Dining | A Menagerie of Foods at Zoo Coffee
The name Zoo Coffee honestly immediately catches my fancy. Going in, a menagerie of animal plushies greet me. Is this a toy store or a cafe? Going forward, yes its a cafe.
A cafe not limited to coffee I might add. They have korean Bingsu and Belgian Waffles. What a wonderful mix they are offering. A hodgepodge of different cultures is what we found out at Zoo Cafe. A friend of mine later told me that Zoo Coffee is a Korean brand and it was franchised here in the Philippines. K Pop and Korean Novelas have conquered our entertainment scene and here comes a Korean brand to invade our food industry.
Now lets dive in the details and judge if this brand can be truly called invaders. LOL.
Lets start off with their serving sizes. They are huge. If you are alone, better ask them first if the food you are ordering are good for how many persons. You might end up eating a bunch of food by yourself. Coffee sizes are still the same with your favorite american brand.
Taste wise, gladly they didn't disappoint. Our mango belgian waffles were bursting with mango flavors along with our strawberry waffles. There were around 3 large waffles topped off with whipped cream, some chopped fruits, and some sort of ice cream (?). The sweetness of the mango fruits blended well with the mango puree and waffle that I can't complain. There was a bit of confusion of palates on our strawberry waffle. The fruits on top did not jive well with the syrup on the waffle. I don't know it might just me being biased to mango. If you got a taste of this berry berry waffle, email us at info.katooga@gmail.com and tell us what you think of it.
Ambiance? Well, if you are surrounded with big animal plushies, who wouldn't not like to be in that situation? Everything is so cute, cuddly, colorful and dandy. Well worth staying an hour or two in this cafe. With the nice airconditioned dining area of Alphaland Makati Place, I wouldn't mind waiting for my meeting here.
Now we came to price. We purposely held this last as we have to push the positives first. Sadly the prices were a bit higher than our favorite american brands. The waffles costs Php180-200 which we believed was to equate with the big serving and the great taste. The ambiance also was great thus it would command for that extra price.
Now for improvements, this is going to be subjective on my part so your experience here might be different from mine. Now the staff at the counter were not that cordial with us. The greeting they gave when we approached did not connect with us. It was as if taken from a script. Now I had to let that one slide as they might be just tired, then we proceeded to give them our order. All went fine and we were seated already at our table.
Our order were now being queued and prepared and now the waiting began. and we waited. and waited. waited a bit more and again we waited. It took a bit of time for our order that I had to go back to counter twice just to do a follow up. In both times they promised me that our order was almost done. On my second trip back, I saw the staff was scampering already to finish our order. I did not see any trays yet with our order so again we waited.
I can't remember how much time passed as we were already starting our meeting, then I was preoccupied with my trips to the counter for follow up, then when I was about to go back for a third trip, our order was finally ready.
We had two full trays of food and drinks and I was all alone to get them from the counter. Other cafe's would already offer help by carrying one of the trays but never did they offered. There were a lot of people in the counter and I assumed they can spare one person to help out for just a few minutes. I was "assuming" they would be in a helpful nature since we waited for our order longer than what was the usual. What is usual for them? Am I unfairly comparing them with my favorite american cafe? Should I have adjusted my patience and give them a bit more for what is their usual? I might be wrong with my perception of my experience this time around since it was my first time dining here. Lets see how they will fare in our visit.
For more about Zoo Coffee, you can check their Facebook presence here.
