Friday, December 6, 2013

Cafe Acelo ( Cebu City )




Cafe Acelo in the Holiday Spa Hotel is located at Gov. M. Cuenco Ave. Banilad, Cebu City 6000, Philippines. It is a small cafe which provides the food for customers of the hotel or spa. They also offer breakfast buffet for customers


Aside from the usual Cebuano delicacies, their menu also includes desserts, pastries, refreshments and wine. A bit pricey, but considering the hassle of going out and looking for a nice place to eat, considering that you are not familiar with the place, you might as well give their food a try.


For their breakfast buffet, you can choose from fruits, rice, bread and congee.

 


Coffee is good, however fruit juice is not on the buffet so its a little disappointing for people like me who prefers to have a glass of cold fruit juice in the morning instead of coffee. Milk or hot chocolate is also not one of the choices. But you still have the option to order it separately if you want. Choices for fruits are watermelon and papaya. Vegetable salad is also on the menu. You can choose to have strawberry jam or butter for your toasted bread. The congee is a bit bland, but you can still add some hard boiled egg and some dried fish, a few herbs and spices of your choice to make it fit your own taste. They serve plain boiled rice and no fried rice. Hotdogs, scrambled eggs, breaded fish and some vegetables made up the rest of the menu.



We decided to have our dinner since we don't have much time before we go to the airport for out flight back to Manila. We had this deep fried liempo since we do not plan on having a heavy meal before our flight. Everything was good even though the meat was a bit stale. The thing that almost ruined our last few hours of stay here was the spoiled buttered corn. We informed the waiter after settling our bill since we do not want to make a big deal out of it anymore. To our dismay, the waiter just smelled the corn on the plate, took it back into the kitchen, then went back to us smiling and proceeded to cleaning our table. We are not expecting a refund but at least even a simple apology will do but nothing. What kind of service was that? or did they even have the right etiquette?

To sum up our experience here, the food isn't that bad after all, but since they do not have a lot of customers, do not expect a wide variety of dishes. Overall service is good, it's not a five star hotel so don't expect too much. 


RATINGS:

Food: 3/5 
Cleanliness: 5/5
Ambiance: 5/5
Service: 3/5
Price: 4/5

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: 

Type: cafe / casual dining
Cuisine: Cebuano, pastries
Delivery: no
Operating Hours: 
Contact Number: 
Branches: Holiday Spa Hotel Cebu City

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Chika-an sa Cebu ( Park Mall Cebu City )



As we were strolling at Park Mall in Cebu and looking for a place to have lunch, we saw this restaurant with a name that is strange to us, Chika-an sa Cebu. Apparently because it's of a different language. It's a nice place so we decided to have lunch in this place before we continue our search for a decent hotel where we can check in during the rest of our days in Cebu. Their menu consists of a wide range of choices from vegetables to meat and seafoods and at a reasonable price. While waiting for our food to be served, I googled the meaning of the word "chika-an". It means, that it is a place where everyone can chit chat.



First to be served was the steamed rice on a banana leaf. Nothing special or extraordinary here, just plain rice on a leaf.



One of the best things about this restaurant is that, they serve fresh buko juice.



The shrimp with garlic - butter sauce is can be good for two persons. It looks greasy but it still tastes good.  It also tastes fresh.


They also serve ice cold sago and gulaman.

To sum it all up, Chika-an sa Cebu serves good food that won't take too much from your out of town trip budget. 

RATINGS:

Food: 4/5 
Cleanliness: 5/5
Ambiance: 5/5
Service: 4/5
Price: 4/5

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: 

Type: casual dining restaurant
Cuisine: Cebuano
Delivery: no
Operating Hours: daily, from 11:30 am to 2:00 pm and 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm
Contact Number: (+63 32) 233-0350
Branches: Park Mall