Buffet dinner at Manila Restaurant – desserts

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.

Pavlova

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.

Chocolate cake

Little squares of cheese cake, very moist and light.

Cheese cake

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!

Cassava pudding with caramel glaze

Coconut jelly – really nice firm, smooth agar-style jelly.

Coconut 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.

Banana cake

Corn pudding – one of my favourites, sweet, sticky and corny.

Corn pudding

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.

Leche flan (creme caramel)

Leche flan (creme caramel)

Leche tart (creme caramel) slice

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.

One of each

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.

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