Let Life Be Benign: Vikings Luxury Buffet at Mall of Asia

Every year, I have this ritual of celebrating my birthday in Vikings Luxury Buffet. This year, I went back to Mall of Asia, the main branch of this restaurant. It has always been a day to look forward to since I make sure that I only dine here on my birthday or my birth month. Probably because I did not want to get tired of the food and especially because of it's birthday promo. When it is your birthday, you can dine for free as long as you have at least one full paying adult with you. I usually dine here with my special someone because our birthdays are right after the other. If I remember it correctly, it is the 4th year we did this, which makes it even more memorable.

The Ambiance 4/5

Since the first time I set my foot inside this restaurant about 4 years ago, I felt I was in a 5 star hotel. I know this is what they boast about, which is actually good, since we all know that dining in a 5 star hotel entails a bigger budget. But this restaurant allows people to experience the same feeling at an affordable price without compromising the quality.

It may have been a perfect score but there were a lot of customers the time we went there so the restaurant eventually became noisy, removing the elegance that it could actually offer. Pardon me for the blurry photos as I was rushing to take pictures because of the many diners inside the restaurant.

The Food 4.5/5

It was lunch time when we dined here and I was quite sad because most of my favorite items were not present. My fault actually that I did not ask prior to going. I expected Hakaw to be there since in the past we usually dined for dinner time and hakaw was there. The food was actually okay and had variety. It was presented well and the arrangement of the food was per cuisine. These are only some of the food that the restaurant offers:

And this is what we got!

Now, for the dessert and drink station:

If you have read my previous posts, I mentioned that I am not into sweets. So this is what I only got:

When a customer dines on the exact day of his or her birthday, the waiters sing a birthday song to the celebrant with a slice of cake. Due to a lot of birthday celebrants that day, we could not wait anymore since we were already happy with our full tummies. Nevertheless, here is a photo of the cake slice they give:

The Service 4.5/5

Dining in Vikings entails at least 2 weeks reservation prior to the scheduled date, which I actually did. They also text a day before the scheduled reservation to confirm, which is actually great so as not to have second thoughts if the reservation was listed or not.

However, there were sudden changes in our schedule that instead of dinner time, we had our celebration during lunch time. I asked the receptionist if I could have it moved just to try my luck but they said that we would be included in the waiting list, which I totally understand. We were #17 and I was really apprehensive to wait since I was really hungry, but we patiently waited.

I must say that it was a job well done by the receptionists to be able to handle the large number of people dining in. I really did not expect us to be called early. They started having guests come in by 11am and at about 1120am we were called and we were escorted nicely to our seats.

I rated their service with a minus 0.5 because of the slower service we had than usual. There were a lot of customers that time and I feel that they could have added more employees to have the service faster. Other than that, everybody was friendly and courteous attending to whatever we needed.

The Budget 5/5

I rated the budget a perfect score because it is very much affordable since one of us was free. We had a weekday lunch approximately Php688+ 5% service charge. We were two customers dining for this price only. Do the math and I'm sure you'd also rate it 5/5!

Here is the rate of their buffet: