Market Cafe - Hyatt Hotel and Casino Manila

To celebrate two happy events -- my son's return from his three-week UK vacation and his passing the June 2007 nursing boards -- we had buffet dinner the other night at the Market Cafe at the 3rd floor of the Hyatt Hotel and Casino (address: 1588 Pedro Gil corner M.H. del Pillar Street, Malate, Manila, telephone: +632 245-1234). The Market Cafe has a wide selection of cuisines and food stations including Chinese, Japanese, Western, antipasti, salads, seafood and tempting desserts. There are four kitchens, three food stations and a bar . The show kitchens cook dishes as requested and deliver these to your table. Just at the other side of the Dessert Station is a bar which mixes smoothies, shakes and iced-teas.

The Western Kitchen show­cases European and American cuisine. Here you will find thin-crust pizzas, pastas, fish, mashed potatoes, ratatouille and beans. The centerpieces are the grill, oven and smokehouse where prime rib, short ribs, chicken and fish are grilled, smoked or baked to succulent perfection. On the side are different sauces like spicy mustard, horseradish and classic barbecue sauce. I picked some slices of salmon and mahi-mahi and handed these to the grill chef to cook. I told them I will return to collect the grilled fish but they insisted that it will be brought to our table and gave me a number to track our table more easily.

On offer at the Salad Station are seasonal greens and an array of freshly made dressings. The Antipasto Station offers cold cuts, walnuts, cheeses. The Crustacean Station has fresh prawns and oysters flown in from Kalibo, as the label indicated. The oysters are so fresh that these are shucked in front of you. Many diners made a beeline to this station and the staff who shucked the oysters offered me fresh ones and poured a wine vinegar dip for me. She said the prawns and oysters were ready to eat and all one needed was to have a stomach for the fresh oysters. I wasn't quite prepared for it so I brought mine to the Western Kitchen to have them baked. The oysters were baked with cheese on top although I hadn't asked for the cheese. I would have preferred my oysters steamed so I could just dip them in wine vinegar or even sukang Iloko with chili, reminiscent of Josephine's restaurant in Cavite a few decades ago. But that may not be a cooking option in buffet dinners at 5-star hotels.

In the Chinese Kitchen were four sections: noodles and dimsum, Chinese wok and Hong Kong barbecue. Steamed rice and yangchow fried rice can also be found in this area. I took some sauteed mixed vegetables of broccoli and carrots and half a steamed fish Hong Kong style. Likewise, the Japanese Kitchen is divided into four sections: sushi, yakimono, tempura and teppan. Unagi sushi, bacon enoki maki and salmon sashimi are also available. At the back of the Japanese Kitchen are other Asian specialities such as the Malaysian chicken satay, Indian roti prata and chicken curry. I took slices of the roti prata and a small serving of the chicken curry.The Bakery and Dessert Kitchen offers Western pastries such as apple strudel, preserved plum pockets, Vienna waffles, tiramisu, chocolate mouse cake, chocolate trifle as well as sapin-sapin, halo-halo, and other Filipino delicacies. I had chocolate trifle with layers of brownies, chocolate pudding and whipped topping chilled to perfection. My son had sugar-free tiramisu. In between dishes, I decided to have a fresh orange although the staff manning the dessert kitchen nicely offered me a dalandan sorbet. Taking the cue, my son took a scoop of the sorbet and asked me to taste it. It tasted like a dalandan popsicle, so very dalandan, but I preferred the fresh orange.

The food was good but the place was unusually quiet which prompted me to ask one of the chefs on what days of the week is the Market Cafe crowded. He confirmed that there weren't too many diners that night compared to other nights when two whole racks of prime rib would be wiped out. I remarked that perhaps because it was a 3-day holiday and people went out of town. Anyway, that dinner for two with taxes, service charge and all set me back by P2,687.36 or about P1,344 per person.

However, as I am a creature of habit, I prefer the buffet dinner at Circles in Makati Shangrila. Besides its proximity to my son's place, an irresistible attraction is the 50% off the prices of selected baked goods after 6 p.m. at Sinfully Circles. The Circles ensaymada which has bacon bits or macapuno and ube normally costs P50 but after 6 pm, it drops in price to P25. While still retaining its 5-star freshness and taste, this is a best-buy indeed.