Cafe Mary Grace - The Outlets — Restaurant in Lipa

First time dining here on a special occasion. Atmosphere, yes, I'll give it to them coz the place have a very nice ambiance. Service is also good. Now, the most important, the food. We ordered the ffg: Mary Grace chocolate and cheese roll - understand what the hype is all about, it's very good, the saltiness of the cheese roll and the sweetness (not to sweet BTW) of the hot chocolate, superb combination. Yes, it's to die for but I'm not gonna crave again coz it's quite expensive. I'll still give it a 5 star.

Wild mushroom soup - just ok. 3 star. Nothing spectacular.

Caesar salad - disappointed. not worth it for it's price. 3 pcs thumb size fried fillet, mediocre parmesan cheese (seriously? Powdered, fake kraft parmesan cheese. Come on!), wilted lettuce (ughhh). 1 star rating sadly.

Salmon pasta and carbonara - 3 star, considering the price which I'm ok to pay but I'm expecting more on the quality but unfortunately didn't meet my expectations. Same kraft powder parmesan cheese. Nahh. Pls use a much better quality ingredients like parmesan cheese. Many options in snr cheese section. The one that you need to grate.

Sirloin tapa - 4.5 / quality beef tapa but expensive for small portion.

Chocolate truffle cake - 5 / loved it! Strawberry shortcake - 3 / not a fan

Overall, I would rate it 3. What's the use of good atmosphere if your food quality is mediocre. Atmosphere is the last thing I'm concerned about. First for me is good food, as long as the quality justified the price, I'm all good. Next is good service. Not sure if I'll come back though. Maybe. This is only my personal opinion about my experience and may...

Such a pretty space! I've eaten at Mary Grace years ago and the chorizo pasta and beef tapa made a mark on me so when we came back, we made sure to order.

However...

🍛 The Sirloin Beef Tapa ( 552 php) The serving is small. The garlic rice was mushy and tasteless. Even the fried minced garlic is bland?? And the beef. The beef! So tender but why was it so sweet and saucy?? Like ewww I've had better tapa at other less popular restaurants but at a fraction of a price. Oh ew what a disappointment!! Sweetened beef. Waste of money. The scrambled egg was also bland. 1/5

🍛 Chorizo pasta almost 447 php. The serving is hefty but where is the umami? It was also bland and no depth of flavor. The garlic bread was also meh. I was so confused. Where's the chorizo taste on the ground meat? Why did it taste like a regular bland minced meat? 2.5/5

🍛 Pasta Amatriciana with meatballs. 446 php. My daughter loved this. She inhaled the whole plate. Pero like the pasta, bland yung meatballs.

🍛 Black Truffle cake - disappointing. Mas masarap pa red ribbon my gosh. We will not order again.

The staff are also lukewarm. But it's okay.

Are we going back? Never. Sayang pera. The quality of the food has declined. If you like pretty places to post to your socials and live your Manileña tita era, you need to come here! But that's the only redeeming factor at this...

We had high expectations, but our experience was really frustrating. The service was slow—we waited a long time for our food, had to ask for cutlery and tissue multiple times, and still ended up finishing our meal without getting any tissue.

We also asked three different staff members to pack our leftover pizza (which was still half and worth ₱659), but no one came back. In the end, we just left without it.

While we were there, we saw another customer shouting at the counter because their reserved food wasn’t ready and there was no table prepared for them. It was obvious the staff wasn’t organized.

We were also surprised to see a ₱114.38 service charge on the bill. I wouldn’t have minded paying that if the service was even decent. After we left and passed by again just a few minutes later, we noticed our plates were still on the table—but the pizza was gone. It really felt like they didn’t want us to take it out for some reason.

To make things worse, we had stomach issues the next day. I had LBM that lasted for almost a week—possibly from the clams.

Overall, it was poor service, poor food handling, and questionable food safety. Definitely...