Birthday dinner at Vieux Chalet
When a restaurant is good, customers return. When a restaurant is great, customers return again and again. I can’t remember anymore how many times I’ve been to Vieux Chalet having been a regular since I was a law student. My kids are now 15 and 14, so, go figure. June 17 was my husband’s birthday and dinner was at Vieux Chalet. What an excuse not to observe my diet. 
Finally got the chance too to take photos of the house specialty, Tony’s chicken — marinated, stuffed with fresh herbs and baked to perfection.
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King Bee Chinese Restaurant
If there’s one deplorable fact about living in the suburb, it’s the shortage on good restaurants. In Antipolo, there’s Vieux Chalet and not much else. I especially missed eating in good Chinese restaurants. There’s Luyong in Marikina and Charlie’s along Marcos Highway but neither measures up to the standards of authentic Chinese grub. But all that has changed. We have a new addiction and it’s called King Bee.
Located along Marcos Highway (between Sta. Lucia East Mall and the Masinag-Sumulong junction), it offers the kind of Chinese food that makes you come back for more again and again…
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Carlo’s Pizza
Somewhere between the two home depots in the Ortigas area is a row of restaurants. Some are familiar names, other’s aren’t. We were hunting for lighting accessories yesterday and, after going around the stores in the first home depot, we realized we were hungry. No wonder — it was almost dinner time. There weren’t too many choices; most of the restaurants looked more like watering holes (okay, there is a nearby auto place too selling second-hand cars so I suppose that the male-oriented eateries shouldn’t be surprising). There was Dencio’s (too boring already) and right beside it was a place called Carlo’s Pizza.
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Banapple pie
Friday, May 16, was my sister-in-law’s birthday. A few days before that, a brother-in-law arrived from overseas from a month-long vacation. So, it was a double celebration on Friday. We had dinner at Ten Titas (rumored to be owned by TV personality Marvin Agustin) at Gateway Mall in Cubao and, before driving home, we had coffee and dessert at Banapple Pies and Cheesecakes along Katipunan Avenue. I wasn’t able to take photos at Ten Titas (it was a fast and furious meal) but, for the record, I enjoyed my kare-kare very much. I did take time to take a few photos at Banapple, however.
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Ever had dessert at Pho Hoa?
We are Pho Hoa regulars. We eat at this Vietnamese restaurant as a family; my daughter goes there with her friends as well. The nice thing about Pho Hoa is that whichever branch you eat at, the food is the same. That’s saying a lot because franchising often means loss of quality control. I like the consistency because it takes away the hit-and-miss element of dining.
In all those times that we have enjoyed Vietnamese food at Pho Hoa, we never ordered dessert. As a rule, we have dessert in a place different from we have our meal. See, from experience, very few restaurants whose specialty consists of full meals offer equally good desserts.
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Manna Bakery
We were an hour early for an eight o’clock appointment yesterday and we drove around the Loyola area looking for a good place to have breakfast. Not Starbucks, definitely. Not McDonald’s either. We considered Seattle’s Best but the parking area was bathed in sunlight and getting into the car afterwards would have been like getting into a hot oven. We left Katipunan Road and entered Esteban Abada Street. That was where we found Manna Bakery. We hadn’t been there before, we hadn’t even heard of it, but the place was cozy, clean and inviting.
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Food tripping in Boracay
On our second day in Boracay, we went island-hopping and snorkeling in the morning. We didn’t get back to White Beach until around 1.00 p.m. We showered and changed and had lunch at around 3.00 p.m. Never mind the lateness of the hour. It was a delicious lunch. Our friend, PJ Juinio, left the hotel ahead of all of us and ordered the food so that everything would be cooked by the time everyone got there. Nice friend, eh? He’s the seafood expert so he was on familiar grounds.
There means the talipapa or the village market…
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Five Cows: ice cream is fine, but…
I must have passed by Five Cows at TriNoma more than once but never really paid attention. Perhaps, I wouldn’t have today either if I didn’t have a bad craving for dessert. The point is, I never heard of Five Cows before. I didn’t know what kind of reputation it has, I didn’t have expectations, I only had hopes based on what I saw on its glass cake display case…
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