoyed the yogurt section; our teen preferred the mango yogurt, I liked the passion fruit yogurt, and my husband thought the bircher muesli was especially delicious.
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In addition to the extensive buffet, guests can request items from a menu that are freshly made to order. We tried the lobster caviar omelet for our first breakfast, which was plated beautifully, but which I found a bit bland.
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The eggs benedict and brioche french toast were perfectly fine, but nothing to write home about, except for the tasty soft shell crab garnish. We were able to request just the crispy soft shell crab at a subsequent breakfast, which the team graciously accommodated.
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By far the winner of the items we tried was the Duck Confit Waffle with a fried egg: this was exceptional, with a crispy waffle and perfectly prepared duck confit, only slightly let down by the unripe strawberry garnish. If I was the chef, I'd swap this out for some passion fruit maple syrup and a bit of fresh passion fruit to contrast with the rich duck meat.
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Dinner at Alba Restaurant
As the resort's all day dining restaurant, Alba also serves lunch and dinner, with different menus for each. The dinner menu is eclectic, with both Italian dishes and traditional Indian choices.
After ordering, we were brought at tasty amuse bouche of lettuce wrap with minced chicken filling, as well as a bread basket of different rolls, including an olive focaccia, regular roll, and curry leaf seaweed roll, accompanied by truffled butter. As we were ravenous, both were very welcome. Orientale only provides an amuse bouche, no bread basket/rice crackers or similar.
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Since our teen caught a unicornfish during sunset fishing, it was deep fried, fish and chips style, and served to us as one of our dishes. I'm usually not a fan of fried fish, but this was done perfectly, and almost greaseless. A tiny squeeze of lemon was all it needed.
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The lobster linguine our server recommended was also delicious, we'd recommend it if in the mood for an Italian seafood pasta.
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The Indian butter chicken dish we ordered was also very good, although I thought there could have been a somewhat larger portion size given its $55 price.
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The cheese-stuffed naan bread wasn't very good, however; there was barely any cheese, and I've had much better stuffed naan breads in a variety of other restaurants in the U.S. and the UK.
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Everything arrived all at once except for the side dish of asparagus, which took awhile later to arrive, making us wonder if our server forgot to put in the order.
At the end of the meal, we ordered a scoop of lemon lime sorbet, which was refreshing, but rather exorbitantly priced at $8 for a single scoop (especially when kids under 12 are able to order a scoop for $3).
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Dinner at Orientale
We dined at Orientale our first evening, and it was the least impressive of our meals. While it's possible we chose poorly, I'd rather a restaurant shorten its menu so that all dishes are pulling their weight. Orientale is open for dinner Monday-Saturday 7-10:30pm, and closed Sunday.
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The menu includes Japanese sushi and sashimi, Chinese, and a few other types of Asian dishes. Here's a few of the many options:
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After ordering, we were brought an amuse bouche of vegetables with seaweed. Since I hadn't had many vegetables that day, it was exactly what I was in the mood for, although as an amuse bouche I'd have expected something more sumptuous, such as tuna sashimi, shrimp, or meat of some kind.
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We started with a spinach salad with yuzu truffle dressing, parmesan cheese, and dry miso. It was good, but there was way too much dressing; we should have asked for it on the side.
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We shared a couple of dishes, the Asian BBQ Fried Chicken for $68 and the Ginger Scallion Iberico Pluma for $90. These were no better than what I'd expect with take-out from a neighborhood Chinese restaurant, for perhaps $20 a dish, so I regretted this reservation.
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The Whale Bar at Sunset
The Whale Bar, open from 6pm-midnight daily, is where the nightly sabrage ceremony is held, which was at ~6:45pm during our stay.
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The Whale Bar is also an ideal place to view the sunset on a clear day. The sunset was a bit obscured by clouds when I visited, but there were still some lovely colors in the sky as the sun set.
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There are a variety of cocktails and mocktails on offer, and I was able to order a mango, pineapple, passion fruit smoothie for $14. Accompanying complimentary snacks were breadsticks, hummus, spicy nuts, and olives.
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Lunch at Crust
Our most satisfying meal from a quality and value perspective was a late lunch at Crust & Craft, the resort's pizzeria on the beach. It's open daily from noon to 5pm, so don't count on it for dinner, unless you eat very early.
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There was no wait for a table when we arrive about 3pm, so we were able to choose from several tables. We were brought cool towels (appreciated, given the day's heat), and a couple of drinks, a lime Beach Cooler for my husband and a pineapple mango passion fruit smoothie that my teen and I split helped cool us down.
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After perusing the menu (again provided via QR code as with all the resort's restaurants) we ordered two pizzas. Our son chose the Pollo, a chicken and cream cheese pizza, while my husband and I chose the Burrata, with olives and capers. With the arugula on top, it was a complete meal, and two pizzas were enough for all three of us, even with good appetites. The crusts were perfect, light with a crispy exterior, and the toppings were sufficient to be flavorful, but not excessive, so they didn't make the pizza soggy.
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Restaurants We Didn't Try: T*Pan, Cargo, Decanter
We didn't try Cargo, the Middle Eastern restaurant, T*Pan, the new Japanese Kaiseki restaurant, or Decanter, the wine pairing tasting course restaurant. The latter two are particularly expensive fixed price experiences, and Cargo wasn't open on Tuesday, the evening we might otherwise have tried it.
Note that T*Pan only accepts children for its lunch seatings, Monday, Wednesday and Friday 12-2:30pm, while it's adults-only for dinner 7-11pm all nights except Saturday, when it's closed.
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The Verdict
A significant culinary highlight for us at the St. Regis Vommuli were the variety of savory options at the Alba breakfast buffet, particularly the duck confit waffles with egg and Maldivian selections, as well as the willingness of the team to bring us fresh passion fruit and other fruit such as red currants, which weren't offered separately on the buffet. After the breakfast buffet, our favorite meal was at Crust, where we enjoyed two excellent thin crust pizzas and an ocean view. While very pricey, we also enjoyed dinner at Alba, especially the lobster linguine, the excellent butter chicken, and the crispy deep fried preparation of the fish that our teen caught the evening prior, during sunset fishing. We found Orientale disappointing: we make far better Asian food at home. We've had better quality dishes, desserts, fruit, and other ingredients at some other luxury resorts in the Maldives, but we did really appreciate the excellent level of service in all restaurants, which of course makes for a more enjoyable dining experience.
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