Barrio Fiesta : what happened to you?

A week post X'mas season, my girls beg me to cook  kare-kare at home. They had too much of pastas and salads and missing their most favorite Filipino dish. Yet until then, I hadn't replenished my pantry and hadn't done marketing. I was still counting on finishing the holidays' left overs.

So one of these afternoons (January2011), we were out on the road  for an errand. It was already past 1pm and we hadn't taken lunch yet. Passing somewhere thru Roxas Blvd. - Malate area, we saw Barrio Fiesta, one of my favorite Filipino restos. I haven't been there for the longest time  and said to my girls: there you could have one of the best karekare in town.

It was a Saturday. My girls asked about the why almost empty BF (Barrio Fiesta). There was only another table occupied plus ours. I thought it might be because of the low-peak hour, after lunch .

sago-gulaman

We were there only for karekare and just added sizzling shrimp gambas for husband. We are trying hard to limit his pork/beef/innards favoritism. Bad for the heart.
Since it had been a long time since I had eaten there, I checked what was going on to their menu. Everything looked familiar except for the zooming of prices. Well, nothing stays cheap these days. I was tempted to compare BF's prices to the latest Filipino restos that have been mushroomed since the last visit I had here. I was thinking about the likes of Kanin Club ( see here), Bagoong Club ( see here), Tres Cuisine and many to mention others. Ofcourse they are not as big as BF yet but in quality of dishes, the latter has to take a closer look to these rising  pinoy restos. And getting back to the prices, Bf's menu is a lot expensive, almost x2 in some of the common dishes. On top of this, they (this particular branch) couldn't even afford to serve filtered water, only tap water.

Obviously it was a wrong decision to take lunch here when it's past noon and our tummies were all ranting bad. But I was thinking the non-busy hours, with almost no other guests to attend to,  would expedite the serving of food. I was not sure if our hungriness had shorten our patience or was it really long before our foods were served. whatever, we were not so happy about the service.

Still, wondering about which comes first?- the chicken or the egg ? - our ill mood or their bad service? The only two dishes we had at BF got 4 disaster  thumbs down :( from the 4 of us.

shrimp gambas_omg! too-ooo salty, husband's health in high danger!



kare-kare- omg again! the peanut sauce could be mistaken as oil sauce!!! and when we taste it_
spoiled peanut taste was very strong. Non of us took a second spoon and just left the plates untouched.
Hungry and disappointed, I choose not to add insult to injury and prevent further unnecessary incident, I told to my family to shrug their shoulders and we would just buy food to nearer somewhere.  I called the waiter and asked for the bill. While paying _ I couldn't keep to myself and told him about the disappointing dishes and in return he replied : ay ganon ba mam? sige po sasabihin ko nalang sa cook ( is that so mam? ok, I will just tell it to our cook). period and nothing else. 

We ran fast away from Barrio Fiesta and  had  a hearty meals at Mcdo.