A New Favorite Buffet

The biggest problem a "foodie" couple has is the question on where to eat. Now that i'm considering myself to be a food blogger, i can only eat at places which i haven't blogged about before. That way, we can eat somewhere new, make pictures and have another review for another day. Since my classmates talk about Tokyo Table a lot, me and Suzette decided to make this place, our 7th anniversary date. Suzette likes salmon sashimi a lot, so we needed to find a place that could supply that craving. And it ended up that going to this place was a very good decision. The title says it all and i really think that this is my new favorite buffet. Everything was absolutely delicious and it combines my favorite cuisines. Korean, Chinese and Japanese, plus they have unlimited draft beer! Which is actually a bad thing, i think the beer can make you feel full quicker which would equal to less food eaten. And if you eat too much, you might not have space for this anymore....

Look at that! Tons of desserts, it's ridiculous...! But oh so good, we will get to that part in a moment. Let's talk about the restaurant and what this place is all about.

Tokyo Table is a smokeless grill buffet restaurant. What that means is that just like any other Korean BBQ restaurant, you will be grilling your own meat infront of you, yourself. The grill is built into the center of the table, which makes it very easy and seamless. The problem with the Korean restaurants is that after you have eaten there, you smell like it as well. The smoke sticks to your clothes and it could stink quite a bit. So at Tokyo Table they have smokeless grills, which is pretty smart, within the grill itself there are holes that suck the smoke right in, the smoke never leaves the grill. So you don't end up smelling like a chimney! I think this really creates a difference. The place itself also looks very good, it has this Japanese zen/modern type of interior going on.

Me and Suzette are pretty big fans of this type of interior design, and we would incorporate a lot of this into our own house as well. There is a lot of space, you could bring a big family with you and they would sit here comfortably. They also have four private rooms, i believe they can fit about 15 people each. Furthermore, their restrooms are very clean. I was very pleased wtih that.

So, i guess it's time to talk about the food huh?

I guess we can do that. The restaurant has divided its options in a couple of sections. On the far left, you have all the desserts. At the back you have all the sushi and sashimi. Right infront of that you have prepared dishes. Around the corner to the right you have dimsum, opposite of that you have some dishes that they are personally preparing, we didn't partake of that. If you go around the corner again, you will have the raw meats ready for grilling. And if you go around once again, opposite of the desserts you will have the condiments and the vegetables for shabu shabu. Which is basically cooking all sorts of vegetables in a broth. We didn't want to do that because it would make us more full faster, we tend to get our money's worth when we go to buffets and we will fill up our bellies to capacity. We tend to stay in a buffet for about 2 hours or more. Think we had a record of 4 hours in Marco Polo a couple of years ago!

The meat seletion is very extensive; marinated beef and pork, peppered beef and pork, samgyeopsal, chicken, chicken satay, scallops, shrimps, milkfish, squid and some items which i thought were a bit out of place such as hot dog, longanisa and tocino. I'm sure they taste great, we didn't try them though. There are plenty more types of meat that they have, it's a very wide selection.

Salmon sashimi and beautiful tuna sashimi that had a gorgeous red color. A very wide and exciting array of sushi as well. We decided to try just one of each, otherwise we would get full faster because of the rice. We have played this game before! But i would venture that they have about 20 different types of sushi, which is great! And i bet that if you just take one piece of each sushi and sashimi offering, you will have gotten your money back already. Sometimes i wonder how buffets make money.

For the tremendous amount of desserts they have, we settled with this. Besides all this, they also have a lot of ice cream, halo halo making and taho. We weren't able to touch any of that. The buttons of our pants were about to pop off. Anyway, the desserts, looks can be deceiving! Not everything was good, there was some sort of Kahlua shot with custard, too strong. Green tea cheesecake was too rich, too thick, made it difficult to get through it. The rest was alright but my favorite was the Rainbow Agar Agar. It was like eating a bubblegum store! Agar Agar is used to make a jelly, it is derived from algae and i just had to get back to get another one of these.

Would it recommend this place? Absolutely! The sheer volume of variety in meat, sushi and sashimi, desserts and free beer makes this place pretty worthwhile. I think we got our money back by eating here.

The buffet costs P650 per person excluded of 12% VAT so that brings the total to around P728. Prices are cheaper for lunch and more expensive on the weekend.

Breakdown looks like this:

Monday to Friday Lunch: P550 per adult and P380 for children below 4ft.

Monday to Thursday Dinner: P650 per adult and P380 for children below 4ft.

Friday to Sunday and Holidays Dinner: P750 per adult and P380 for children below 4ft.

Children below 3ft. are free.

Please make sure that you finish all your plates! There is a no left over policy, if you violate it, you will be charged P950!

Operating Hours everyday are:

Lunch: 11:30am - 14:00pm

Dinner: 18:30pm - 22:00pm

Contact number: 032-239 7000

Address: City Times Square (at the back of the Parkmall), Mantawi Avenue, Tipolo, Mandaue City.

#Japanese #Restaurant #Buffet