Le Midi Unveils High-Floor Sunday Brunch Experience with Refined French Touches from November 2024

Le Midi, the French brasserie, bar and terrace on Level 32 of Crowne Plaza Kuala Lumpur City Centre, has introduced a Sunday Brunch Buffet, offering a French-leaning spread against a high-floor city view from November 2024.

The buffet has been developed by chef Noor Azan and his culinary team, marking a new addition to the restaurant’s dining offering. It runs every Sunday from 12pm to 3pm, priced at RM198+ per adult, which includes two types of free-flow mocktails. Diners can also add a free-flow wine and beer package for RM138+.

Set on the 32nd floor, Le Midi has built its reputation on French brasserie cooking served with a view over the city skyline, and the new brunch format is designed to bring that setting together with a broader spread than its usual à la carte service allows. Where the restaurant’s dinner service is typically ordered dish by dish, the Sunday format spans multiple stations across the dining room and terrace, encouraging guests to move between counters over the course of their visit rather than remain seated for a set sequence of courses.

The spread opens with a seafood-on-ice display featuring snow crab legs, Boston lobster and freshly shucked oysters, alongside tiger prawn, Asari clam and black mussel, set out over ice at the entrance to the dining room. Also on offer are cold starters including Alsatian Flammkuchen, salmon gravlax, smoked chicken pâté en croûte, heirloom tomato terrine, seafood galantine, chicken liver mousse, vegetable crudités, prawn cocktail and grilled asparagus mimosa, giving guests a wide spread of options to graze on before moving to the hot counters.

A Caesar salad counter allows diners to build their own plate from roasted chicken breast, smoked salmon, escargot and beef bresaola, tossed with Caesar dressing, croutons and romaine lettuce, and finished with parmesan shaved to order from a wheel at the counter, a detail intended to add a touch of tableside theatre to what might otherwise be a straightforward salad station.

For those looking for something warm, a porcini mushroom soup kettle is served with artisan French bread, olive oil and butter, offering a lighter option for guests pacing themselves ahead of the carving and entrée sections. Nearby, a live station prepares spinach tortellini with tomato sauce to order, with the chef rolling, shaping and stuffing the pasta by hand in front of guests before boiling it and finishing it with sauce, adding a made-to-order element to a buffet format that can otherwise consist mainly of pre-plated dishes.

The carving station centres on roast Angus ribeye, sliced to order and served with roasted root vegetables, Yorkshire pudding, shallot jus, honey mustard sauce and hollandaise, giving guests a choice of condiments to pair with their cut of beef. The main course line-up draws heavily on dishes previously only available on Le Midi’s dinner à la carte menu, among them split-roasted Cornish chicken with jus, oven-roasted lemon sole with fennel and red wine sauce, char-grilled lamb chop with herbes de Provence sauce and tiger prawn à la Provençale. Also on the entrée list are seafood pie, duck confit with cannellini bean, grilled vegetable ratatouille with tomato concasse and sweet potato au gratin, rounding out a selection that spans meat, seafood and vegetable-forward options across eight separate mains.

Dessert includes Basque cheesecake, mixed berries tart, financier, Black Forest cake, Weiss dark milk chocolate tart, pistachio Paris-Brest, assorted macarons and fresh fruit, arranged around a handmade chocolate Eiffel Tower centrepiece intended as a visual focal point for the dessert corner as much as a nod to the restaurant’s French identity. Guests working through the buffet in order will move from the raw and cured starters, through the warm counters and carving station, to a dessert table designed to close the meal on a sweeter, more indulgent note.

For Kuala Lumpur diners, the appeal of Le Midi’s new brunch lies in the chance to spend an unhurried Sunday afternoon working through a genuinely varied French spread, all from one table and one seating. Several of the featured mains — split-roasted Cornish chicken, oven-roasted lemon sole, char-grilled lamb chop and tiger prawn à la Provençale among them — have until now only featured on the restaurant’s dinner à la carte menu, so brunch guests get a rare chance to sample several of these dishes side by side in a single sitting, rather than returning across multiple evenings to work through the menu one course at a time.

The seafood-on-ice counter, with snow crab, lobster and freshly shucked oysters, alongside a carved Angus ribeye station, gives the afternoon a sense of occasion that suits marking a birthday, catching up with family, or simply treating a weekend to something a little more special. Paired with the two free-flow mocktails included in the price, and the option to add a wine and beer package for a longer, more social sitting, the format is built to let guests set their own pace, moving between the raw bar, the live pasta station and the carving counter as they please.

The setting adds its own charm to the experience. Perched on the 32nd floor with a terrace overlooking the city, Le Midi offers a vantage point that few Sunday brunches in Kuala Lumpur can match, making the meal as much about the view and the atmosphere as the food itself. Between the live-cooked spinach tortellini, the tableside Caesar counter with parmesan shaved from the wheel, and a dessert table anchored by a handmade chocolate Eiffel Tower, there’s a sense of theatre built into the format that should appeal to diners looking for a brunch that feels like an event rather than a routine weekend meal.

Running from 12pm to 3pm every Sunday from November 2024, the three-hour sitting gives guests a comfortable stretch of afternoon to work through the different counters at their own pace, whether that means starting with a plate from the seafood-on-ice display, taking a turn at the carving station for a slice of Angus ribeye with all the trimmings, or simply settling in over the mocktails included in the price. For those who enjoy lingering over a good spread with a view, it looks set to become a pleasant new addition to the city’s Sunday brunch scene, and a fitting reason to head up to Level 32 the next time the weekend calls for something a little more indulgent.