Riviera Cafe

I had the privelege of lunching at Riviera Cafe yesterday, The Heritage Hotel Manila's main dining outlet. Riviera Cafe located at the Heritage Hotel used to be the 'in' place for buffet dining and I wanted to see how it is doing nowadays. When I entered the hotel, I noticed that the lobby was buzzing with a lot of people. I was to learn later that there was a Mayor's of the Phils activity that day at the hotel, ergo, busy lobby. I then proceeded to the coffee shop and it was relatively quiet the time I entered (around 1230ish)

If I'm not mistaken, Riviera Cafe was one of the first hotel coffee shops to pioneer the Interactive Kitchen concept in Manila. What this means is the chefs/cooks will prepare your food right in front of you in the dining area as compared to the yesteryears when food was cooked in the kitchen and presented to the diners in its cooked state already. Riviera Cafe of today still practices the Interactive Kitchen concept but I noticed that there are times when the cook would be missing from his/her station.

As I usually do, I started with the Chinese sections. They had a small corner with a roast duck carving, dimsums and other Chinese dishes were located. I was only interested in the dimsum as the other dishes did not interest me much.

This was my first plate of the day consisting of fried dumplings, shirmp covered in strips of wanton wrapper, some canapes and a bun with sweet black bean paste. The bun was a bit too thick that it was like looking for the sweet black bean paste in the middle of nowhere. The shrimp and dumplings were ok but I was looking for some steamed dimsum which, unfortunately, they did not have. The canapes were just so-so.

My next plate consisted of potato wedges, a penne pasta dish, a single maki and lemon chicken. I liked the pasta combined with the potato wedges. The lemon chicken was a bit too bland even with the lemon sauce.

My two favorite things would be mussels and prawns. So I stopped at the grilling station to have the cook grill me a couple of mussels and prawns, nothing else. So I wasn't surprised that it turned out good because: 1. they're my favorite 2. how could one go wrong with grilled items.

And for the finale, dessert!

I first had a serving of two scoops of ice cream, chocolate and strawberry flavor. Then a plate consisting of cheesecake, chocolate cream and palitaw. I really love palitaw, specially if its from Via Mare and the palitaw from Riviera Cafe is also good. So I decided to go back for two or three more. I was about to grab my palitaw plate when out of nowhere, a critter from the cockroach family came crawling out from one of the other palitaw plates. Suffice to say, I decided to skip my second serving of palitaw altogether.

I really do feel sad for Riviera Cafe as I wanted it to be back to its old glory days but, unfortunately, the food selection is not enticing enough. It was limiting itself to Asian dishes which can only be saleable to a certain niche. Hopefully, Riviera Cafe can restore itself back to its old glory

The Heritage Hotel Manila

Roxas Boulevard corner EDSA

Pasay City

Philippines 1300

Tel: (+63 2) 8548888

Website: http://www.millenniumhotels.com/ph/heritagemanila/restaurant/rivieracafe.html

Operating Hours: 0600H-2230H