Guide to Restaurants in Manila
Every city in the world will contain a relatively small group of people who, for reasons of their occupation or life-style, dine out in restaurants on a regular basis. The far greater majority, however, only dine in restaurants on an irregular basis. A business lunch or dinner, a family celebration, on a date or perhaps visiting a city can be among the many reasons for making a decision to dine with family or friends.
The decision to dine out is easily made. The choice of where to go is often the more difficult to make. In which area of the city? What restaurant to select? What is the type of cuisine offered? Can we afford it? Will we enjoy the food and service? These are many questions posed to the inexperienced. For those who live in the general area of Manila or are visiting that exciting city, deciding where to dine has been made simple by just owning a copy of the Guide to Restaurants in Manila.
This is an unusual and useful book, because its many authors are not gourmets or restaurant reviewers. They are not advertising compilers. They are in fact a group of irregular diners who have experienced the problem of selecting a suitable restaurant themselves and so got together to do something positive about the problem. Their solution was to get out in the city and eat. Eat in as many restaurants as possible. Dine in every type of establishment from family-type economic restaurants through to fine dining bistros and from their collective experiences select just one hundred of those that met a common set of criteria. The factors that affected their rating system was the food, the atmosphere, service, price, accessibility and sanitation. Included in the restaurants’ information details is the personal opinion of the reviewer, and as they were all professional writers, these are often pithy but honest.
The result is a book sized to be easily carried in a pocket yet comprehensive in content that is more than enough to allow potential diners to select the most suitable restaurant to satisfy their appetites and other needs.
Although the full reviews are in the alphabetical order of the individual restaurant names, selection is simplified by efficient systems of cross-reference. Thus from the overall map of Manila, one can select the general area in which one wishes to dine and then see the street map of that area indicating the actual location of each restaurant. These restaurants are also listed alphabetically with the basic information such as address, type of cuisine served, the enjoyment factor of the reviewer using a number of heart icons, the average cost of a meal using peso icons and the page on which the full review is located. From this list a number of alternatives may be selected and the opinion of the reviewer read prior to making a decision.
If the type of cuisine is of more importance than the location of the restaurant, an index is also provided to provide easy location of the restaurant’s individual details and review.
Although only taking up one page, the individual restaurant details and reviews are unusually comprehensive. Not only is the full address and telephone number of the establishment given but also an indication of what one could expect to pay for the full meal. Hours of operation are stated, the acceptable mode of dress and payment as well as the availability of parking, an important factor in this city. An individual location map is also given as well as the actual meal ordered by the reviewer and comments on its quality. The review also contains the reviewers’ overall impressions resulting in the decision as to the number of heart icons awarded.
Perhaps the best thing about the Guide to Restaurants in Manila is its honesty. The fact that it is not advertorial but a genuine guide to consumers can clearly be seen. It is a book that should be on the bookshelves or in the desk drawers ready for the next time that someone says, “Let’s have dinner together. Where shall we go?”