We all enjoyed the savoury dishes but I think we were all even more impressed with the wide selection of desserts on offer. I took most of these photos as soon as we arrived, before most of the other diners began moving in on the buffet.
Individual pavlovas, topped with real cream, kiwi fruit and strawberry – these were soooo sweet and soooo good.
Chocolate cake, wasn’t quite as strong in chocolatey flavour as it looked like it would be, but it was nice to have a chocolate dessert amongst all the other sweets on offer.
Little squares of cheese cake, very moist and light.
A kind of cassava pudding with a sweet caramel glaze (I didn’t write any of the proper names of dishes down – my apologies). Juji picked the piece of pudding with the cherry on top – she wanted the cherry!
Coconut jelly – really nice firm, smooth agar-style jelly.
Banana cake, made with real banana. This was a little on the dry side, but I wasn’t too fussed as there were so many other yummy desserts to enjoy.
Corn pudding – one of my favourites, sweet, sticky and corny.
Leche flan (Filipino creme caramel) – we all loved this. It was creamy and soft and caramelly, tasted homemade and was absolutely gorgeous! This photo of a whole leche flan is actually the second one they brought out, after the first one was finished.
We thought it would be a good idea to get one of each dessert and make up our own dessert plate. After I took this photo, Jay painstakingly cut each sweet into four – well, all except the pavlova, which was very difficult to saw into four without getting completely squished) so we could all have a taste. After having a taste of each, we then went back and grabbed more of whatever we liked best.
As we ate we realised it would be too much of a rush to make it for the 8:30 pm showing of the movie, and so we decided to go to the 9:30 pm session instead. When we left, we were really full. Jay was the fullest, I think – he really loved that dessert selection! There was a boy around 10 years old who was rather keen on the leche flan – he must’ve had three or four slices! But it really was good – if you’re a fan of creme caramel you’ll love it.
We’ll definitely return to The Manila Restaurant and have the buffet again, but I’m also keen to try their A La Carte menu too. According to the takeaway menu which I took home and have been drooling over today, you can order from the A La Carte menu and then pay an additional $6.00 per head to eat dessert from the buffet! Service was efficient and inobtrusive – our bottle of water was replaced with a fresh full one without us even noticing, and our dirty plates were whisked away quickly. There’s karaoke at the restaurant too on certain nights – I’m not a fan at all, but that might appeal to some people reading this! In terms of savoury dishes featured at the buffet there were maybe half a dozen salads, half a dozen hot meat/fish dishes plus fried rice, steamed rice, stir-fried noodles , bread and soup – and everything was cooked really nicely. While we were there, dishes were replenished regularly, which was great to see. Jac even got me to take a photo of her posing with the chef who had come out with a fresh plate of something or other! It was definitely worth $24 per head, especially if you like dessert!
And how was the Harry Potter movie? I can see how die-hard fans would be disappointed with how much from the book was left out of the movie. But I’ve never expected the movies to be very faithful to the books – you simply could not expect to squish a 800+ page book into a 2 and a bit hour movie. I suppose because I’ve always seen the books and the movies as quite separate things I was able to enjoy this movie – in fact, I really enjoyed it. I think it’s my favourite of the films so far, even though there’s not enough Tonks, not enough Snape, boooo! Juji and I are getting together next weekend and plan to wake up absurdly early on Saturday morning to go and line up at Dymocks to pick up our pre-ordered copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – I am getting really excited about being able to read the final book of the series at long last.
Hah! I did it! I managed to fight sleepiness and finish my posts! Now I plan to sit in bed and read one of my Murder, She Wrote novels until my eyelids get too heavy.
I'm TFP, a food blogger from Perth, Western Australia.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
those pavlovas remind me of the episode of take home chef (heard of it? or at least the chef, curtis stone?) where he made a pavlova with strawberries and passionfruit. those tiny ones are cute!
It was the worst of the lot – the director and screen player writer should be SHOT. Thank goodness the screen play writer for the first 4 movies and the director from the 1st 2 will be back for Half Blood Prince.
I was rather pissed at SOOOO much being left out.
Being here in El Paso (no, we still have not moved to Maryland yet :( ) there’s flan everywhere. It’s a Spanish dish I believe. I’m not a big fan of it though. My mom liked it.
$24 a head? WaaaaaaaaOW! OK, this is definitely next on my list ^_^ I love desserts. When I go to buffets I have a small plate of savouries and then three or four serves of dessert.
Wow, that flan looks really well made XD. We tried it once and loved it. Recreating it was a disaster! Turned out extremely runny >_
Wow, I am so jealous that you guys have such a great Filipino restaurant. Here in Sydney the selection of Filipino retaurants is pretty paltry and they always seem to look really dogdy.
I love leche flan and that one looks really good. A meal full of desserts, this is definitely my kind of place!
It looks like you have been crossing over to the sweet tooth side a bit more of late! As a long-time dessert-only eater, welcome!
Wow, that creme caramel is just so perfect. It looks like a real true creme caramel, I just so love the way it is almost ready to topple over, so heavy, so sweet, someone got that right, bravo to the chef!
This restaurant sounds really good – although it’s a bit funny how they have pavlova’s in a Filipino restaurant. I’ve been considering bringing my Food Club to this restaurant to try something different – am glad to know that it was great! And cheap for a buffet!