Gateway Mall 2 Restaurants That Seat a Big Group

Four Gateway Mall 2 restaurants take big groups: Palenque and World Kitchens, which are food halls, and Vikings Luxury Buffet and Dookki, which are unlimited tables. For eight or more people, the first needs no booking, the buffet takes reservations, and the other two are worth a phone call.

Four Gateway Mall 2 restaurants, by floor

Restaurant	Floor	Format	Booking	Hours
Palenque	Upper Ground B	Regional Filipino food hall	Walk in, none needed	Mall hours
Vikings	Upper Ground B	International buffet	Reservations taken	Lunch 11 AM to 2:30 PM, dinner 5:30 PM to 10 PM
Dookki	Upper Ground B	Unlimited tteokbokki and Korean hotpot	Call ahead	Mall hours
World Kitchens	Level 4	Food hall of 15 show kitchens	Call ahead	See below

All four cost ₱500 to ₱1,500 a head, and the format suits a big group at each. For a party above eight, the phone call is worth making everywhere except the walk-in hall.

The food halls

A food hall solves the hardest part of a group dinner, which is agreeing on one cuisine. Everyone orders from a different kitchen and eats at the same table.

Palenque is the easy one. It is a regional Filipino food hall with stalls such as Palm Grill and Nasi by Bale Dutung, and the rule is plain: walk in, no booking needed. It keeps mall hours, so it also covers the mid-afternoon gap when other kitchens are shut.

World Kitchens is the bigger production, a hall of 15 show kitchens on Level 4. Look for the Cochinillo Entero, Gambas al Ajillo and Unagi Hitsumabushi, which gives a sense of the range: Spanish and Japanese at one table. Its hours need attention. From Monday to Thursday it opens from 11:30 AM to 3 PM, closes, and reopens from 5:30 PM to 10 PM. On Friday and Saturday it runs straight through from 10:30 AM to 11 PM, and on Sunday from 11 AM to 10 PM. It has a wine room and a whisky bar inside. See how to run dinner, the wine room and the whisky bar on one floor.

The unlimited tables

Vikings is the one to book for a celebration. It is an international buffet with a carving station, it takes reservations, and it suits celebrations. Lunch is 11 AM to 2:30 PM and dinner 5:30 PM to 10 PM, every day. The booking link is a Klook listing.

Dookki is unlimited cook-it-yourself tteokbokki and Korean hotpot on mall hours. Cooking at the table keeps a barkada busy and talking. From Sunday to Thursday the mall closes at 9 PM, so be seated by 7 PM.

Buffets in Cubao compared lists what to ask before collecting money.

Timing a group dinner

Three clock facts shape the plan:

• Late lunch, 2:30 PM to 5:30 PM: Palenque and Dookki serve every day, and World Kitchens does too from Friday to Sunday. From Monday to Thursday, World Kitchens is shut from 3 PM to 5:30 PM and Vikings is between seatings.
• Weeknight dinner: the mall closes at 9 PM from Sunday to Thursday. The buffet and the Level 4 hall serve until 10 PM on their own hours.
• Friday and Saturday: the mall closes at 10 PM and the Level 4 hall stays open until 11 PM.

Whoever is organising should give the group a meeting time 20 minutes before the booking.

The ones left out

Gateway Mall 2 has other sit-down restaurants: Din Tai Fung, Mamou and Grace Park on the ground floor, and Wolfgang's Steakhouse on the upper ground floors, which costs ₱1,500 and up a head. They are ordinary restaurants rather than group formats, so with ten people, call first. The floor-by-floor guide to Gateway Mall restaurants has all of them.

For a tighter budget, Food Express is one mall over, on Level 3 of Gateway Mall 1: a walk-in food court costing under ₱500 a head.

After dinner, without leaving the building

Level 3 of Gateway Mall 2 has both follow-ups. Timezone has arcade games, short-lane bowling and private karaoke rooms, takes party bookings and closes with the mall. Paeng's Gateway Bowl has 24 lanes and six billiard tables, accepts group reservations and stays open until midnight, which makes it the stop for after a weeknight dinner.

For the group photo, Quantum Skyview is the atrium under an LED ceiling at Upper Ground B, on the same floor as three of the four restaurants.

The night-out planner builds this kind of night for up to 15 people. Start from the barkada night out guide, or for a birthday, the birthday celebration guide.