Midas Cafe at Midas Hotel

Genesis Hotels and Resorts, an all Filipino property management group who brought to you Astoria Boracay, One Tagaytay Place and Bellarocca Island Resort and Spa, laid down the foundation of coming up another hotel landmark in the Philippines. The site? That old Hyatt Hotel location. The name? Midas Hotel.

Now that the site is owned by another hospitality group, will it ever live up to its luxurious legacy of being a location of a "famed sunset boulevard of the Orient"?

Midas Hotel boasts of a fascinating deluxe interior designed by the country's renowned designer Samson-Almario. True enough, when I get inside, I was enthralled by the Almario signature designs, the touch of white and black in the walkway crisscrossed by a kaleidoscope of vibrant colors and the verdant green and immaculate white inside their resident restaurant, Midas Cafe.

One can never ignore the Hermes-design neatly stacked on shelves where the grand piano is located at. The well-lit walls and the minimalist chandelier, a hanging crystal wires that looks like a fiber optic tip, speaks of utter elegance.

This is me in the pic unfurling my MacBook Air. :)

Pasta with mixed vegetables and mushrooms.

So what else do they have on buffet their spread.

Started off with these.

Steamed Lapu-Lapu.

Prioritize all tender meats first when in a buffet.

Citrus-Glazed Shrimp.

Lamb Patties with Tomato Basil.

Sweet variant. My sweet tooth can't help it.

Slice your own loaf. I got the wheat variant.

Assorted bread.

Salami and some bread-must-have's.

Different types of cheese, Cheddar, Gouda, Manchego, Cream Cheese, and a lot more. They even have that Filipino white cheese.

You can also put this in your bread. :)

Stir-fried vegetables. Be sure to take one in a buffet, veggies will aid in the speedy digestion process.

Oriental style fried chicken.

Duck confit. Best paired with wine.

Emince of Pork, swiss style.

Spicy Beef Caldereta but you can't see the beef because they're hidden underneath the piles of veggies.

Pork. What's this entree called again?

Other aquiatic variants are Shrimp.

And other seafoods.

For the grilling station, they have Salmon….

Chicken.

And pork belly.

And my other favorite section of the buffet, the Carving Station. The other being the Desserts Section. This is a US Beef Striploin Steak.

Garden-fresh salad with different types of dressing, Tomatao Vinaigrette, French Dressing, Ceasar Dressing, Thousand Island Dressing, Midas Dressing, etc.

Two-toned salad.

Soup. They also have other soups as well, Creamy Chowder and the Chinese Molo Soup.

Asian section including Japanese Maki, Sushi, sashimi, Chinese Molo Soup, Chinese Noodle Soup, Xia Long Bao, etc.

Let's see what do they have for desserts.

Fresh fruits, watermelon, pineapple, melon, etc.

Layers of panna cotta and a fruit salad on top.

Rice cakes and more.

Round of sweets.

Sweets again.

More sweets.

Cake-eoso delicioso.

Let's see what's on my table.

DIY-ing my own salad.

Mixed seafoods. You see, even in a buffet, I still observe proper plating. That is to heighten appetite, because the more delicious-looking the food in your plate is, the more you'd want them.

Shrimp and veggies.

Oriental style chicken and lamb patties.

Pork belly and chicken with bathed in a delicious barbecue sauce.

Lamb, Duck Confit, and crunchy steamed veggies.

A parade of Asian goodness, a Xiao Long Bao, Japanese Maki, Sushi, and Sashimi.

And my favorite part in a buffet, a juicy steak. This time, it's a US Beef striploin.

Hoarding lots of sweets, I did it right before my meal started.

Concluding my meal. I picked one mango at the buffet table and had the chef sliced it for me.

Some hotel buffets that I have tried don't have an extensive array, and perhaps lacks two components, lamb and a steak. They have both although their lamb is already in fillet form, but their desserts, as many as it could have been, lacks halo-halo station and ice cream station. But at Php899 care of a groupon voucher, it was ok.

And oh, how's it if I'm going to post my top ten buffet places for 2011. What do you think.