Frannywanny

Cucina  is the all-day International dining restaurant of Marco Polo Ortigas Manila  and is one of my favorite hotel buffet restaurants in the metro too. While it may not have the widest array of dishes to choose from, I love how each dish is well-curated making it go very well with the rest of the line-up. I also love how they make it a point to change the themes every so often so I don't feel like I'm having the same old, same old in every visit. One visit, I had Italian , the next I had Thai, in another visit I enjoyed the best Filipino dishes and so on. There was even that one lunch wherein we had the most authentic British fare too . Despite the regular thematic changes, the top favorites are there to stay. I also love breakfast at Cucina ! I'll never forget that one memorable breakfast during our babymoon staycation at the hotel and I woke up so early because I was starving. I tell you, pregnancy hormones can sometimes just get so crazy. So there I was, part of th...

Let's take a short trip down memory lane. Well, sometime in 2017, Paul and I had one of the best babymoons at the Marco Polo Ortigas Manila  where we also celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary . I remembered even writing about it and I quote, "After all, this will be the last wedding anniversary where it's just the two of us. Next year, we will be joined by our beautiful twins so looks like it will be a family getaway from then on." Three years after that memorable staycation, we found ourselves back at our favorite hotel in the city and yes, this time we have our twins in tow. Often times, we'd toy with the idea of take a quick couple-only trip and to leave our twins in the able hands of my parents and Yaya M. However, #momguilt never fail to take over and so I've chickened out so many times as I can't bear the thought of me being away from my twins for more than 24hours. I guess I'm just not ready for that. Any moms out there who can relate with ...

If there's one thing that I've learned throughout my 17 years of dating Paul, I realized that a romantic date doesn't always have to be expensive. After all the fireworks and sparks have died down, the real test of one's relationship is how you can truly be there for one another. It's how you can still manage to hold on to one another despite all the heartaches, the hardships and sacrifices that love entails. It's when you're just simply contented with his/her company even with the absence of a nice candlelit centerpiece, instrumental music playing in the background or food served on fine chinaware. In fact, Paul and I have never been huge fans of degustation meals, tasting menus or fancy restaurants. Going on casual dinner dates brings back so much nice memories of when we started dating. You see, Paul was my boyfriend since we were both in college and this means he has been paying our meals out of his school allowance. That said, our dates normally consi...

February is the shortest month of the year (despite this year being a leap year) and yet I always feel like my schedule is extra jam-packed this month as compared to the past months. Just this weekend alone, I became a ninang to an adorable baby boy and the next day we had a family gathering to celebrate the birthday of two of my nieces. They're tweens now and in my mind, I've always thought they're still little toddlers. Time is surely flying by so fast. We're also a few days away from Valentine's Day and regardless whoever you will be dating -- your special someone, your boyfriend/girlfriend, your crush, your best friend, your parents or even yourself (hey, remember -- #selflove), I thought of sharing some of my recent and not-so-recent food finds which I think are totally date place worthy. Let's start with MeatSumo  in Panay Avenue. This just opened two weeks ago and I can expect this place to be packed most especially for dinner and during the weekend...