Shanghai is blessed with a veritable splattering of top quality hotels. People who previously spent time in hotels only on holidays and at weddings might find the initial idea of going to one for dinner or a drink sort of strange. This feeling is well worth while overcoming with premier league players such as the Shangri-La, the JW Marriott, the Westin, the Four Seasons and the JC Mandarin on our doorsteps. My word, talk about competition, but this is to our benefit as they wrestle each other for our custom.

Of these, the JC Mandarin conceivably has the lowest profile but it does have a number of excellent facilities, two of which I have had the good fortune to acquaint myself with.

Buffets are not everybody's cup of tea and I can't profess to being their biggest fan. Japanese starter; Italian soup; Indian, Chinese, seafood and carvery main followed by a French desert goes way beyond the demonized fusion but sometimes spreading your bets is a good move.

The Tatler restaurant on the first floor of the JC Mandarin, on No. 1225 Nanjing Road W., offers an all you can eat buffet that whilst being unusually good value at 198 yuan (US$24.44) is also very high quality.

Swiss Executive Chef Roland Kaiser ensures everything runs like clockwork and nothing on display is anything other than super fresh. The open kitchen with beaming happy chefs lording over their assorted dishes is bright and clean and provides gentle entertainment. A profusion of food from every corner of the world is on offer.

The color scheme, orange and purple, is perhaps not to everyone's taste but with much of the food cooked before your eyes and the opportunity to gorge on perhaps half a dozen courses it isn't worth fixating on it.

Second is the Wine Bar & Grill on the third floor which is rapidly becoming my canteen.

The Wine Bar & Grill couldn't be further from a canteen and is more presidential or regal — depending on your point of view. It's certainly CEO type habitat, I'm way out of place, but it also just squeezes its corpulent ambience into the affordable, if occasional, lunch bracket. On offer is an antipasto buffet with soup and bread for 69 yuan, but with an extra 30 yuan, a serious main course is included.

The antipasto is presented on a beautiful long glass bar with dozens of divine delights to choose from. Various salads, olives, salamis when combined with the bread and a bowl of the soup make for a fine lunch. The soups I've had have been utterly faultless, it's a lobster bisque sort of place and boy do they do it well.

It would be churlish to miss the mains for a paltry 30 yuan — black cod with a ginger emulsion, goulash with beetroot salad and the spring chicken were very good.

Pretend you've a fleet of ships or you're about to buy a TV station. Lunch for two with a cheeky glass of white cost 330 yuan.

Tel: 6279-1888