Over the past year, group-buying sites have sprouted like there’s no tomorrow, providing us with opportunities to dine at a restaurant, pamper ourselves at a spa or salon, and even buy gadgets at very affordable prices, usually at 50% discount. Because of them, more businesses have gained much-needed exposure, especially those that are targeting an already saturated market. And we completely support upcoming businesses or companies, particularly those that have started from humble beginnings. We’re one to give everyone a chance to impress or disappoint us. This time, a restaurant in Caloocan did not just let us down, but completely upset us – Apricot Diner.

If you’ve been following our blog, you know we are not snobs when it comes to food and we get easily pleased. However, because we cook at home and we’re so used to the intense flavors of our homemade dishes (not bragging! It’s a fact and we can proudly prove that), we can sometimes be very critical about dishes at a restaurant, especially when the prices are too steep for what they served us. If I’m going to spend over 500 for a buffet or even just one dish, you better serve me something good.

Before I tell you about how our dinner at Apricot Diner went, let me tell you first about how this all started. I saw this deal last year on MetroDeal for 58% discount vouchers from Apricot Diner, who claim to be offering an “Eat-All-You-Can International Fusion Buffet”. As you can see, the photos they used were enticing, which I now think were taken from Google Images or somewhere else.

I honestly had doubts because they’re located in Caloocan, but, again, we’re all for supporting restaurants that aren’t that known yet. There might be a gem there somewhere.

So, to clarify this, they were offering Php 600 value of food from their eat-all-you-can buffet for just Php 250. The description had me sold, but I did a little digging first. At that time, there were nothing really substantial written about them yet, so I just crossed my fingers that they’ll deliver to their promise of “… finest foods". I thought of bringing my 2 best friends with me and Ken so I bought 4 vouchers in total, for a total of Php 1,000.

We love buffet style restaurants because we get to taste a wide variety of dishes while taking control of the ones that we want to have more of. And in our experience, most of the time, it was worth the price. So, we’ll be featuring more eat all you can buffet-style food places here, like Cabalen restaurant.

One weekend in June, our family was out for a whole afternoon of food trips and we were scheduled to watch a flick around 3pm. So, we had a lot of time to spare for lunch. I’ve been wanting to eat at Cabalen for the longest time so we decided to head on there to try their eat-all-you-can buffet.

Cabalen’s buffet in Trinoma features Filipino and Asian dishes. The price is Php 468 per adult, Php 270 for kids (4 feet and below). This buffet is available only at their branches in SM Clark, SM Mall of Asia Glorietta and SM Megamall. Their other branches only feature Filipino dishes.