七十三：Magnolia Flavor House

Another late post.

Magnolia is a very famous ice cream brand in the Philippines and at their factory along Aurora Boulevard in Quezon City, they have this Magnolia House where they serve ice cream concoctions like parfaits, splits and even ice cream cakes.

If you've been reading my blog for a while now, you must have noticed that I really like ice cream though I like sweets in general, I would be willing to eat any flavor of ice cream.

Buffalo wings and Cheeseburger with potato wedges

When I was young, my family would go to Magnolia House to eat delicious ice cream. They also set up something like a theme park in front of the factory during Christmas where they would put up a giant Christmas tree full of ice cream decors like popsicles, ice cream sticks, ice cream cups etc. 

Those were the best memories of my childhood. ^_^

The last time we went to the original Magnolia House was during the 90's before it was bought by Nestle. Now, the factory has been converted into a mall called Robinson's Magnolia and they also placed a Magnolia House outside which I think is the same location of the original one.

Anyway, a few years forward, I was celebrating my birthday with a friend and as we were both love ice cream, we decided to eat dinner at Magnolia Flavor House in SM North EDSA.

We were looking for a restaurant and we passed by Magnolia Flavor House and it didn't take a second for us to agree that we both wanted to eat there.

Cold Marble ice cream flavors

The restaurant's ambiance is bright and spacious with tall ceilings and lots of lighting fixtures.

It was dinner time, probably around 8pm but the place was quite empty. I guess not a lot of people miss Magnolia as there are other ice cream shops that have popped up.

Citrus Vanilla Mango

Magnolia Flavor House now serves food aside from ice cream. It kinda reminds me of another ice cream shop/restaurant called Icebergs. 

As it was dinner time, we decided to eat something heavy. We ordered buffalo chicken wings and a burger to share. 

The chicken wings were crispy and has a sweet and spicy taste almost like a Korean style chicken wing. The chicken pieces weren't huge to be considered buffalo wings but it's enough for one person. The burger on the other hand had lots of veggies which for me is nice. It tasted fresh but not really tasty. Both came with a side of potato wedges.

Of course you can't eat at Magnolia Flavor House without eating ice cream. We decided to order the Citrus Vanilla Mango flavor (because I love mangoes!) of their Cold Marble line which seems to be something like those served by Cold Stone Creamery.

TBH, I didn't enjoy much eating at Magnolia Flavor House. The food and ice cream was okay as it was also quite expensive. Their ice cream price ranges from an average of 150-300+ which I think would be better if you just buy a tub of ice Magnolia ice cream at the supermarket if you're craving for one.

In the end, the nostalgia that I was hoping to experience wasn't there during the whole time that we ate there. I was really disappointed.

七十：Kitchen of Cakes and Coffee

My 70th post! This is also my first post for 2015!

Moving forward..

I like coffee and I like cakes and so this cafe intrigued me.

It was the week of my birthday and I met a friend at SM North Edsa.

We just had lunch and we were looking for a place to just have dessert and do some catching up.

While walking along the SkyWay (if that's what it's called), we saw this small store full of cakes in their display.

Both of us like sweets and since there was a vacant table left, we got inside and decided to eat there.

We decided to order two different cakes to try and a pot of tea since my friend doesn't drink coffee.

There was so much cakes in the display case that it took some time for us to choose the cake that we were going to order.

They also had a lot of tea to choose from and we were choosing between Peppermint or Vanilla.

I think peppermint was not available so we opted for vanilla.

I ordered the Chocolate Praline cake and my friend chose Mango Walnut Torte so we have one chocolate cake and one fruit flavored cake to balance it.

We also ordered a pot of Vanilla Rooibos.

The cakes arrived and the slices for each cake is quite thick for its price which is Php100 which is good.

The pot of tea also looked really nice with the tea pot placed on top of a tea light to keep it warm.

The vanilla tea smelled really, really good. It was also not bitter and just enough to cleanse our palate from eating the rich, sweet cakes.

It was also enough for about 6 servings so we were able to get 3 cups each during our stay there.

We tasted the Mango Walnut Torte and it was frozen. 

The mangoes were frozen that it was hard to slice the cake. The mangoes were also not that ripe but it had a lot of walnuts and the meringue was crunchy.

As for the Chocolate Praline cake, it's a fudgey chocolate cake with buttercream filling and has some caramelized sugar sprinkled on top for texture.

It was a very rich chocolate cake but not too sweet.

As for the ambiance of the place, I can say that it is very cozy.

You have an option to sit at the comfy couch with pillows though since the place is small, it's hard to get those seats but they still have some seats available outside the store,

We didn't fully enjoy the cakes or maybe we chose the wrong cake flavors but we enjoyed the tea.

We also enjoyed the time we were trying to catch up with each other so the food not being that good didn't really matter. We still liked the place though. ^_^

I think I would still be willing to try their other cakes and maybe their coffee if I get to visit the place again some other time.