Shellacked by Backyard BBQ

During our most recent Boracay (Nov.'12), Backyard BBQ at D'Mall was up on the list for us to dine in cos 1st we hadn't tried it yet and 2nd my younger daughter's staples include bbq ofcourse. And there's 3rd_ the buzz over the net hyped my curiosity.
One of the evenings, we went but all tables were occupied plus there were q's waiting next. We didn't have the energy to q so we ate at...

...Shakey's. It was quite a consolation that it was by the beach, haha. Besides, that time my girls had enough of the island's dishes and already craving for fastfood fix. Shakey's pizza & chicken by the beach tasted so much crunchier and delish, Case in point._even Jollibee burgersteak would surely taste better when eaten at Boracay, haha.

So one other night, again we were scouting for a place to dine. We passed by BBBQ again and thought we would get lucky cos the place particularly looked not full that night. Only to find out that tables were already fully booked. So they do reservations here huh?



So we planned for a daytime meal at BBBQ, lunchtime. Same thing. Still full packed. wt#!!!!

So I concluded to my girls to ditch the idea of Backyard BBQ, atleast for this season. Better luck next time. And added : if you want bbq...

..here I give you.. your favorite Gerry's, haha. We settled for a lunch at Gerry's Grill in Station 2 with no q hassle at all.

Plus our all time favorite kare-kare. I told ya when we are ultra hungry we reach for our comfort foods.

Everyone was happy then. We thought we'll just have bbq at our backyard when we get home, haha.

Crisostomo @ ATC

Here's another themed resto at the relatively ( I had to add the word cos I've been referring to it as new for quite sometime now, haha) new wing of Alabang Town Center (ATC). Crisostomo is very Noli Me Tangere/El Filibusterismo. 

Quite detailed, if I may. Check the name of our waiter_ Tiburcio! I checked other servers and all the names I remembered from Noli and Fili.

Browsing the menu, you get_ (samples) from the vegetable section : Noli Me Talong, Pilosopong Pinakbet, Okra Clara. (samples) from the meat section : Tadyang ni Tiago, Mechado ala Bonifacio, Crispin at Basilio. (samples) from the salad section : Ensaladang Erehe, Crazy Sisa Squid... and many many other interesting entree names.



Lots of them but only two made it to our table. We were there to fill up our ranting stomach, it was just a random lunch. Not for degustation event, haha. We didn't order drink from here even. My girls bought their milk teas outside ( I think Gong-Cha?) which the resto kindly allowed.

kkk bbq. whatelse.is.new? You can browse all my pinoy resto posts here and always my younger daughter orders bbq. Call it deprivation. At home we rarely have bbq, if ever, it must be a take out from a certain resto. So when we eat outside. definitely she bbqued!
This one she loved big time. Just like the rest of the bbq's, haha.

kare-kare kura. ok, you may do the same as I mentioned above ( browse my archive, haha), to find out that kare-kare is another default dish we have when we eat filipino outside. Especially, this time around that I intentionally not cooking this favorite at home. Cos we are so "only 3 eating".
We enjoyed this kare-kare, we ordered for more rice. But we always like kare-kare. In this town, you would rarely find bad kare-kare.



When we are hungry like that, we play safe. Like we order dishes that we already know would serve us right, no matter what.

Given more space, the detailing of Crisostomo would surely be more interesting.



Detailed even more_ this is the bill holder. nice or what?

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.

Kanin Club

Finally we made it to Kanin Club, Westgate Alabang. Imagine, it's relatively within my neighborhood and only this weekend that we were able to eat there. It was always full and a lot others were waiting outside on the instances that we passed by the area. Usually, lunch/dinner outside is imprumptu, so I don't get to do reservations.

We entered the resto 30 minutes before 12 noon. I was kindah surprised to find out that the place was uncrowded on a Sunday lunch. We even got to choose our table at 2nd level.

But it didn't take much longer for the seats to get occupied. In a matter of 15 minutes after our arrival, daughter said there were already a queue outside.

We were actually here to taste the famous crunchy dinuguan. I've been depriving myself of fatty food for the sake of hubby's health condition. This time, I was going over the top with this sinful dish in the name of high blood provocation. I also allowed husband to indulge just once this time.Well, as everyone who tried this already said_ it's sinfully yummyness! It's actually crackling pork skin (chicharon) bathed in pork blood.

The girls didn't even bother to glance at our black dish. Their attention glued in full to their forever favorite dish_ beef kare-kare.



We only had these two plus a bowl of rice in our table. But hey, if you had these super hearty dishes, I don't think you could afford to have an extra appetite for other dishes. We couldn't.

We didn't stay long, after less than an hour our lunch was done and on our way out the tiny resto was already full with many others waiting for their turn outside.



Look daughter was carrying a doggie bag? Nah, our left overs. We had them as dinner at home on that evening.

Bagoong Club

I've been wanting to dine here at Bagoong Club for the longest time, but I reside at the opposite end against  the resto's location (Quezon City). So blame it to distance why only now. I was so late and it hurts cos I'm a certified bagoong lover :))). On the other hand, I guess, those who are yet to try Kanin Club ( which is in my neighborhood _Alabang) and live in the north could relate.

The resto looked like a house to me and could have been one. The lobby was a usual sala (living room) of a house.

This area had lots of photos of the celebrities who had dined in here. Famous faces that validated how late I was.



Trivia on the paper plate mats.
I just wonder how would you smuggle, (which means to transport something secretly cos it's illegal), a dish as smelly as bagoong, haha.

Settled in a table, a complimentary sampler of two of their bagoong concoctions was served and yes came with singkamas slices. One version was called bagoong pag-ibig (love) which was a sweet blend and the other one was bagoong umaga (morning) which was spicy.

The menu was an announcement of Bagoong Club's original concoctions of our Filipino dishes which they dubbed in playful new names. For instance _ pork dishes were under the category of puro kababuyan which literally translated in English as all pigs and well, didn't sound so bad after all but in our native language it meant another thing which actually is interestingly funny!

It didn't take more to fill up our table with plated dishes.

So started with this crunchy ukoy ( shrimp-veggies fritter). Dipped in a vinaigrette, everyone in the table enjoyed munching this, except for one - ME! I don't know, but I'm quite sensitive about the cooking oil. I easily could detect  strong taste -other oil, I use corn oil at home which to me doesn't alter the original flavor of the dish.

Ofcourse, we had the sampler plate with four other versions - europa ( with parsley/basil?), the one with crab aligue (forgot the name) and the kids requested for a repeat of the pag-ibig which was the sweetened one and the umaga for husband chili tooth.

I was not sure if it was a good or bad thing, but the kids learned to eat bagoong ! One thing I was sure of, it was much better if they learned to eat one new vegetable dish.

Blissful marriage - bagoong and green mango, only this mango plate was not so green. almost ripe, but just the same , took less than 5 minutes to get lost.

Ginataang hubad na kuhol ( coconut creamed snails out of shells). Very tasty and quite interesting. Highly recommended.

Inihaw na pusit na busog sa bopis (grilled squid stuffed with bopis-sorry no translation ). Another must try dish, something different form the regular grilled squid.

Krispy's karekare. My girls are self- proclaimed kare-kare experts. Bagoong Club prided itself with award winning kare-kare version. Let's see. . .
First of all, we had a major problem here. They didn't have beef kare-kare, which my expert girls' only choice of  kare-kare. They don't eat innards. so the only option was the crispy pata. On the other hand, cuz' Bianx doesn't eat kare-kare at all but loves crispy pata. The solution was to separate the crispy pata from the kare-kare sauce. Everybody's happy! Bianx enjoyed the crispy pata and my gils mixed their own kare-kare.

Their version was on the sweet side so my girls loved it! Personally, I found it too solid. Too much peanut. I would prefer a milder one but I like the idea of crispy pata kare-kare, It was crunchy and peanut-ry.



Service was quick and attentive. Value for money was fair. Yet, I was not so sold on their bagoong concoctions. Nothing to rave about, just regular sauteed bagoong with twist not so surprising. I expected more and quite not delivered to.

sa Gerry's na lang . . .

One of the restos we frequent most often is Gerry's Grill. It's like our safe ground when we are in the pit of appetence.





It's not really a favorite, it's more of "sa Gerry's na lang" .

kare-kare

pork bbq

pork sisig

The familiar dishes makes it our comfort zone. It's like Mcdo when we want to eat Filipino dishes.

beef stew w cheese

tuna kinilaw

It's like an extension of my own kitchen where I cook common pinoy dishes and toppings came from my own experimental cook book.

balut & tufo

It's like when we try new resto and foods disappoint us, we say : "sana nag Gerry's na lang tayo" ( we should have gone to Gerry's instead).

sago

No complications .