Club Peninsula Lounge, Intercontinental Da Nang

June 01, 2017

We stayed at the Intercontinental when we visited Da Nang, which included access to the Club Peninsula lounge. Apart from the 3 food tours we did in Danang, the Intercontinental lounge was where we spent the most time. We don't usually spend this much time in a club lounge, but the one in the Intercontinental was perhaps one of the nicest hotel lounges we've ever seen, and in no small part due to its expansive and spectacular view of the South China Sea.

Breakfast at the lounge may appear limited in variety, but whatever larger spread in the main buffet restaurant Citron next door will be made available in the Club Peninsula lounge. You can choose to walk over and get whatever catches your fancy, on your own, or make like a boss and ask the wait staff in the lounge to dish it for you.

In addition to breakfast, the lounge also serves afternoon tea, and evening cocktails. So really, if you can develop a thick skin, you can get very full stuffing your face with complimentary lounge food alone.

There's a small selection of ala minute dishes for breakfast, and while they were mostly pedestrian, there were a couple of highlights. The fluffy Gourmet Scrambled Eggs flavoured with black truffle and chives, and accompanied by a pan-fried quails breast and red wine jus, was pretty commendable.

The Eggs Benedict, a simple ensemble of poached eggs layered with canadian bacon atop toasted English muffins and slathered with hollandaise tasted better than it looked. The hollandaise was a little too rich, but the eggs were poached well.

The Italian Omelette, studded generously with buffalo mozzarella, rocket leaves, marinated cherry tomatoes, and parma ham, was also pretty decent.

Ditto for the Vietnamese Omelette, dotted with crabmeat, beansprouts, watercress, and given a kick with fresh chilli slivers.

The Seafood Congee, with diced shrimp a-plenty, was made flavourful with lashings of pork floss and fried shallots, a drizzle of chilli-ed soy sauce, and half a salted egg.

I liked the delicate broth of the Vietnamese Chicken Pho, and the silky rice noodles, but the chicken was dry and tasteless.

The Vietnamese Beef Pho was better, mainly because the meat was more tender. That said, the pho in Da Nang can't hold a candle to the excellent ones in Hanoi.

The Waffles were pedestrian, but it helped to load them up with cherry compote, maple syrup, and chocolate fudge.

There's also a small buffet selection set up in the lounge, with all of the boulangerie: bread rolls, baguettes, multigrain loaves, regular 'ol sliced bread, bagels, muffins, and donuts.

And even more bread - gluten-free bread, pound loaves, muffins, croissants, and fruit and chocolate danishes which were pretty decent.

I liked the cheese station: with parmesan, gouda, brie, cheddar, blue, charcuterie like chorizo, salami, smoked turkey, mortetella, smoked salmon, smoked seabass, summer ham spring rolls, olives, pickled cucumbers, capers, sweet & sour fish sauce

Fresh milk of the whole, skim and soya varieties, overnight oats, fresh fruits including grapefruit, dragonfruit, watermelon, papaya, honeydew, muesli and an assortment of cereal.

3 different types of honey, lychee, longan, fragata; mango, guava, and strawberry jams; nuts like pecans and walnuts; and dried fruit like apricots, figs, raisins

Evening Cocktails

The drink cart, where you can mix-your-own cocktail, or just ask the resident bartender to whip something up for you.

There were a handful of small bites to line your stomach as well: Japanese kani salad with julienned vegetables, kelp, and a sesame-soy dressing, and a Saigon beef salad with marinated zucchini.

Greek salad with feta, basil, coloured peppers, and cherry tomatoes; and fresh summer spring rolls paired with a chilli-ed fish sauce

A trio of cheese: brie, blue, and livarot, paired with cashews, pecans, dried figs, fruit marmalades, and breadsticks

Something for the sweet-toothed: chocolates, macarons, cookies, and fruits

There was a modest hot food selection, most of which weren't great: the sugarcane-d shrimp was actually the best of the lot, which wasn't saying much, as these tasted as limp as they looked.