Golden King Restaurant Buffet

Buffets are now all everywhere. We decided to try this Chinese-Japanese buffet with an online discount voucher.

Since we arrived around an hour after opening time, food on display was already depleted.

Of course there was maki, though fillings were not that varied.

The Chinese buffet staple, pancit and yangchow were available. You can also get some veggies and other ready to eat viands including chunks of crab.

A grill was available per table but it's not the smokeless type you see in other more popular buffet chains. There were bacon wrapped veggies, some meat, and chicken slices.

For dessert, I tried some of the jelly mixes they offered. I also made an ice-less halo halo.


With the discounted price, the food and overall experience was worth it. There are limited choices but you get what you pay for. As for the service, the vegetables took quite sometime to be refilled.



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Yanagi at Midas Hotel: Food of the Golden Man

If you haven't already noticed from my previous posts, Japanese cuisine is my favorite. A full Japanese buffet at a hotel is an exciting idea for me. Hotel buffets often go for above a thousand bucks. But thanks to an online voucher, we were able to get a Japanese buffet at Midas Hotel for Php995. Me and my officemates had this for lunch. Yes, buffet lunch on a mid-week office day.

I got around two plates of sashimi - which means that the quality is good.

The maki choices were not that varied but there was this one with rice and roe inside then topped with tempura breading resulting to a wonderful play of textures and taste. The tempura sushi, rice topped with a whole tempura with torched cheese on top, was also one of my favorites because of the crunch and flavor.

The tuna and salmon carpacio is the group's common favorite.

The tempura served upon request had a good balance of shrimp meat and breading, but nothing very special.

Freshly grilled beef with a buttery aroma and taste was served upon request and was also a group favorite. It was more tender and tastier compared to the grilled beef/steak at other buffets I tried but beef wt other steakhouses are still better.

The takoyaki was just normal takoyaki while the beef curry had tender beef chunks.

You can also have sukiyaki or soba.

There were also a number of salad options from the traditional salad greens to a heavier potato salad, and even seaweed salad and jelly fish salad.

Dessert another tale in itself. Let's start with ice cream. I loved all the flavor options which were the milky sweet red bean, deep matcha, bold black sesame, and hot wasabi. Wasabi. Yes, Wasabi ice cream. Compared to the milky creamy texture of the other three flavors, wasabi ice cream had a texture similar to ice shaving but with a mix of cream.

The usual mini pastries are present, along with Japanese inspired azuki (red bean) panna cotta. My favorites are the meringue and the chewy deep chocolate mini dome.

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The Food Club: Birthday Promo and Discount

Celebrated my Mom's birthday at The Food Club buffet last month. We availed their birthday promo, which is the same as other buffet places - just bring one full paying adult and the birthday celebrant gets to eat for free on the exact date of her birthday. Since we were three people, one of us decided to get an online voucher to get a discounted rate. So in all, our party was composed of one full paying adult, one free (birthday promo), and one who used the coupon. Good thing they allow the usage of a coupon and birthday promo on the same transaction.

Writing about buffets is both easy and hard. Easy - because you can write about a lot of food. Hard - because you have a lot of food to write about.

We arrived about an hour past their starting lunch time so many stations needed to be refilled already. It was a weekday lunch so the place was not that packed.

Let me show you what we had...

Salmon Sashimi

The slices were a bit smaller than other buffets so I got this whole plate for sharing. They didn't have tuna sashimi but they had a variety of rolls to choose from but I wasn't able to take a photo of it.


Shabu-shabu

I filled our bowl with little shrimps, fish, slices of pork, mushroom, and broccoli. No noodles for me to maximize the stomach space. There was only one type of broth but you can customize with the garlic, ginger and other seasoning that goes in it. The server at the station was the one who cooked it and it was delivered to our table. We shared this bowl.


Roast Belly

For the carving station, they only had one meat that day which was the roast belly. There was an electric fryer in front where the chef adds slices per customer's request to add doneness to the meat or reheat it. Two sauces were available - mushroom sauce and red wine sauce. We shared this too.


Assorted Plate 1

This is my viand tasting plate. Pardon my messy plating. This mostly had Asian food like tempura, stir fry shrimp, pork adobo, pork asado, some shrimps from a veggie dish, and toasted salted peanuts.



Assorted Plate 2

This is not my plate nor a shared plate but I asked permission to take a photo of if since it shows other food that I didn't get and it looked pretty. This had pasta, corn, green veggies, and some meat. Go, grow, and glow foods well represented on this photo.


Steamed Shrimp

There was a station where you can have shrimp or salmon cooked, so we ordered steamed shrimp. It took some time before this arrived on our table.




Salad

Before dessert, I always try to visit the salad station. My salad had toasted bacon. I also got an egg from the other station nearby. The egg was probably soaked in soy for that saltier taste and brown color


Dessert

Mini cakes

Here are the mini cakes we got. A chocolate mousse, mini strawberry, and mini red velvet. Okay, I just named them according to what they tasted. I didn't get to check the labels.



Ice cream

Chocolate, Mocha, and Coffee flavors were available. The half-scoops formed a brown monotone on my ice cream bowl so I added some toppings. They also had orange flavor, but I figured it might be a candy orange flavor which I might not like.


Crepe

I guess I overdid the toppings on this one. This is a mango filled crepe with half scoop of chocolate ice cream, chocolate drizzle, chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, sprinkles, and crushed Oreos.



Their selection had variety since it had Asian and Western food - tempura, shabu shabu, sushi, meats, pasta, dessert, etc. There were still some stations/food that we didn't get to try like the halo-halo, other Pinoy desserts like kakanin, nachos/tacos, dimsum, and other viands.

Compared to a popular buffet chain, this had less choices. I was looking for frozen yogurt, more meat at the carving station like steak or turkey, and more salad customization options. But this has a more affordable rate than that particular popular buffet chain.

The venue had high ceilings and glass windows which gave a good vibe to the place. The tables were arranged a bit too close to each other, though. But the place was not packed when we ate there so it was okay.




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Year 2015 Asian Food Compilation Special

Time to look back at the other cuisines we have tried in 2015. Let's have a look at our favorite Asian food places this week. Click on the labels to read the full write-up!

Seryna

The best and most memorable Asian themed restaurant we went to this year. Of course a Japanese restaurant would be favored. If you haven't figured out yet, Japanese is one of my favorites. [...read me]


Jang Ga Nae

Memorable because of the adventure we had going there. Good Korean food too. [..read me]

Jatujak 

Tried out a new cuisine with a delivery discount. Discovered Pad Thai and Thai flavors on this one. [...read me]



Four Seasons Hot Pot Buffet 

Since hot pot originated from Asian countries, this hot pot buffet is included in our compilation.
[...read me]


Banzai: The Great Teppanyaki theater 

Yet another buffet and another Japanese themed restaurant in this list! [...read me]

 View more Asian food adventures HERE.

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