SELECTING a variety of seafood dishes for a meal may be a tough decision, but a pleasant one. And over at Isla Sugbu Seafood City you can choose, cook, and eat; but unlike a regular dampa restaurant, it offers a fourth step — repeat.
First opened in Cebu in 1989, the restaurant was re-established as Isla Sugbu Seafood City in 2014 after a hiatus. Since its reopening, it has won the Sunstar’s Best of Cebu Award for Best Seafood Restaurant from 2014 to 2017.
The restaurant recently opened its first branch in Manila at the Venice Grand Canal mall in Taguig City.
“It’s a nice addition to the food scene in Manila. It’s not common. It’s a place that you can bring guests to if you feel like spending some money that’s not going to burn a hole in your pocket,” Winglip K. Chang, president of Kuya J Holdings Group, Inc., told BusinessWorld shortly after the program at last week’s launch.
The restaurant offers Paluto All-You-Can — a buffet concept with its all-seafood station. Guests choose from a variety of locally sourced fresh seafood including shrimps, scallops, oysters, mud crabs, and king fish. The seafood is then prepared in an open kitchen according to the cooking style guests prefer. Items labeled “premium” are excluded from the offer. Diners can keep returning to the buffet to get more choice seafood cooked at no extra cost.
As part of its launch, promo rates are being offered — P848 for weekday lunch, and P888 for dinner and weekends. The regular rate is P1,300 per head.
Mr. Chang noted that guests are obliged to finish their food. “The Paluto All-You-Can has no limit on what you can eat. But we want people to also be responsible in picking how much food they want to have cooked,” he said about the leftover charge which is twice the promo rate.
Mr. Chang said the promo rate will remain for quite a while. “We want to get as many people to enjoy the restaurant,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be fancy. It’s just nice and fresh seafood, cooked well at a very good price.”
The P848 promo rate is available from Monday to Thursday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; and P888 from Monday to Thursday, 6-11 p.m.; and on weekends, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., and 6-11 p.m. on Fridays, and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., 6-11 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
For information, visit www.seafoodcity.ph. — Michelle Anne P. Soliman
