Robinsons Place Midtown Wing, All New Shopping in Ermita

My friend from my USC MBA days, Rizalyn, who's based in Cagayan de Oro, is here for a whole 3 wks for training with PhilHealth. Wanted to meet up with her and catch up on life in general ... she is staying at the Bayview in UN and so I thought why not do a shopping trek as well at the new Robinsons Place Midtown Wing! I had lunch there 3 wks ago at the Recipes with 20+ Customer Marketing Peeps on a workday ... might be good to visit on a weekend. Unfortunately for us, Recipes was closed yesterday. Weird but yes, the resto was closed. So off we went to look for a place that had pasta, and light salad --- oh yes! I saw Italiannis! Yehey! We got in at 130pm and saw the lunch buffet (which BTW is now down to P395/person from the P595/person a week or so back!) but they were closing the buffet by 2pm. Nope, 30 min not enough to enjoy buffet so we opted for the regular menu instead. After a lunch-full of tsismis and update, we were ready to go shopping.

As we re-entered the mall, I was then strucked by how different this wing is from the rest of the Robinsons Place Mall! It truly is more upscale, lightings are warm, more spacious, modern lounge sofa designs, and the shops, are more "masstige" already. All the known coffee shops are there, Starbucks, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and I think I saw Figaro. The Beauty Bar with my favorite "Dashing Diva" section is present and all-in-all the whole wing just gives you this airy more "classy" feel than the other wings swarming with "tiangge-type" stalls selling everything from herbal medicines to fake bags to underwear -- you would have thought this was Market!Market! or Greenhills.

I guess the Robinsons Place Ermita felt the need to expand and provide a more "upscale shopping experience" for its shoppers. Come to think of it the closest mall is SM Manila and my gosh that place is just crowded with people. Not a very nice place to do leisurely shopping (very typical of an SM mall except for MOA). Considering as well the Manila area, and the Fil-Chinese community in Binondo, I think the new wing has hit a jackpot in terms of providing this different shopping experience. Of course, the students and the medical community in the PGH (Phil Gen Hospital) are benefitting from this as well.

We left the Midtown Wing after having coffee at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, which if it wasn't just for the rain, we would have preferred to seat ourselves in the veranda area which would have given us a view of Ermita area. Truly, a leisurely place to stay awhile and meet up with friends and family!

Of course, I didn't miss visiting the newly renovated Robinsons Dept Store and checked out our displays of Ponds, Dove and Vaseline Lotion. Ah, but my observations and comments ... I will defer in another write-up as am trying to piece together as well how the Galleria store looks like.

So off we went to UP Dil after spending 4 hrs at the new Robinsons Place Midtown Wing. I don't know about you but the new space looks a lot lot better than the old Midtown Hotel way back! Indeed another new place to shop at the heart of Manila!

Mrs Jane B.