UCC Park Café (G/F 1800 Eastwood)
I’ve always been a frequent patron of the UCC cafés around town: brunches before church service at the Podium branch, and breakfast at the Connecticut Street branch in Greenhills post shift on Saturday mornings. As such, I was instantly elated to find out that they were bringing their “hotel coffee shop outside of a hotel” right to the ground floor of our office building.
On their very first week of opening, I’ve already visited twice: dinner over a business meeting, and lunch on a weekend. Here’s what we had:
If you opt for a healthy and refreshing drinks, UCC has a couple of fruit shakes on the menu. I found the carrot taste on the Citrus Carrot shake (P169) too strong and didn’t like it as much. The Vanilla Chocolate Mint (P165) tastes infinitely better — and I presume has loads more calories as well.
We opted for the tomato variant of their Japanese Seafood Soup Spaghetti (P395), which had prawns, squid rings, and mussels.
Fried Chicken Curry (P329) crispy fried chicken, with carrots and potatoes in a curry sauce served atop Japanese rice
A house specialty — the Hayashi Burger Steak (P379) — featuring a huge lump of ground beef burger patty with mushroom sauce, served with vegetables and rice
The most unique dish we had was the Yin Yang Omurice
Presented like a yin-and-yang emblem with mushroom and creamy white sauces
As you may have guessed, omurice is a portmanteau word — joining ‘omu’ (for omelet) and ‘rice’. Flavored fried rice is wrapped in a thin sheet of fried egg, making this dish a very heavy and tasty meal in itself.
Setting. Fronting the Eastwood Central Park, the branch stays true to the Park Café concept (the original branch being in Glorietta fronting 6750 Building — which incidentally is our former office), featuring chic modern decor, plush seating, and brightly-lit interiors.
Service in UCC shops is fairly standard, except during busy meal times when the staff seems to get flustered with to many things going on. The tabletop request buttons come in handy during these times, which at one point I had to press thrice before getting attended to.
Price: ~P400-500 per head
Overall verdict: I may be a bit biased with my assessment of UCC Park Café, it being a long-time favorite of mine and all. Despite the fact that some of the dishes taste like they were “re-heats” instead of being prepared from scratch, and the sporadic long waits for service, I maintain my predilection for this place — if only for its comfort dishes and relaxing ambiance. The menu has many other dishes that I was not able to feature in this post, especially the coffee and yummy desserts.
UCC Park Café
G/F 1800 Eastwood Building
Eastwood Mall Veranda
Eastwood City, Bagumbayan, Libis Quezon City
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