up town center – Jellybeans in the City

Tasty Taiwanese dishes at FatFook Kitchen, UP Town Center

For a recent holiday get-together with my former office buddies, we settled on FatFook Kitchen at UP Town Center as our meet-up place.

For one thing, UP Town Center is easily accessible to all of us, scattered all over the metro as we are. Despite the Christmas rush, getting there was relatively easy, since most of the traffic are headed towards the opposite direction to the Makati and South areas.

Secondly, we know that we won’t be disappointed in the food. After all, Taiwanese cuisine is so close to what appeals to the Pinoy palate while offering a welcome break to flavors and textures we consider mundane.

The next challenge was ordering food for a group of five that will please everyone’s taste buds or sate their personal cravings. Fortunately, FatFook has a ready solution with its Feast for the Family offer which allows diners to order one appetizer, one noodle or rice dish, one vegetable dish and two main entrees for just Php1,1088.

Given our appetites and this amazingly affordable offer, we ordered two sets of Feast for the Family and indulged ourselves in a variety of Taiwanese dishes which included:

Appetizer.

Noodles and Rice.

Vegetable Dish.

Main Entrees.

Dimsum. Our meal wouldn’t be complete with some tasty potstickers so we ordered some of the frozen dumplings which the restaurant steamed and served to us.

We also couldn’t pass up the chance to have a taste of FatFook’s signature Taiwanese Sausages, plump and meaty links with a sweet, savory and garlicky flavor. Also, since FatFook does not offer service water, we washed down our meal with soda and TeaCo Black Tea.

Our enjoyable time together over good food was enhanced by the great service of FatFook’s staff.

I’m so looking forward to our next meet-up here.

This FatFook branch is located at 2nd Floor, Phase 1A, UP Town Center, Diliman, Quezon City, open daily for dine-in and takeout.

Other branches in the metro are located at:

SM North EDSA
Glorietta
Robinsons Galleria
Alabang Town Center
Ayala North Exchange
Ayala Malls Manila Bay

FatFook delivers frozen and ready-to-cook dishes via GrabFood and FoodPanda.

The Alley by Vikings, UP Town Center

It’s great to have officemates who love to eat (not as much as I do, but still).

Before we took our holiday break, my boss decided to treat our team to dinner at The Alley by Vikings in UP Town Center.

What sets this buffet restaurant apart from the others is that it takes the form of a street-style food hall which incorporates concepts from around the world. Walking around the stations, you get a feel of touring the streets of the countries where the featured food items originate.

Instead of filling your plates yourself, you can request for small servings of the dishes from their respective stations, similar to the street food tripping experience. For example, our “food trip” here included the following stations:

Hao Chi – for Chinese dimsum and Peking Duck
Yatai – for Japanese sushi, sashimi and okonomiyaki
O’Sean Eleven – for seafood chowder
Just Steak a Minute – for freshly grilled steaks and other meats
Ferino’s Bibingka – for freshly made puto bumbong
Hunnycomb – for cakes and pastries

Buffet Rates:

Weekday Lunch: Php738 for adults, Php188 for kids 3ft for 4ft, Php388 for kids 4ft to 4ft 6in
Weekday Dinner/ Weekend or Holiday Lunch and Dinner: Php938 for adults, Php288 for kids 3ft for 4ft, Php588 for kids 4ft to 4ft 6in
Kids below 3ft eat for free

There are a lot of food choices, and more food stations than the ones I mentioned, which can be quite overwhelming. Refilling the more popular stations such as the sushi and the muscovado sugar for the bibingka took a long time.

I would also guess that the air-conditioning couldn’t cope with the volume of diners as it was quite warm where we were seated.

All that said, it was still a good time spent with my office buddies.

This branch of The Alley by Vikings is located 2nd Level, Phase 2, UP Town Center, Ayala Mall, Katipunan Avenue, Quezon City, open daily from 11am to 2.30pm and from 5.30pm to 10pm. For inquiries and reservations, call +63 2 82771888, +63 2 82772888, +63 917 6735888 or +63 918 9078888.

Other branches are located at:

2nd Level, Ayala Malls Cloverleaf, A. Bonifacio Street, Brgy. Balingasa, A. Bonifacio, Quezon City
C1, Upper Ground Floor, Bonifacio High Street Central, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig

Planning a visit to The Alley by Vikings? Here are some promos you can take advantage of:

20% off Weekday Lunch for every group of 5 pax from January 2 to February 28, 2020

Birthday celebrants eat for free on the day of their birthday if accompanied by one full paying adult, or within their birth month if accompanied by four full-paying adults

(Note: Terms and conditions apply for the above-mentioned promos.)

Maximize your buffet restaurant visit. Read the tips in my buffet survival guide.

Check out my blog posts on other buffet restaurants in the Metro:

A happier lunch experience at the new Friuli Trattoria

A trattoria is an Italian-style eating establishment, a happy medium between a ristorante and an osteria in terms of formality. Friuli Trattoria, named after a region in Northeastern Italy, serves signature Italian dishes such as pastas and brick-oven pizzas.

I already tried out Friuli Trattoria’s Maginhawa branch but was not terribly impressed with the service nor with the food so when my daughter was hankering for Italian food for our Saturdate lunch at UP Town Center, I had some misgivings before agreeing to eat here. I was won over by the relatively lower prices in this joint compared to the other Italian restaurant in the area (Cheapskate Mommy strikes again!).

We were lucky to find a table for two given the sizeable lunch time crowd. I was also pleasantly surprised by the friendly and relatively fast service of the wait staff. We didn’t have to wait long for our order:

Pesto Spaghetti (Php175)
Mushroom Pizza (Php220)
2 cans of A&W Cream Soda (Php60 each)

The combination of flavors was just right and the meal was satisfying for the both of us (although we did save some room for dessert elsewhere;-)). The total bill amounting to just Php515.

I had a better experience here compared to the Maginhawa branch and I wouldn’t mind bringing my family for a quick Italian lunch of we’re in the area.

Friuli Trattoria branches are located at:

2nd Floor, UP Town Center, Katipunan Avenue, Diliman, QC
79-A Maginhawa Street, Teacher’s Village, Quezon City