La Fiesta: Eat and Drink All You Can

Hello, foodie friends!

Today, let me share with you a wonderful evening of good food and wonderful company.

Last Sunday was my mom's sister and her sister-in-law's birthday, and since they are all busy trying to make a living, they always celebrate or hold their birthdays at an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant to save time for preparations. Well, actually, it was my cousin who did the bookings and coordination for them.

Since it was Sunday, we had to make a reservation because they are frequently fully booked on weekends. What I like about this buffet restaurant is that they serve free dinner to the birthday celebrant on whatever day of their birth month, and since we had two celebrants with us, we got two free buffet.

The dinner will start at 5:30 pm, and we can stay and enjoy the buffet until 10 pm. We arrived there thirty minutes early to avoid traffic and so that we could get an accessible parking spot. Since we were the first to arrive in our group, the receptionist was gracious enough to show us to the waiting area while we were waiting for the rest of the group and for the birthday celebrants.

Here is my son checking their promotional posters at the entrance. He is not much of an eater, so I'm sure he can't take full advantage of the buffet, but he was looking forward to the sweet sections.

Our company finally arrived before the dinner started. We expected my aunt to arrive on time because she is highly punctual, and she never failed to do so. The waiter led us to our table, but we asked to have it relocated closer so that the three separate tables would become one because we wanted to sit near one another.

After exchanging pleasantries and wishing the celebrants a good birthday, we went ahead and explored the buffet table with our plates. We serve the kids first with the food they like before getting our portions. Yes, portions, since I wanted to sample as much of the variety on the table as possible without getting too full.

Here I got a small portion of roasted duck, gyoza, pork barbecue, and some shell soup. Rice is rice, whether it's steamed, fried, or anything else; therefore, I didn't get any. I've seen a lot of dishes that contain rice, such as fried rice, paella, and some rice porridge. Carbs like rice can make us feel easily full, and we don't like that at a buffet. I went back to our table to join in the conversation while eating.

For my second plate, I tried checking different cuisines far from our table. I tried getting samples of different kinds of maki, carbonara, beef karekare, and callos. Maki is the only exception to the no-rice rule.

The kids had already finished their rice dinner by this point and were requesting dessert, so before digging into my second plate, I served them first with their most-awaited sweet desserts.

They do have a large selection of delectable sweets in the dessert sections, which will surely impress kids and anyone with a sweet tooth. They have rows of trays of different rice cakes, mousse cakes, fruit salad, flans, candies, cookies, brownies, and more pastries, and they also have a chest freezer loaded with ice cream and popsicles. You can assemble your own halo-halo too! All the sweetened fruits and ingredients of Halo Halo are right in front of you. If only I had an appointed photographer to take all the photos, my hands would be full holding my plate and my kids plate. lol

When we returned to our table, he was pleased with his second plate and eager to sample everything on it. Now that he's having a lovely feast, I can go back to the buffet and have some more for myself.

Now where are we? Honestly, I already lost count of how many times I went back and forth to the buffet table, not just to get my food but to serve my kids, and I also tried the food that they were getting—just a bite.

For this round, I tried the macaroni salad, cassava cake, sapin sapin, maja, bibingka, and brownies. These are mostly native delicacies in the Philippines. Me and my husband shared everything on this plate just to have a taste of it. We were just curious if it was good, and we were not disappointed.

I think this is the last time I get something for myself. I just get some finger food like this roasted nut, Shanghai roll, fried potato, chips, and, at long last, the shrimp tempura. I always found the tray of the tempura empty, so I waited for the refill just to get some.

They are already serving the complimentary cake for the celebrants and are now preparing a song and dance number for them.

They sang a birthday song and danced to some viral tiktkot dance hits, and they received a huge tip in return. It was fun watching them perform.

We asked the crew to take a photo of us but couldn't find the rest; they were still busy roaming around the buffet table, so my husband and my eldest son are missing in the photo.

Here is the group that took advantage and enjoyed the unlimited refill of beer! lol

Some late discoveries: I found these two above while looking for some pulutan or something to pair with my beer. The chicken feet were surprisingly soft, literally tearing apart with less effort, and the garlic shrimp were so fresh.

We enjoyed the food and each other's company so much that we couldn't believe we were there for over three hours. We had a gastronomic feast with a wide variety of foods and beverages, and even the kids enjoyed it.

That's it for now.
Thank you for reading until the end!

❤️❤️❤️

_{All photos are my own, unless stated otherwise.
The lead image was edited using Canva.}