[HOTEL] Swiss-Belhotel Mangga Besar Jakarta

Nowadays, finding comfortable hotels for staycation has become a kind of hobby for us since we are pretty busy on the weekdays and want to enjoy the weekends as much as we can. It doesn’t have to be outside Jakarta, but if the location is quite far from home, that’s perfect, especially if we can enjoy the culinary scene in the neighborhood as well! And now we are sharing our experience of our recent staycation at Swiss-Belhotel Mangga Besar, keep reading to explore what’s in the hotel!

Swiss-Belhotel Mangga Besar is a 4-star international hotel strategically located in Central Jakarta, exactly in Mangga Besar and Mangga Dua areas, close to both business and entertainment districts. With total of 246 guestrooms (from Deluxe Rooms to Presidential Suite) and 14 meeting rooms of various sizes and configurations including 2 massive ballrooms (accommodate up to 2,000 person), Swiss-Belhotel Mangga Besar seems like an ideal stop for both business and leisure.

As we were looking for a family-friendly hotel, we couldn’t be happier when we found out that Swiss-Belhotel Mangga Besar actually has Family Suites in their room category! It was an instant YES especially if you do staycation or traveling with your family and you don’t have to rely on the availability of rooms with connecting door anymore!

THE SUITE

Master Bedroom of Family Suite

The Family Suites are 101 sqm and have 2 bedrooms, 2+1 bathrooms, living room and dining room. The master bedroom is big and spacious, has king size bed and complimented with spacious marble bathroom with bathtub and rain shower. The additional twin room is a bit smaller than the master bedroom, has twin bed, has bathroom with only rain shower. The bedrooms look very neat and clean, although the air conditioner in master bedroom could use some maintenance work for sure. However, that didn’t really affect our overall stay experience as we still could sleep soundly during the night.

The living room features a dining room table for four and writing desk. The walls are covered with mirrors and somehow created the more spacious effect into the room.

I secretly wished that they would change the furniture color, though, as the green is very unattractive and brings old, dirty ambience to everything else in the room. I don’t know, maybe it’s the signature color or something, but they seriously need to rethink about it and make some changes to create more “modern” and sleek look to the already-gorgeous suite.

THE RESTAURANT

After settling down in the suite, we walked down to the main restaurant of Swiss-Belhotel Mangga Besar: the Swiss Café Restaurant, which is located on 2nd floor of the hotel. The restaurant is spacious and divided into some areas, but the best seating area is in the most inner side, with access to natural light from glass window and nice round, group seating tables. With innovative, open-kitchen concept restaurant for a unique multi-cuisine dining experience,  Swiss Café Restaurant proudly offering fresh-food excellence in Chinese, Asian and truly scrumptious International dishes in a most pleasant ambience. The restaurant opens everyday from 6AM to 10.30PM with seating capacity of 160 guests.

We went there during lunch time and the Swiss Café was not busy at all. We were surprised to see the table setup prepared beautifully the the chef team and staffs. There are so many food, colors and options arranged especially for us, thank you so much! I don’t want to talk too much, but you can scroll down to see all the beauties!

Superb table setup for our lunch at Swiss Café.

Bread Basket fulfilled with fresh breads and the options made us crazy!

Unique Sushi Platter with some “unusual” toppings like grape and strawberry.

Here comes the highlight of our lunch: the Gurame Kipas (IDR 99,000). This deep-fried crispy carp fish is served with steamed rice, fresh vegetables, chili and soy sauce. This is like typical Indonesian menu, only you don’t have to share this with anyone else, LOL! The fish is very crispy and didn’t have the annoying smell like typical gurame goreng (if you know what I mean) and despite its bony looks, it’s actually kinda meaty and I was super satisfied!

Gurame Kipas (IDR 99,000)

Hainanese Chicken Rice came next to my favorite list, I love how tasty the rice is, and the succulent chicken made it even better. The condiments are good additions to the package.

Hainanese Chicken Rice

Hainanese Chicken Rice

If you happen to visit Swiss Café and you want to order only 1 menu, by all means, you’ll just HAVE TO order this one. The Sop Buntut (IDR 135,000) – or Oxtail Soup if you prefer, is so good I finished this without hesitation. If you remember the table setup above, you’ll think that it is probably impossible for 2 person to finish everything, but yeah. XD This oxtail soup was on point: with super well-seasoned, tender meat and the tastiest soup you can not forget! At first glance, I thought the soup was going to be really oily, but in fact it was okay and tasted perfectly good so I didn’t mind the oiliness.

Sop Buntut (IDR 135,000)

Not only the food, Swiss Café also goes all out with their colorful drinks and desserts. I especially love their traditional Indonesian desserts like Bubur Ketan Hitam (Glutinous Black Rice Sweet Porridge) and variety of Jajanan Pasar. Other desserts are also nice but again, I always prefer traditional Indonesian desserts to Western ones.

THE POOL

During a rainy season like now, it’s difficult to enjoy staycation to the fullest especially if it rains when we want to go swimming. Fortunately, Swiss-Belhotel Mangga Besar has indoor swimming pools so we still could go swimming although the rain didn’t continued the whole day. It was a lucky day for us because the pool seemed like it had just been cleaned and there was nobody else, YAY!

 THE EXECUTIVE LOUNGE

One of the perks staying in higher room category is that you can have access to the Executive Lounge. And Swiss-Belhotel Mangga Besar doesn’t disappoint at all with its comfy and full-of-service lounge. We visited the lounge for tea/snack time, and while they didn’t have extravagant choices, it was still an enjoyable experience for us.

If you don’t stay at this hotel and want to have some relaxing time at hotel lounge, you can also unwind with cocktails or snacks in Silver Lounge which is located on the Ground Floor (lobby). We didn’t make time to visit it but I saw a promotional menu of All You Can Eat afternoon tea package for a very low price, but I forgot the exact number.

We also visited another restaurant inside the hotel named Joe’s Grill, which specializes in variety of grilled dishes and provide smoking seating area in case you need it.

THE VERDICT

Frankly speaking, we were so excited to stay in this hotel as the location couldn’t be more perfect to explore the unlimited, famous culinary scene of those areas. In the end, we mainly stayed inside our suite just because it was too comfortable and we decided to spend our time to the fullest in the hotel. From the moment we stepped into the hotel, we were grateful that we were welcomed with big smiles and helpful staffs, and even until we checked out from the hotel, we didn’t find anything bad during our one night stay in Swiss-Belhotel Mangga Besar. We definitely will stay here again in the future!

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** This review is written based on our stays on 4-5 November 2017.

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Swiss-Belhotel Mangga Besar Jakarta
Jalan Kartini Raya No.57
Jakarta, 10750
Indonesia
Ph.+6221  63 93 888
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