Category: ISLANDHOPPER

8809 Sampalo St. near cor. Kamagong St. Makati City

You’ve just had your annual medical checkup. Blood pressure good. Everything else unremarkable. It’s now time to live a little and clog those arteries with a flavorful dose of 100% cholesterol goodness. Behind the Metrobank branch at Kamagong (diagonally across Suzukin) is this no-a/c but breezy set up frequented by the office lunch crowd. There’s not a lot in the menu. The no-fun sissies who love giving you guilt trips order the boneless bangus (125 pesos), the health-conscious opt for kansi laman (95 pesos) and the carpe diemers go for the piece de resistance, the kansi bulalo (80 pesos). Seize the day, and your aorta, with about 4 lovely tablespoonfuls of marrow slush guaranteed to expedite your entry to heaven, physically and metaphysically. Bring that googled article from the mayo clinic that says coca cola can corrode metail; if it can do that then it can melt all that fat. Down the coke with lipitor bites. Eat this while you’re young. Or when you’re old enough and too far gone to say it’s too late to start eating healthy.

45 Mercer St # A
New York, NY 10013
(212) 343-9012

I’m going to rave, and no one can stop me. I was a fan of Cendrillon even before I got there by virtue of the book published by its owners and chefs, Romy Dorotan and Amy Besa. Memories of Philippine Kitchens is a beautiful book because of the stories and Neil Oshima’s pictures. When I found out that lunch at the Cendrillon was part of my relatives’ itinerary, I was ecstatic. Of course, being all that excited heightened the danger of the high expectations not being matched by the actual dining experience. I’ve heard mixed reviews, the bad ones mostly from Filipinos. Well, I don’t know what those bad reviewers ordered, but I was happy, happy, happy with everything about

the restaurant. The location was fabulous, with chic shops lining Mercer Street. (The Gourmet Garage some steps away, one of Heath Ledger’s stops on his last day alive, is a toys r’ us for domestic divas like me. The olive selection (with taste test) rivals Zabar’s.) The interiors – – global with strong Filipino touches. The food! The food! Filipino fusion without trying too hard to be fusion, and trying too hard to be Filipino. Amazing, sublime twists on the lumpia and the ukoy.

As soon as I get the chance, I’m going to go back.

Ground Level Net 2 Bldg, 3rd Ave. Bonifacio Global City

A fine restaurant. Great interiors. A good example of Filipino fusion. We got the sampler dinner – 7 courses, 12 dishes, all paced out just right so that your stomach can adjust to the next course. Notable were the shitake soup and the tuna ceviche.

What kept it from getting five stars is that the food was somewhat overflavored. Too saucy. I mean, wagyu beef does not need much help except for the subtlest of flavors, but Chef Laudico’s rendition had it smothered in red sauce; it tasted just like your lola’s kaldereta. Good, but you just want to scrape the sauce all off to taste how wagyu really tastes.

Check out our photos of our Christmas Eve dinner: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=24327&id=631171910

Note: I gave this 4 stars after our Christmas dinner, but after another dinner last June, I’m promoting this to 5 stars. The dinner was exceptional. Loved the shitake mushroom puree, the blue cheese mashed potato, the duck patotim, the adobo overload!

2277 Chino Roces Ave. Makati City

Little Tokyo is a wonderful surprise in an area better known (or notorious) for pirated DVDs. It’s nice to walk around the courtyard to choose the Japanese restaurant that will be to your liking and within your budget. Tucked away in there are a number of Japanese restaurants all frequented by Japanese expats, so you know they’re good and authentic. But if budget’s not an issue, then you don’t even need to enter the courtyard. Fronting the deeveedee deeveedee den is Seryna. Ambience is cozy, with a low ceiling and interesting decor of rich wood and slate. The food’s excellent. I’ve never met a sashimi I didn’t like so it’s a given that their sashimi platters would be delightful. The sukiyaki uses fresh top-grade ingredients. The uni (sea urchin) tempura is melt-in-your mouth, eyeballs-roll-up good. Service is tops! The server even discouraged us from ordering a second order of Sukiyaki unless we’re sure we could finish the generous serving of the first one. She said she didn’t want to see good food go to waste. The only negative point is the unisex washroom. It’s quite clean, but I have a personal aversion to unisex restrooms. But that’s just me. Overall, this is one of the city’s best Japanese restaurants. I’m going back for the uni!

I have been busy transferring reviews from my multiply site. And now, I just want to rest a bit and say something from the present.

A blog visitor led me to the sites of scrapbookers here at blogspot and elsewhere. And I was amazed at the talent of Pinay scrapbookers. That was something I tried to get into many years ago. Bought the books and scissors and bag, the whole shebang, but so far I’ve produced very little. The only time I get to complete a project is when it has to be used for a special event and usually the thing goes to somebody else, which means I have nothing to show for it.

My top 3 excuses:
– No working space
– No time
– Expensive photo printing costs

Real reasons:
– Procrastination
– Laziness
– Fear of the mess
– Fear of coming up with ugly stuff
– Expensive photo printing costs

But the creative journaling workshop got me in the mood. And that may be a slow start to eventually get into something bigger like scrapbooking. I need to conquer my fears too. And I will. And I need to solve my procrastination habit. I will. Tomorrow.

Maga Center, Paseo de Magallanes and Fort

We enter a crowded resto. We sit on the no-nonsense chairs, more comfortable than aesthetic, around an old skool formicaesque table. We almost do not have to look at the menu, as our orders will be the no-brainer, “the usual.” For me, it is binagoongang liempo. For my husband, the crispy beef ribs. We add a tall glass of maiz con hielo that reminds me of summers when my mom would hoard cans of creme style corn and our yayas would work out their bicep muscles churning crushed ice on demand. All time favorites. No surprises. No nouveau twists. No pretensions. In an ambiance that does not require prettying up. Just food that tells you that there are places you can run to when you want the world to be familiar, simple, and real.

Now, THAT is comfort food!

Unit 1512 Forbeswood Heights, Rizal Drive corner Burgos Circle, Fort Bonifacio Global City, Taguig

If your restaurant or culinary repertoire has no clear, cohesive concept, do not be tempted to label it as comfort food. You will just give yourself a standard that will be too difficult to meet. You’re setting yourself up for failure if you take on the responsibility to relax frazzled nerves, mend broken psyches, and warm up cold hearts. Your adobo has to taste exactly like how Lola Pacing or Yaya Sabel cooked it. And you better have blizzard-consistency champorado with a can of Alaska evaporated milk by the side so I can use the milk to write my name on the porridge.

From the outside, in the dining spaces done in posh but generic zen, to the ultra uncomfortable chairs, there is nothing about Basilio’s that says, Come to mama and have some comfort food. What clues you in on the all-too-subtle concept is the 500-page essay on the menu that describes comfort food as “not fusion,” no pretensions, but with just a little twist from the usual. Okay, that confuses, not comforts me.

Then you look at the dishes on the list and you think, these look like fusion, but you’re not sure exactly what categories and cultures are being fused.

So anyway, never mind the concept. Let’s just eat.

I like the bite size foccacia bread. The butter was delicious, reminding me of a Geneva breakfast where I tasted the freshest, best butter I’ve ever had. My husband shattered the mystery and delusions of exotic when he pointed out one of the butter packets marked by a price sticker from Price Mart.

Then, appetizers. Always searching the best buffalo wings in the metro, we ordered the wings. (Sorry, I didn’t take notes so I won’t be using the official menu names.) Don’t believe the menu photo; the real servings are more generous. It was underwhelmingly okay. Not bad. Mildly spicy. Effective in staving hunger pangs as we waited for our friend to arrive. The blue cheese dressing was in portion controlled quantity though, but you can always request for more.

I ordered what the waiter referred to as the bestseller – the beef and mushroom pot pie. Imagining that a comfort food rendition of this dish would have thick, gooey, creamy beef stew inside. And the dish comes and it looks fabulous, with the pastry top crust nicely puffed up ala souffle. The fun ends there because inside, the sauce was rather sad and thin – imagine a can of Campbell soup diluted with 3 cans of water. The best thing going for it was it was steaming hot, leaving a burn that numbed my tongue for 3 days. Generous on the mushroom, which I loved, but hello, where’s the beef? Isn’t it that the rule of first mention is that in a dish called beef and mushroom, there should be more beef than mushroom? Okay, I made up that rule, but the price seemed to warrant more cow carcass than fungi, no matter how good tasthing the fungus variety is.

My friend’s 50 or was it 30-clove garlic chicken is comfortingly tasty, but it was just a couple of notches above SM’s rotisserie chicken. Okay, 3 notches. At twice the price.

My husband’s comfort food was fish and chips. Not very memorable, except that it was too oily.

I hesitated to order the macaroni and cheese, another bestseller, because I just had baked mac at a workshop catered by the BSP canteen, and I would hate it if the cafeteria edition is better than this 300+peso version. But I couldn’t resist so we ordered it, center served it, and shared it among the 3 of us. Now, that was good macaroni and cheese. Most mac & cheese versions use fake cheese of the quickmelt family, but this had sharp cheddar and it was several notches above the cafeteria variety. No regrets ordering this.

The saving grace of the meal was the dessert. The molten chocolate cake was exquisite – dark and just the right balance of sweet and bitter. Delish!

All in all, not a bad meal. None of the dishes were awful, with the molten chocolate cake and the mac & cheese as winners. But any little comfort derived from the food was immediately wiped out by the bill — when we subtract the price of the bottle of merlot, there was still more than 2 grand to settle among the 3 of us. Gosh, I needed comforting after that.

Serendra

I thought I would never get to eat at Abe’s. For some reason, every attempt to eat there has always been thwarted by uncontrollable circumstances, by difficulty to reserve, or by being outvoted for other resto choices.

What rice shortage? Abe lets you forget about the food crisis as servers go around with pretty native wicker baskets lined with banana leaves as they serve all you can eat rice for everyone. The height of summer noon, however, is not the most conducive for carbo-loading. What is perfect for a hot, steamy day is the lato salad in a light vinaigrette topped with salted egg. Perfectly refreshing. The squid tactics is just as scrumptious as I remember it back in the Bistro Lorenzo days. Tender squid in a light batter sprinkled with a spicy sweet sauce. The crispy tadyang is good, but nothing we could not replicate at home.

It took all these months, or years, for me to finally check out one of Serendra’s more popular restaurant. Pretty good food. I really wanted to give it a 3.5 stars, but the lato salad helped me round it up to a 4.

I almost dismissed this ubiquitous restaurant because I thought it was owned by the same people who ran the just as ubiquitous Reyes beauty parlors of 35 peso haircut fame. It was a good thing that my friend, Raymund, corrected my silly impression and invited me to lunch there. I’ve been back many times since.

Franchisers, it seems, have the liberty not to offer the full menu. The King’s Court branch did not have the butterscotch banana, and The Fort’s did not serve the salmon belly because the owner found it too fatty. Both of these dishes are good. The banana dessert may taste almost like the ordinary banana cue, but if you close your eyes and focus your energies on your tastebuds, you will sense the hint of butterscotch and a somewhat creme bruleeish quality to it. The Julia Vargas branch carries the whole range, and even offers you the option of slowly baking inside their lukewarm air-conditioned area, or being grilled in their inuman semi-open air section.

Of course, all the branches have to serve the pork and chicken barbecue, served with peanut sauce, java rice, and achara. If that sounds and tastes to you strangely like Aristocrat’s, that’s because the Reyeses aristocracy rules this resto chain. Good, lip-smacking barbecue, even if you skip like I do the condiments. Other satisfying choices are the tuna belly and the grilled squid, albeit it being smallish.

Serendra

In the location, location, location slogan for resto success, Zao hit the jackpot being beside Conti’s since it is the most convenient detour for Conti’s spillover.

I do believe, however, that it can stand on its own merits.

It was 9PM and our last meal was many hours ago, so my brain and my stomach were too hungry to wade through the menu. So in typical Icebreaker thick-faced fashion, I just asked the people on the table beside us what was good to eat. And they highly recommended the short ribs and the spring rolls. Thank you, people on other table, we had a good meal.

The seafood spring roll is the best item among our orders. Mainly because it was the only one that vaguely reminded me of Vietnamese cuisine. My bro in law said it tasted like fresh Oishi prawn crackers, but he means that in a good way. If you run out of leaves for rolling, the waiter will gladly refill.

The ribs were succulent, good to the bone, juicy, fight-for-the last piece goodness with that lovely carcinogenic charcoal flavor. But there was nothing that suggested Vietnamese gustatory delight about it. Nothing that my husband, the backyard grill king, cannot do.

If squids would ever become endangered, my sister would be one of the prime culprits. So, we had to order the calamari-type dish. At best, it was okay.

And of course, I had to have cafe da – cold Vietnamese drip coffee with condensed milk. Yum!

So, if you’re looking for Vietnam in a bowl, Hanoi in a plate, Saigon this is probably not the best place to go. But if you’re looking for flavorful, filling meal, friendly service, with a not-too-pricey bill, when you’re famished and Conti’s is full, or even when it’s not, come to Zao’s.