Chili's

J and I went back to our old favorite Chili's after almost two years.

Guiltless Grilled Salmon

Blue cheese porterhouse steak

Gurts

Pancake House's very own yoghurt dessert: GURT'S.

Blueberry cheesecake and white chocolate yoghurt P155. It is delicious as that of Red Mango's, the yohgurt is tangy and sweet and 95% fat free. We love that they have a generous serving of the toppings.

Cafe Amadeo

Forgettable coffee and cheesecake at Cafe Amadeo, the cafe at Manila Doctor's Medical Tower.

Iced coffee and kapeng barako

Strawberry cheesecake

Charlie's Grind and Grill

Cheesesteak

Angus Burger

BreadTalk

I like Breadtalk's baked products because they are unique and tasty but I seldom buy there because I feel uncomfortable on how they display their bread in the open, expose to all kinds of elements in the air. I find it unhygeinic. I do not know if I am just paranoid but in the few times that I have eaten their bread, I get sick with colds after.

Anyways, I wanted to get rid of the bad feeling and taste of the cream puff and croissant that I forced myself to buy something from Breadtalk. I got these:

1. Tomato Sausage, P39. It is like a pig in a blanket sandwich. I like it.

2. Hot Chic Floss, P54. I ate this just now and I love it!. I love its spicy taste

30 pesos down the drain

Tsk, tsk, tsk

I thought that I found a winner in the desserts I ordered because they were cheap and from bakery famous for its De Los Reyes Torte, which tastes heavenly. Alas, I was proven wrong.

1. Mini Peach Croissant, P19. This croissant was worse than the one I had at  Delifrance. Its texture was almost similar to a pandesal and had a bland taste.

2. Mini Choco Cream Puff, P11. Same forgettable taste as the croissant.

Add caption

favorite words du jour

1. ILL-ADVISED. Perfect excuse for an obvious gaffe.

2. WALANG BASAGAN NG TRIP. Believe it or not, I discovered this line just today in a blog, and encountered it again a few minutes ago.

3. THERMAGE AND BOTOX. It worked on Charice, and I want one too!

The other cafe in our building

This cafe has bad service, bad food, and mosquitoes. No wonder it is almost always deserted.

Rubbery and bland waffle, P100 with free coffee

still tasted awful even with blueberry

Hot Chocolate, P80. This tasted like Swiss Miss, diluted version.

The only winner in this cafe are the mosquitoes. They had quite a feast courtesy of my legs.

La Maison

J was pestering me all weekend on how he was hankering for steak but I did not share his craving because we just had one that week at Myron's, plus this steak hang-up is becoming an expensive fixation.

For unknown reasons, I finally indulge in J's request (maybe because we watched the Man vs. Food steak challenge episode last weekend and the idea of eating steak was planted in our subconsciousness, aha INCEPTION much?!).

We scouted the GB5 area and we were about to settle in this restaurant besie Chateau 1551 (I don't remember the name) but as we entered teh resto I noticed that the the atmosphere was full of smoke and the smell of the food was all over the restaurant like you were in a sizzling house. The smell would surely stick in our clothes and I hate that when it happens. So J and I ended up at La Maison.

It's only our second time dining here. The first time was like years ago and it was the birthday treat of our friend, thus, we were not familiar with the costs of dining here (which we later found out to be costly!, hehe). I don't what happened to this restaurant but it used to be full but now it is almost deserted (is it because of the location? it's located at the 3rd level of GB5, away from the rest of the dining scene at the ground level).

So-so complimentary bread.


















Love their ceiling decorations with "salakot" lamps


















I had filet mignon, medium. Tender, succulent and delicious.

J's order, Rib-eye Steak. It was also delicious.

After this happy and heavy meal, we watched Inception again at our best-kept secret cinema.

Snak Time

I had my first taste of kwek-kwek yesterday at the building cafeteria. I usually see kwek-kwek being sold at the streets. I was always curious what it was, what it tastes like and what's inside the golden-orangey coating of that oval-shaped popular streeetfood.

Apparently, kwek-kwek is just hard-boiled egg deep-fried in this orange batter. It is best eaten when dipped in vinegar. In fairness, it was not that bad as I have imagined it to be.

Kwek-kwek, P12

What's inside. I really thought kwek-kwek is a day-old chick.

Champorado, P25. My all-time favorite comfort food during rainy days. My hunger was not satisfied by the kwek-kwek, so I ordered champorado. I don't know why but whenever I see champorado, I usually have the compulsion to buy and eat it.

Champorado topped with evaporated milk.

My sweet chocolate sticky rice porridge ready to be devoured.

Inception

Christopher Nolan's Inception rocked our world. One of the best movies we have watched in our young lives. The story is unique and innovative, the cast led by my all-time favorite Leo Dicaprio and my current favorite Joseph Gordon-Levitt were all wonderful, and how it was made was really pure movie magic. No amount of words can describe how we were entralled by this movie. It's a gripping suspense that makes you think during and even after watching the movie.

We so love INCEPTION that we have to watch it twice. Actually, we watched it again so as to better understand and confirm our theories about some aspects of the movie.

PS. Since I'm having an OMG i love Joseph Gordon Levitt moment, I'm watching (500) Days of Summer now. I just find it amazing and coincidental that in this movie, it touches on the subject of architecture and dreams: JGL studied architecture and loves LA's architecture and Zooey talked about her dreams (when she invited JGL for the first in her apartment).

Double Happiness

After Cibo, J and I went to Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf to have dessert (even I wanted to have it in Cibo, boohoo). We ordered doubled chocolate and toblerone cheesecake. Both taste were surprisingly good.

Double chocolate. Yummy marshmallows in uber-rich hot chocolate. Oh what bliss! A perferct way to cap a delicious meal and to warm ourselves in a cold, cold, cold mall.

Toblerone Cheesecake. I was pleased with this cheesecake. It was fresh and moist with a generous amount of toblerone bits. The cheesecakes in CBTF are usually a hit or miss affair, sometimes they have delicious cheesecakes and sometimes you really get the dry ones.

Cibo Bambini

Saturday night dinner at Cibo Bambini, top floor of Power Plant Mall. This is an outdoor dining concept right in the center of the kiddie wing of the mall. J did not like the idea of eating "al fresco", thus, we did not have our dessert here.

Cinque Formaggi. I do not remember what the 5 five cheese were but the 5 types of cheese complement each other to achieve a put-together delicious taste. However, the mozarella made the crust chewy which lessened my enjoyment of eating this pizza. I still prefer a thin and crispy pizza crusts.

Pan-Grilled Pork Chops. An otherwise ordinary porkchop turned into an amazing dish by Cibo. J and I loved this dish, especially the sauce. The meat was tender and tasty and even made more delicious with the sauce. I really want to replicate this dish at home but since I forgot the exact name of the dish, I have no way of finding the recipe in the internet. I think I'll just have to experiment on my own.

Yoshinoya

When all else fails or in my case, if i can't decide where to eat, YOSHINOYA, is my go-to place. I always order their Beef Bowl, it's fast, cheap and delicious.

Fraudulent SM MOA Hypermarket Cashiers

I'm not generalizing all of the SM MOA Hypermarket cashiers but most of them have this illegal, fraudulent and evil practice of not giving the exact change in your grocery payment.

I'm sure I'm not the only victim in this scam. My friends and strangers (who pay before me in the queue) have all experienced this.

I don't know if this is a policy or tolerated practice but I find it weird and appalling that almost everyone of the cashiers are doing it.

I don't know if the cashiers are just plain lazy in giving out the exact change or just plain evil and corrupt PERIOD.

What it irritates me the most is that these cashiers do not have the decency to inform you that they are not giving you the exact change (oh well, who says that thieves should ask permission first before looting you in the middle of the night). They act like it is perfectly normal or an established policy to deprive a customer of his/her exact change. Worse, after being confronted about it, they do not even apologise.

It is not even an excuse to say that you ran out of loose coins, even if it is only one freaking centavo. You are in the business wherein you handle cash and you are SM for crying out loud, you should be responsible and rich enough to put gazillion loose coins in all forms and sized in your cash register.

You betcha, I'm going to report this to the proper authorities.

Chocolate Fire

Typhoon Basyang hit Manila like a mad lola, which resulted in widespread blackout. J and I were bumming around the house enduring the heat and darkness.

Thus, we went out for a walk, and along the way, I was able to convince J to drop by a dessert place I have been reading about in the net, Chocolate Fire at Salcedo Village.

Chocolate Fire offers a wide variety of chocolates, all were mouthwatering that made J and I both confused and excited on what to order. It was overwhelming that we ended up just ordering the safe and usual stuff:

1. a slice of chocolate ganache cake, P170. There was nothing extraordinary about this cake. I've eaten better-tasting and less expensive ganache cakes.

2. a bar of rocky road chocolate, P144. From the looks of it, it seems like a typcial chocolate bar but this turned out to be a super yummy chocolate bar. It was not too sweet and the fillings complemented each other. Too bad, it was kind of pricey.

3. Australian style chocolate milkshake, P150. The taste and texture of thiis shake caught us by surprise. We were expecting a typcial thick and super rich taste but it was the exact opposite. I found it strange at first but it took only a few more sips to make me love this drink. I like its smooth texture and it is not too sweet and heavy in the tummy. I researched a bit and found out that Australian milkshake is really smooth and "thin" and their counterpart for typical American milkshake is called a "thickshake". I really love it and best of all, I did not suffer from lactose intolerance -sweet!

Delifrance

I was aimelessly wandering around the mall when I saw this:

The promo featured two of my favorite things: croissant and promo meals. I immediately went inside and ordered. The almost 30 minutes wait did not irriate me because I was comfortably seated in the sofa reading the latest issue of Preview and other magazines.

But when myy order came, I was disappointed because it looked like this:

huh!?

I asked the server if they ran out of croissant. He replied:

ha?

I told him that the sandwich looks different from the promotional ad/banner. The server still gave me a confused look. I did not pursue the issue anymore because I did not want to argue that day. The only good thing about the sandwich was that it passed my "cross-section" test, which made me forget about my complaint:

The cross-section of the sandwich shows that they did not scrimp on the filling, woohoo : )

In sum, the spaghetti was OK, the sandwich forgettable but I'm not complaining because I was able to kill time for almost two hours while waiting for J.

Sango Burger

J and I have been going to Sango Burger at Little Tokyo for almost 4 years now. We love their burgers especially the meat sauce, and french fries. 

Sango burger also has a branch in Power Plant Mall. But we find their burgers less yummy, the serving of the meat sauce is not that generous and more pricey.

Master Chili Cheese Burger

Regular fries

Barcino otro vez

J and I attended two parties yesterday but we were not quite satisfied or happy on what we ate. Thus, J and I went to Barcino for a nightcap. We ordered the usual, a bottle of red wine, manchego cheese, and callos. This could also be our send-off/pre-victory for Spain for the 2010 World Cup Finals.

Penafiel Joven Roble, P995

Queso manchego, P240 

Callos, P305.

Izakaya Kikufuji

For our usual Friday night date, J and I went to Izakaya Kikufuji in Little Tokyo, Makati. It is one of those unassuming yet charming authentic Japanese restaurants in Little Tokyo. It is a typical Japanese restaurant, spartan in design, with a spacious sushi bar occupying the center of the restaurant and full of Japanese expats.

We ordered Go Ten Mori Shasimi Set and Ebi Tempura. The shasimi set consists of 5 kinds of fish: tuna, salmon, sea urchin and two imported fish whose names I forget. The shasimi set was fresh and delicious but the two imported fish were exceptionally delicious. The best thing about it all was that the price was relatively cheap considering that we had 5 kinds of fish.

Go ten mori, P560

Ebi Tempura, P205

Surprise of the night: They gave us a free draft beer coupon that we immediately used. *happy*