café rizal - rizal park hotel

it’s christmas time and people look forward to meeting friends whom they haven’t for a long time due to busy schedules. now, a group of friends would like to maintain a “meeting place” to be somewhere of the best ambiance, gastronomic experience when it comes to the food, and superb guest service to make that once a year dinner a memorable one.

rizal park hotel’s cafe rizal came to mind. the beautiful interiors, after its renovation and conversion to a hotel, have been beautifully exposed online, luring ignorant people like us to consider and give their place a visit, again in this once a year gathering. oh the regrets.

interiors / ambiance
an easy 5/5 if i were to rate it. from the outside, the interiors shout of simplicity and elegance, every angle is instagram worthy and you can’t help but take shots of the place. it’s christmas time and their tree is beautifully placed as a centerpiece in their small lobby. lighting and the audio system on point.

food and service 1/5
this is where the beauty of the interiors get pulled really into the lowest low. think we were overreacting? it really spoiled everything for us.

we didn’t have problems with booking a table for 10 pax. one of our friends contacted them ahead of time.

we arrived 7:30pm and our dinner was served around 9:30pm. here’s when our experience started spiraling towards disappointment.

1. our orders were taken by someone who seem to be not confident and not aware of the food items in the menu.
2. after placing our orders, they had to spend 10-20 minutes before they gobackto inform us the food we want to eat is not available. it was okay during the first dish not available but when they had to comebackthree times (yes three separate occasions) to inform us that three different dishes were not available, you know something’s wrong. and this fiasco delayed all our orders to 9:30pm.
3. understaffed servers. the refilling of water is supposed to be done reflexively. too bad this resto never showed us this, instead had us keep on calling the servers (too busy and far from our table) numerous times to the point of requesting them to leave a pitcher with us. hay.
4. no restaurant manager available for us to voice out our concerns. why should this happen?
5. they charged us service tax for an almost no service experienced. when we complained, they gave us poor quality cake to apologize for this.

to be fair, their food’s taste was acceptable but not right for the expensive pricing. i got jimmy’s choice bla bla which arrived to be spicy spareribs with yangchow fried rice which initially lacked the vinegar that supposed to come with it. the personnel gave me vinegar from their buffet table, what a joke.

merry christmas to rizal park hotel, hope you guys get to read this review for your improvement. it was really a bad night and i sincerely hope other guests don’t experience the disaster we did.

nice place, yummy foods, the staff are customer oriented, courteous. i'll bebackhere soon. the interiors are well designed, the facilities quite classy. bringbackthe old times.

my first time to eat here . i had my lunch buffet here today.lunch buffet cost php 1250.00 all in. the food is great not bad yummy desserts as well. just a shout out to my haterbackalt we live in democracy where there is freedom of speech so if u don't like my blog because i'm cheap so what that's my opinion mind your own business besides you didn't pay for my cheap meal ok and the theme of my blog is cheap affordable meals so deal with it ok . anywaybackto my blog this rizal hotel park it used to be army navy club and they renovated it to a beautiful nice hotel . this place is nostalgic to me because i used to study swimming lessons in army navy club it's nice to bebackhere . service is superb ;) so love their hakaw its yummy ... overall my dine in experience was good ,i just wish that there is a replica of jose rizal monument since the name of the hotel is named after josé rizal ,i know that jose rizal's monument is just around the corner in luneta but still the name of the hotel is after jose rizal so just hoping to see a picture of rizal in this hotel just saying my curious mind ......

yummy food and beautiful interiors! sure, the selection isn’t that vast but i’d take that over a bland hundred dish spread anytime. i liked the mongolian rice, all dimsum (good hakaw all you can!), noodle soup, porchetta, and grilled thinly sliced liempo, the purple shooters, and the ube creme brûlée!

ps. wentbackearlier, no more mongolian! please bringbackmongolian section!

we came here yesterday for lunch after availing a discount voucher from metrodeal and overall, it was an excellent experience.

ambiance - 5/5
the hotel itself was very elegant, despite being named after rizal, the interior and exterior gives off such a luxurious vibe. i can say that its like an old spanish house with its decor and interior. the cafe was neat and well lit, the color schemes being white and gold made it look even more elegant. i never wanted to leave the place!

food quality - 4/5
everything we got from the buffet was delicious. a few that made us comebackfor more were the hakaw, chicken feet, yang chow fried rice, sesame buchi, rib eye, tempura, french onion soup and the roast chicken. a very memorable one i got was the chinese steamed bun with braised pork belly inside with lettuce, it had these crushed peanuts inside which gave it a sweet and nutty twist.

food variety - 3.5/5
although everything we got tasted good, i find their buffet choices to be a bit lacking. they didn't have much seafood dishes, their desserts only had a few choices, and most of their food can be found at every other buffet. whenever i try new restaurants, i always want to discover a new or unique dish which i can only have there but they didn't have anything close to being unique. and i think most of their cakes somehow tasted the same.

service - 5/5
hands down the best restaurant service i've ever experienced. from the moment we got inside, all of their servers and even hotel staff greeted us good morning with such sincere smiles on their faces. the servers always attended to our needs and often went to our table just to ask if we were enjoying our food. even the managers were doing their rounds and even clearing empty plates from some tables, something we don't see much as we only see some managers from other restaurants giving orders to their servers.

i can't really comment on their buffet rates because of our discount voucher but even if i had to pay full price, it will surely be worth it. we will definitely come back. i hope they add more choices to their buffet. (total points is 4.375 but i just rounded it off to 4.)

rizal park hotel is an early 1900s building whose elegant restoration is still on-going. it's most beautiful at night, and the dinner buffet at cafe rizal provides a variety of dishes that vary from day-to-day, satisfying both the calorie-conscious or the ravenous post-duty doctor. the service is attentive and cheerfully efficient. the dinner buffet was surprisingly just php 1500 per person. parking space is plenty. my rating for this original visit: 4 stars

so, after several different visits over the past months since my original impression, i was so sadly disappointed last 2018 june 8 when i brought family of 8 persons to dinner. my 85 year-old aunt decided on a la carte, since she was not too hungry. her food arrived, after much follow-up, 30 minutes later! she was not happy with the way the salmon looked, so sent itbackfor additional cooking. another 15 minutes. luckily, her grandkids were around her, otherwise she’d be speaking in ilonggo to me and the staff! the restaurant was less than half full that evening, just to put things in perspective.

the buffet selection was ok, although there was less seafood choices for grilling. the last straw i had was when the restaurant had no working credit card terminal/device working! i paid in cash but my aunt kept asking what kind of place was this restaurant...

i called the attention of the manager, who could do nothing but apologize. my original rating for this restaurant was 4 stars then but after this dinner with balikbayan family, i’ve changed my mind. will no longer be a frequent patron anytime soon.

the place is lovely and cozy. buffet is quite expensive, lunch @1,400+ and dinner @1,900+, but choices are just limited. a few hits but a lot misses and desserts tasted ok if only those were served in an ordinary restaurants, but for a hotel buffet standard, they really need a lot of improvements, taste and presentation wise. service is superb though. their buffet may be on the steep range but surprisingly, the prices for their a la carte menu are quite reasonable. will definitely gobacknot for their buffet but to try the a la carte meals.