Buffets, Food, Hotels, Restaurants, Travel

A Bountiful Feast at Bellevue’s Café d’Asie Buffet

Fine treats at the Bellevue buffet… yum!

Buffets are always a great treat and a huge trial for me. I enjoy the seemingly limitless choices, especially in cross-cuisine buffets, and hotel buffets are even better because the quality of the ingredients are cranked up a notch. Unfortunately, when faced with all these options, especially when I plan to write about the food, I am usually compelled to try absolutely everything, and I end up so stuffed my dining companions have to roll me out.

Strawberry shortcake galore!

My MO is simple, straightforward, and (in theory, at least) effective: I start with a little of everything, try each dish out, and return for the ones I like. This works best with hotel buffets; for the “no leftover” gigs, it’s best to screen your choices early on. The problem is, most selections nowadays have so many dishes that even a small tasting plate will leave you too full to return for the good stuff.

The buffet

For better or worse, this isn’t the case at the Café d’Asie’s All Day Buffet at The Bellevue, where we celebrated my folks’ anniversary this year (last year, now). The buffet has a cross-cuisine assortment of flavors, with Japanese, Chinese, and Continental (and one or two Thai and Korean) dishes, but the actual number of offerings is limited to a perfectly reasonable, non-gluttonous selection.

Steamed siomai from the Chinese section

The buffet area has a few defined sections: a Japanese area, with assorted maki, sashimi, and salad (tuna and kani); a salad bar with the usual veggies and processed meats; a fresh seafood section with prawn, mussels, clams, and salmon sandwich rolls; a bread and cheese table, which also had some dried fruit and nuts; a Chinese food section with mushrooms, squid balls, and steamed siomai; an entrée table with a selection of Asian main courses and some grill-to-order steak; and a dessert bar, which had various cakes, mousses, pastries, ice cream, and an assemble-it-yourself halo-halo and crepe counter (this may sound like a lot, but compared to the huge buffets at Spiral, or even at Circles, it’s quite modest).

Plate 1 – Japanese food

Even if the selection is tightly edited, so to speak, it’s easy to stuff yourself silly here. After reviewing the offerings, I decided to get my plates by section: my first plate was Japanese, and loaded with maki (California and two other unidentified rolls), raw tuna salad (with a slightly spicy mayonnaise-y dressing), kani salad (which had lots of cucumber, which wasn’t to my taste), and salmon and tuna sashimi slices. I also got some chunks from the salad bar: excellent smoked salmon and something that looked like a mixture of mussel meat and octopus (whatever it was, it had tentacles). Washed down with their refillable brewed iced tea (separately ordered, around P146), the first plate alone had me pretty satisfied.

Plate 2 – Bread, cheese, fruit, and nuts

White bread roll with salmon, cream cheese, and dill

I returned for my second plate, which consisted of bread and cheese (I figured salad was salad wherever you ate it, but the cheese plate looked worth it). I also got a few deli meat slices, some more salmon, a clam and a mussel (literally one shell each), and some dried fruit (apricot and mango), nuts (pistachio, walnuts, and almonds), and olives, capers, and tiny dill pickle slices. The dip selection was also good: they had some kind of sesame paste, olive tapenade, hummus, and sun dried tomato paste. Just the sort of thing I like to eat at home—healthy, yummy, and very filling.

Plate 3 – Steak!!!

The cool thing about the Café d’Asie’s buffet is that you can choose to stick to a limited (and cheaper) selection, if you wish: they have a “Light and Right” version of the buffet, which is essentially the same thing minus the entrees (P700, inclusive of VAT and service charge). My folks were satisfied with the Japanese selection and the salad bar; I could’ve stopped at my second plate. But of course I just had to try the Full Buffet (what my sister and I refer to as the “Heavy and Wrong” buffet; P1160), which includes the main courses and steak. Of these, the only thing really worth paying extra for is the US Ribeye steak, which you can have sliced and grilled to your liking (I can’t recall what the other entrées were, exactly, but I remember they had some Thai and Korean dishes). So Plate Number Three for me was steak, Kimchi rice, some steamed veggies, mushrooms from the Chinese section (they looked and felt like Shiitake mushrooms, but they tasted slightly sour and watery), and croquettes, which were essentially mashed potatoes fried into little fingers. The steak was very, very good—just the right amount of fat (I think that’s what they call marbling) and tender meat, slathered with mushroom gravy. If you’re the sort who really must get the most bang for your buck, go ahead and order two slices (or more, if your heart can stand it)—the steak alone is worth the price of the buffet.

Plate 4 – Dessert

Finally we had dessert: a kiwi tart, some absolutely fabulous warm pudding with cream sauce (I got the chocolate sprinkles from the halo halo toppings), strawberry shortcake, chocolate mousse over panna cotta, and—in keeping with the holiday season—fruitcake. They also had brewed coffee as part of the buffet (I wonder how many people would appreciate a complimentary cigarette or two after a buffet, hehe—to be smoked outside, of course). By the time we finished our meal, the hotel guests (identifiable because they dressed like they were at home) and other visitors were all gone, and they’d turned the lights down over the buffet. I don’t know how long the “All Day Buffet” runs (probably not literally all day), but they have lunch and dinner, and they also have a breakfast buffet in the morning. (Incidentally, for January they’re having Sunday brunch buffets that run from 10:30AM to 3PM; I don’t know how this will affect the normal lunch buffet.)

Toppings at the halo halo bar

Chocolate mousse and panna cotta

Fruit crepe with Arce coffee ice cream

All in all, I was very pleased with our meal, and the venue as well: as one of the few hotels in the area, this gives you a viable venue for business lunches, family meals, and not-too-casual dates (the vibe of the place is such that you can choose to be casual, if you like, or get all gussied up if that’s your thing). For a hotel meal, it’s reasonably priced, and the selection is wide enough without being overwhelming. Next time I think I’ll try their breakfast buffet.

Café d’Asie at The Bellevue
North Bridgeway, Filinvest Corporate City, Alabang, Muntinlupa City
771-8181, 771-8282 (fax)
www.thebellevue.com.ph
Restaurant hours: 6AM – 12MN daily

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