Nikki, a fried of mine had her birthday at Island Leisure Boutique Hotel and Spa sometime in September. I have heard of the hotel and have read about it on Facebook but never really knew what the inside looked, so I was pretty curious about going. The hotel is charming, cute and homey, which is no surprise since it used to be a house before it was gutted and transformed into what it is now. There are small nooks with fountains and benches for you to choose from. I found the decor interesting, probably a mix of different Asian themes. The upstairs rooms still smelled of pain and woodwork, but they already had a fully functioning spa and Jacuzzi. I also loved the lighting-- subdued and soft, which was not surprising since it doubles as a spa after all.

I like the boutique concept-- the items used to decorate the hotel is for sale, and you can see how much by flipping over the price tags attached to each one. I don't know if Dumaguete has other boutique hotels like this. This is a pretty nice concept and it would be nice to see other hotels like this pop up in the city.

The food left a lot to be desired, however. I wouldn't go into the details since I forgot what we ordered. One of the friends ordered beef, which came hard and rubbery. She practically wrestled the beef into submission since she was hungry and needed to go back to work after dinner. My mashed potatoes came cold and bland, very much unlike other preparations of the same dish that I have tried in restaurants in the city. The only thing in the menu we liked was the calamares. The exterior was crunchy and crisp, while the squid meat was soft. 

Perhaps it was just our luck that we went there when the place was still very new, and the staff didn't have the system down yet, so there were problems with the service as well. ( For one, they brought the silverware per dish, which required a lot of going back and forth, pretty tiring to watch even if you didn't do the actual going back and forth yourself.)