Luxury is in the details
Wagyu beef tapsilog; black cod tinapa; champorado with bacon and bonito flakes; and waffles with strawberries, white chocolate, and yuzu whipped cream are just some of the dishes you’ll find at Nobu’s breakfast buffet
Wagyu beef tapsilog; black cod tinapa; champorado with bacon and bonito flakes; and waffles with strawberries, white chocolate, and yuzu whipped cream are just some of the dishes you’ll find at Nobu’s breakfast buffet
I’m not a morning person, which means I’m not a breakfast person either. Breakfast is just something to put in my stomach to get me through till lunch. Generally, it isn’t particularly healthy, or even tasty, as it’s something I grab as I dash madly out the door on my way to work. Except on holidays. Holidays are different. Holidays are for leisurely breakfasts eaten while staring out at the ocean, and knowing that the only decisions I need to make are whether to get a tan or go back to bed for a postbreakfast snooze.
Hotel breakfasts are my favorite thing—because I didn’t have to cook it on my own, and because everything delicious about breakfast is available, all at the same time. While I’ve had my share of table-groaning hotel buffet breakfasts, my current favorite is one that seems almost sparse by comparison. “Seems” is the key word here.
The breakfast buffet at Nobu City of Dreams Manila is unlike other hotel buffets. With only three stations, it looks underwhelming—until you take a closer look. That’s when you realize that each item is quite unlike its counterpart in other buffets.
At the pancake and waffle station, the chefs are gleefully concocting a smiley face pancake for a guest whose son had requested one. The waffles are green tea waffles, and the French toast deserves the very fancy name it has been given—painperdu (French for “lost” or wasted bread). It is a cube, four inches high, cloud-like and custardy inside, buttery crisp around the edges. We ask the chef to surprise us, and our waffles arrive topped with fresh strawberries, a sprinkle of white chocolate, and a drizzle of citrusy yuzu curd. It goes without saying that we had a second serving, topped with yuzu whipped cream.
I’ve always thought that attention to detail is what sets the Nobu restaurants apart from others. The breakfast buffet is all about the details. The fruit juice is fresh, not canned. The pancakes aren’t served with plain butter. Instead, you get pecan-miso butter—with nutty sweetness and a hint of salt. The blueberry jam is actually housemade blueberry-shiso compote, and instead of lemon curd, you get yuzu curd. Even the ketchup served at the hot station is made in-house—a sweet and tangy concoction that made me wish I could take home a giant bottle. It isn’t thick and fake red. It is the color of real tomatoes.
The second station contains pastries, yogurts, and cereals, except that the granola is quite obviously not a commercial mix. The nuggets of cereal are crunchy but still sticky, clumped together with pistachios and hazelnuts. There is smoked salmon with capers, perched on crisp potato pancakes, and buttery, crumbly scones that you slather with more butter and a spoonful of blueberry compote. There are martini glasses of chia pudding, and small mason jars of yogurt with fruit. What I appreciate the most are the two-bite pastries—croissants, danishes, pain
au chocolat, pound cake, and muffins—that let you taste without getting full.
The third station contains an abbreviated but well-chosen selection of hot dishes. The ubiquitous congee is available, as is crisp bacon in thick slices, and fried rice, of course. The scrambled eggs are moist and creamy, managing to avoid the usual rubbery texture of eggs that sit in a chafing dish. There is also this dish: chicken lollipops, crisp and faintly piquant.
And because it is still a Japanese restaurant, the okonomiyaki is a musttry. The savory pancake is chunky with shredded cabbage, thinly sliced pork belly, green onions, and heaped with Japanese mayonnaise and bonito flakes. And I have a sneaking suspicion that the okonomiyaki sauce is also made in-house.
The restaurant’s breakfast buffet also contains an a la carte selection of breakfast minis that you can order to your heart’s content as part of the cost. This is where the fine hand of chef Nobu Matsuhisa shows itself. He and his chefs have taken Filipino breakfast favorites and “Nobufied” them. The day we were invited to have breakfast as part of my birthday holiday, a new menu item had been introduced—black cod tinapa, garlic fried rice, creamy scrambled eggs, and tomato salso. The tinapa was not overly smoky, and because it was cod, it was nice and fatty. My favorite was the Nobu-style tapsilog. It tasted like tapsilog, but was actually a wagyu beef cheek, braised until tender, served with garlic rice, a runny egg, pickled papaya, and shreds of nori. Think salty, slightly sweet, creamy, with little bites of pickle to temper all that umami.
The breakfast minis were served in bowls that just fit your hand, small enough to allow you to order more than one and still eat other things. Except maybe for Nobu’s version of champorado. It was as rich as chocolate pudding, and topped with both bacon and shreds of bonito flakes—Nobu’s answer to our champorado and tuyo combination. Chef Nobu had told us about the champorado during one of the media lunches when the restaurant first opened, and I had always been curious. It reminded me a bit of home because my mom always served me champorado with bacon.
Nobu’s breakfast buffet has an edited selection of dishes—not as extensive as other hotels—but abundant where it counts the most—in luxury. The luxury is in the little details, the homemade touches, and the uniqueness of the food served. The service is always attentive, and the chefs and wait staff are happy to indulge your requests. In fact, the only thing I need to make it perfect is the sound of waves crashing on the beach—but I can probably settle for the sound of waves coming from my phone, if I can have more of that pain perdu and Nobustyle tapsilog.
The Nobu breakfast buffet is available every day from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. on weekends. R1,232+/ pax, 02 691 2882, 02 691 2885
Email me at cbj2005@gmail. com or follow me on Instagram/@eatgirlmanila
‘With only three stations, it looks underwhelming—until you take a closer look.’