El Prado Restaurant at Hotel Berjaya Manila

Tucked inside the heart of Makati's urban hub is Hotel Berjaya-- a hotel astutely fitting to brandish a hospitality culture of east-meets-west. The name itself sounds like middle eastern, but it is essentially Malaysian-based, under the auspices of Berjaya Group of Companies.

And the restaurant name seated at the second level of the hotel is El Prado Restaurant, incidentally sounding like Mexican. Inside the restaurant you can see huge paintings, vessel-derived, rose-window designs, and wooden furniture pieces. It was cozy enough to enjoy a leisurely meal.

The menu is a bit unsatisfactorily skewed in terms of variety but for a price of Php398 and a free use of swimming pool(from a groupon site), I said, "oh well, I would maximize the pool use anyway."

Main entrees include traditional Filipino stew, Stuffed Milk Fish, Grilled Pork, Sweet & Sour Meatballs, and Chapseuy. However, they serve soup and two salad variants to kick off your meal.

A wide selection of pasta awaits you from Carbonara to Pesto, from Fettuccine to Fussilli, they have it most of them. And since I am a pesto lover, I had the chef made mine. Shown are what I have on my table. Well, some of it. The rest are devoured ruthlessly.

Although they only have few assortment for the antipasto, like halo-halo, fresh fruits(Papaya and Watermelon only) and Filipino desserts(ube jalaya, kuchinta, puto, and other Filipino rice cakes), they are good enough to conclude my meal. Although deep inside my already diabetes-wary body, it is asking for an ice cream, panacota, and blueberry cheese cake.

Just as I thought that I have to maximize the pool service, I withdrew from doing it upon seeing that their pool has stagnant water, and that would make it a breeding paradise for algae and other anaerobic bacteria. Pool picture is grabbed from the Berjaya Hotel website. I didn't bother getting inside the glass door to the pool to snap it.

And I would like to commend the staff for the warm and efficient service. After all, there were only three tables(including mine) they were serving that time.