After a successful run in 2016, EDSA Shangri-la’s HEAT is back at it again with their Mad For Wagyu night this year. This buffet will give you Saturday night fever from 6PM onwards in a whole new way, especially if you’re a great lover of Wagyu beef. You’ll feel feverish just thinking about the selection!
I was invited to a Mad For Wagyu blogger night by none other than THE Richie Zamora of The Pickiest Eater (thank you and it was awesome to finally meet you!) so I made a mad dash with my brother to EDSA Shangri-la after work one Saturday evening.
Traffic wasn’t cooperating with us so we arrived really late to the party. Still, I was glad to be able to snap some decent pics since the food was being regularly refilled. This post is just to give you an idea of how the chefs at HEAT reimagined Wagyu beef in different ways to aid you in your Wagyu madness. I think the variety is easily the biggest winning point of Mad For Wagyu night.
Just to give a refresher, Wagyu is actually an umbrella term that refers to any of the four beef cattle breeds that come from Japan. The Japanese are actually very very good at this sort of stuff. (Just check out how much I gushed about their Yubari melon while I was in Sapporo.)
It’s been a while since the world discovered that meat from Wagyu cattle equals high quality and intense marbling, which explains why people clamor for it. And of course, that marbling really is the best part about eating beef.
Wagyu beef is pretty expensive, but for the price of Php 2,615, you can have all the Wagyu you want in the form of many different dishes at HEAT in EDSA Shangri-la. That’s what the Mad For Wagyu night every Saturday is all about! I think I’ll let the photos do most of the talking from this point!
As I mentioned, the internationally-themed sections of the buffet at HEAT display Wagyu incorporated into various regional dishes. For instance, the noodles area offers laksa with bits of Wagyu in the soup. You can eat it with some Wagyu Wrap (aka sosyal na lumpia) on the side. The wraps are located right across the soup station.
My favorite way to eat Wagyu beef can be found at their Western section. The glistening slabs of beef will entice you as they wait to be sliced and devoured. Chefs will cook the meat to the degree of doneness you like, and there really is nothing like enjoying quality pieces of meat this way. You get the full effect of the natural beef flavors plus the tender and juicy mouthfeel… So good!
You have the option to eat the meat with these ginormous popovers, but eating them together can be a bit heavy. You have to save room for the other Wagyu dishes! (Also, they taste better warm so you might want to ask them to warm these up.)
Aside from eating your meat with gravy, there is a collection of other sauces you can choose from on display at the buffet, to keep things interesting. If you need ketchup for your burger, you know where to go!
This BBQ Chocolate and Bacon one sings to me as I love experimenting with sweet-salty flavors.
In between the sauce area and the Western section is the Indian food, where the star is obviously the Wagyu Beef Shawarma. (Also, can we take a moment to admire the awesome lettering art found in each section?)
I love shawarma so I was excited to try this, unfortunately it wasn’t as good as I imagined it would be. The pita bread they served it in was tough, and the onion taste of the wrap was overpowering. I wish it was more balanced.
And before I forget, if you ever want to take a brief break from stuffing yourself with Wagyu, you can grab some fresh seafood over here. Consider it a palate cleanser haha!
This next section banners “Grill Em Up”, but that’s not the only thing available here. In this area you will get a mixture of Asian style meats on sticks, which you indeed can have grilled, but there are also other Asian dishes to be found. For example, classic Pinoy dishes that have been Wagyu-fied, such as the Wagyu Beef Bulalo.
This Marinated Wagyu Beef Yakiniku was scrumptious and juicy. The flavours were just right– a mix of sweet and salty producing a nice umami aftertaste. One of my favorite things that I ate this evening for sure!
Speaking of favorites, this Sinigang na Baka was divine. One sip of that soup gives you a tangy hit of calamansi that not just tickles the tastebuds but awakens them. This was probably one of the best sinigang I’ve had in my life. The beef was also a good texture and not tough at all. Yum!
Finally, we get to the “Asian Delights” section, featuring mostly Chinese favorites like Char Siu made using Wagyu, and also Black Pepper Wagyu Beef.
I was looking forward to the Wagyu Xiao Long Bao, but I’m not sure if it was because of the late hour of my arrival or if they’ve removed that from the menu this year, but all I could find were these Wagyu Buns.
And boy what a consolation these were! I was pleasantly surprised by these buns. There was just enough sweetness to remind you that they’re the classic siopao, but they had a certain pleasant juiciness from the meat inside that you can only find with beef.
No Wagyu buffet would be complete without wine (or beer for that matter), so HEAT prepared a good selection of wines to up the ante of the whole Wagyu experience. Red wine is of course the best thing to pair with beef, in my opinion, but many people go for beers as well.
For non-wine drinkers, you can go ahead and take your pick from the beverage section. My brother enjoyed their Shirley Temple and Blueberry Spritzer.
Based on my observation, the two most frequented areas here in the Mad For Wagyu buffet are the “Asian Delights” and “Western Favorites”. Coincidentally, they are also my personal favorite sections as far as anything involving Wagyu goes, but my baker heart can never stay away from the dessert area. I may not be a huge dessert eater, but I can stare at baked goods and desserts for hours without stopping haha!
I made a conscious decision to veer away from the typical buffet desserts like cakes, crepes, and ice creams. Instead, I went for the tasty-looking churros on display. There is a chocolate fountain standing right beside the churros area. Here you are free to shower your churros with as much chocolate as you want!
The Churros were delicious to the last bit. Crunchy outside and soft inside, they weren’t hard to the bite but instead had a sort of mashed potato-like heart, if that makes sense. This is more like the kind of churros I make at home. I’m not a big fan of tough churros like the sort that La Lola makes.
For my dessert plate, I also decided to go for a bit of taho (one of my favorite things!), and my buffet staple of cheese and nuts drizzled with honey. I loved the chili honey they had here at HEAT!
Like any other night, I was craving for some chocolate, so it was easy enough for the Chocolate Lava Cake to catch my attention. Duuuuude. Look at that melty chocolate goodness inside the chocolate fondant cake!
Chocolate lava cakes aren’t difficult to make, but you’d be surprised how some other restaurants can still mess it up by overbaking it and losing that lava component. But this! This was so excellent!
I can’t give you any other more perfect way to end this meal. (Almost licked my screen there.)
Since I didn’t try the 2016 edition of Mad For Wagyu, I can’t give you a point of comparison. But based on what I gathered from the posts of my fellow food bloggers who went Mad For Wagyu last year, I think EDSA Shangri-la have kept the core favorites while switching just a few things up this year.
If you’re a lover of beef, I think this buffet is worth a try at least once. The good news is, you have the whole year to decide since they’ll be having the Mad For Wagyu night every Saturday this year. (And a Lobster night during Fridays too!)
Frankly speaking, the dishes I managed to photograph are barely half of the things you can find in this buffet. The rest of them I leave up to you to discover. If you’re more well-equipped to handle buffets appetite-wise compared to me, I think you’ll be enjoying this Mad For Wagyu night a great deal!
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Restaurant HEAT at EDSA Shangri-la
Lobby Level, Tower Wing,
1 Garden Way Ortigas Center,
Mandaluyong City, Manila, Philippines
Contact No.: (+632) 633 8888 ext. 2740
Hours: Open daily from 6 AM to 12 AM
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Full disclosure: I was invited to EDSA Shangri-la’s Mad For Wagyu Night but opinions are 100% mine alone.
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