Buffets in Cubao Compared: Vikings, Cabalen, Food Exchange

For a buffet in Cubao, the choice is between five rooms: Vikings Luxury Buffet for a booked celebration, Cabalen for Filipino food, Food Exchange Manila for a hotel spread, and two Korean unlimited tables, Romantic Baboy and Dookki. All five take big groups, and only Vikings takes reservations.

The five side by side

Buffet	Food	Where	Cost per head	Hours
Vikings	International, with a carving station	Upper Ground B, Gateway Mall 2	₱500 to ₱1,500	Lunch 11 AM to 2:30 PM, dinner 5:30 PM to 10 PM, daily
Cabalen	Filipino	Ground floor, Ali Mall	₱500 to ₱1,500	Mall hours
Food Exchange	International	Novotel, Gen. Aguinaldo Ave	₱1,500 and up	Breakfast daily, lunch Monday to Saturday, dinner Monday to Thursday
Romantic Baboy	Unlimited Korean barbecue	Ground floor, Ali Mall	₱500 to ₱1,500	Mall hours
Dookki	Unlimited tteokbokki and Korean hotpot	Upper Ground B, Gateway Mall 2	₱500 to ₱1,500	Mall hours

Mall hours in Araneta City are 10 AM to 9 PM from Sunday to Thursday and 10 AM to 10 PM on Friday and Saturday.

What to ask before you collect money

Get the current per-head rate for the day and meal you are booking, and ask whether drinks are included and whether tables have a time limit. Then set the group's contribution a little above the quoted rate so nobody is chased for ₱50 afterwards.

Hours, and the gaps between them

The two international buffets close between meals. The three on mall hours do not.

Vikings seats lunch from 11 AM to 2:30 PM and dinner from 5:30 PM to 10 PM every day. A 3 PM late lunch is not possible there.

Food Exchange has the most complicated week. Breakfast runs daily from 6:30 AM to 10 AM, lunch from noon to 2:30 PM from Monday to Saturday, and dinner from 6 PM to 10 PM from Monday to Thursday. For a Friday or Saturday night, check its page before you build the plan around it.

Cabalen, Romantic Baboy and Dookki keep mall hours, which makes them the options for an odd-hour meal. The catch is the other end of the night: from Sunday to Thursday the malls close at 9 PM, so sit down by 7 PM if the group wants to get its money's worth.

Booking for a group

Vikings takes reservations and suits celebrations. The booking link is a Klook listing. For a birthday of ten, this is the one where the table can be fixed days ahead.

Food Exchange gives diners three hours of free parking, which matters if half the group is driving in. The buffet is inside the hotel, which stands beside the Coliseum.

For the other three, send one person ahead to put the group's name down.

Picking a Cubao buffet by the kind of night

• A birthday with titas and kids: Vikings, because it can be reserved, or Cabalen for Filipino dishes everyone already knows.
• A barkada that wants to cook and talk: Romantic Baboy for unlimited barbecue, or Dookki for hotpot the table cooks itself. A long unlimited meal doubles as the activity.
• A weekday splurge or a work dinner: Food Exchange, from Monday to Thursday.

After the buffet

Nobody wants a second meal, so the next stop should be something to do. From the Gateway Mall 2 buffets, Paeng's Gateway Bowl is upstairs on Level 3 with 24 lanes and six billiard tables until midnight, and Timezone on the same level has private karaoke rooms until the mall closes. From Ali Mall, Gateway is about an 8-minute walk, and Cubao Expo is about 5.

For tables that are not all-you-can-eat, see the Gateway Mall 2 restaurants that seat a big group. For a costed celebration, read where to celebrate a birthday in Quezon City for ten, and for the full group plan the night-out planner builds, start at barkada night out in Manila.