Bizu Dessert Buffet - Choices, Choices and More Choices

If you have ever walked in to Bizu wanting to get some dessert, getting excited seeing the countless variety of sweets to choose from, yearning to try them all out, feeling the dissatisfaction of being forced to choose just just one or two from the spread, feeling happy about your choice after tasting it, and then feeling doubt as to whether you should have gotten something else when you see someone at the counter ordering something else - that's how Yeng and I felt choosing the dessert buffet from Bizu.


Pictures from Bizu's official website http://www.bizupatisserie.com/home.aspx

Here's how Bizu's selection looks like:

Small Chocolate Indulgences

Chocolate Truffles (Assorted)

Samba- Classic milk and dark chocolate mousse

Nirvana- Dark Chocolate Mousse and Pistachio Creamer

Amour- Orange Chocolate Mousse with crème brulee Roca- Rich Chocolate ganache with vanilla custard

Opera- Dark Chocolate and Coffee Buttercream

Baba- Hazelnut Mousse and Caramel Creamer

Chocolate Ganache Tartlet

Chocolate Cup with Pistachio Cream & Strawberry

Napoleon with Trio of Chocolate

Chocolate Éclair

Fresh Fruit Samplings

Babylon- Raspberry mousse with crème brulee surprise

Limone- Calamansi mousse with strawberry and raspberry

Yoga- passionfruit and yogurt trifle

Pavlova with kiwi, blueberry and mango

Lemon Tartlet/Fresh Fruit Tartlet

Apple Tartlet

Lemon Éclair

Strawberry, Mango or Blueberry Chiboust

Fresh Fruits in Skewers

A Selection of Brilliant Flavors

Tiramisu in Demitasse Cup

Madagascar Vanilla Crème Brulee in Egg Shell

Cinnamon Crème Brulee with Grand Marnier

Carrot and Walnut Bar

Cream Cheese Brownies

Vanilla and Caramel Cream Puffs

Grand Marnier Religeux

Assorted Macarons de Paris

Bread and Butter Pudding with Vanilla Sauce

Vanilla Éclair

Thank Goodness It’s Sugarfree!

Naomi- Milk and Dark sugarfree chocolate

Sophia- Sugarfree tiramisu

Jolie- Dark Chocolate with Hazelnuts

Kakatakam! It's not countless after all, but it is a lot. I didn't even include the chocolate fountain option (since you have to pay extra for that. Yeah we're cheapskates).

Bizu's dessert buffet is a selection of 8-12 types from the choices above, with about 4-5pcs allocated per guest. Yeng and I eventually chose 10 items from the list above. We'll keep our choices to ourselves in the mean time. For those willing to guess what they are, Yeng will treat anyone who gets the most correct guesses. Hehe.

Still No Caterer

The church, reception venue and caterer are the so called holy trinity of wedding planning in the Philippines. Miss one and you have no wedding (well technically the church is all you need but a Filipino wedding just won't be complete without a festive program and a meal).

Yeng and I have already booked our venue and church but are still on the lookout for our would-be caterer. We've already tried a couple but we haven't really decided which one to go for.

The safest one, one we could consider in the bag, would be the catering services provided by our venue. We've already completed our food tasting and while there were some culinary keepers in the menu we tried, there were a couple that we don't mind swapping with other items in their menu. The advantage of having the reception catered by the resort is that we don't have to spend additional OOT fees and we the rent of the resort would be include the package. That saves us money, time, and the number of people we have to deal with.

One other option we are looking at is a well known restaurant from the metro. If we end up choosing them, they would completely complement our theme of having a Santorini sunset-inspired wedding reception. They would also be able to offer us additional items that would add to the grecian look that we are hoping for, FOC. They will be coming out with their quotation on Wednesday and hopefully we could go for some food tasting during the weekend.

Another option that was originally at the top of our list is another well known metro restaurant famous for its pastries, cakes and french macaroons. Yeng worked tirelessly to get a quotation from them and finally we now have one from them. Just getting one from them almost made us give up! Good thing Yeng persisted. We hope we can tweak it a little bit more to negotiate a cake or a dessert bar. Hopefully we could schedule our food tasting with them within the week as well.

Finally, the last but not the least, is a Batangas-based caterer that has managed to successfully break into the mainstream wedding catering business. The good thing about this catering group is that they would be able to provide us with free lights or a three tiered cake FOC. Also since they are based in Batangas, they have a no OOT per se. We've had our food tasting with them and though not super WOW, they compete quite well with other mainstream wedding caterers. Plus their desserts are a notch higher than most. I would say that with this caterer you get the right value for what you pay.

One thing we've learned through all this is that it's actually a lot harder to find catering for a small wedding than the more standard 150plus-guest-wedding. That combined with our out of town venue makes it doubly harder. Hopefully even with these challenges, we hope to get the best caterer that we can. One that will be able to feed and please our small gathering of hungry guests.