Valentine’s Day Food Roundup

My husband and I always love celebrating Valentines day together. So far, we’ve celebrated 13 Valentines days as a couple, and still counting! Here’s our day’s food roundup. 🙂

We started the day with a trip to Risa Chocolates’ chocolate kitchen! If you’re a chocoholic like me, you will love Risa Chocolates. Their kitchen is near SM Southmall, at BF Almanza (a few meters away from the guard house). The best way to enjoy chocolates is to eat it with your chocoholic friends, so we bought a few extra boxes of pralines and had a great time eating it with our connect group. Now that we know where their chocolate kitchen is, we’ll definitely visit again soon. Like next week.

For lunch, we decided to try out Sir Raffles, which serves authentic Singaporean cuisine. My husband ordered their hainanese chicken, which was good, and the portion was generous (especially the chicken rice). It was good, but I’m afraid we will always be partial to the Hainanese chicken of Ate Yellie. Hands down the best Hainanese chicken I’ve tasted so far. Sir Raffles’ Hainanese chicken is our second favorite.

I ordered their lamb curry with roti prata. Goodness, what a treat this dish is. The tender lamb goes really well with red curry. The heat of the curry was pleasant, not overpowering. It takes nothing away from my enjoyment of the dish. Their roti prata was really delicious. We ordered another plate of it. The simple pleasure of tearing off a piece of warm roti prata and dipping it in red curry is enough to make me want to go back. Next time we’ll call and order the claypot rice in advance. They say it takes about an hour to cook. Sir Raffles is in front of Puregold Jr, BF Homes Paranaque. Along Aguirre St.

After lunch, we went to our home connect meeting and what do you know…we ate more sweets. Haha. These are from Ate Yellie. My favorite is the walnut swirl!

After our home connect meeting, my husband and I went to Mama Lous for dinner.

We were thirty minutes early for our reservation but they accommodated us anyway. It was a busy night! So many couples and families having dinner together. This place is pretty special for me and my husband, so we always go back here. Also, we like the food and the friendly service.

Of course my husband ordered the marbled ribeye steak. That’s his favorite.

I prefer the more delicate fish and mushroom risotto. Each bite for me is heavenly. It makes me want to learn how to cook risotto. It’s a heartwarming dish, and leaves you craving for more risotto!

The set meal included blueberry cheesecake, but my husband and I simply cannot consider a visit to Mama Lou’s complete without our usual tiramisu and coffee. Thank God it’s available last night! This is, without a doubt, one of our favorite desserts. The perfect way to end a good dinner. 🙂

That’s it, our Valentines Day food roundup! Next year uli!

Sambo Kojin – SM Southmall

Hubby and I have been meaning to try out this buffet place at SM Southmall for weeks but we only found the time for it this Friday. Been hearing a lot of things about Sambo Kojin and I must admit, we did enjoy our dinner. The maki, sushi and sashimi table was my first stop. Everything was okay, but my favorite was the salmon sashimi.

As for the meat table, I prefer the salmon belly and the different kinds of beef. The bacon-wrapped asparagus was good too, but the bacon-wrapped shitake mushroom tasted really weird, though. It made the bacon taste funky.

The Japanese rice is also good, but next time I won't order it anymore. I didn't get to eat much of it anyway. I just enjoyed the sashimi and beef and I was all good. The plate of shrimp tempura wasn't too good, it was soggy by the time it got to our table.

If there's one thing that they need to work on, it's their desserts. The cakes were dry, and these shot glasses of sugar on steroid may look cute but they're just awful. That shot glass with the caramel and cream did not taste like either caramel or cream at all. I honestly did not take more than a spoonful of each shot glass.

Other than that, I am pretty much happy with the food, and the service is pretty friendly too. We're definitely planning to go back soon.

 

Speculoos Cookie Butter

One of our good friends (the same one that got us hooked to Yushoken) made us try out Speculoos Cookie Butter. This spread is a bit hard to describe. You know that warm feeling you get when you were a kid and you walk into a bakery and smell the freshly-baked bread? That's what this is. It's a warm feeling in a jar. Take a bit of toast, slather a generous helping of cookie butter on it and I swear you'll be hooked. Like, forever.

It costs P525 per jar, but I let me just say…It. Is. Worth. It. Get it at selected Blue Kitchen outlets.

 

Ramen Yushoken is Crazy Awesome. Srsly.

I never considered myself a ramen person. I never really liked ramen noodles (except for that phase back in college when my room mates and I would eat instant ramen after we've burned through our weekly allowance, and that doesn't count). All that changed when I tasted Yushoken's ramen. I kid you not, their ramen is amazing.

Their menu is really basic. When I first saw it, I was kind of doubtful that it would be good because the menu was really short. For the ramen, they only had shiyo, shoyu, miso and tantamen; it was simple, straightforward and no frills. For their side dishes, they had aji tamago, gyoza and karaage. Even the place itself was kind of simple and no frills.

My favorite is the shoyu ramen. I've only been here twice and I have not yet moved on to their other ramen because I'm still in love with shoyu. On the very few times that I actually eat ramen in a Japanese restaurant, I always order shoyu ramen because I like the taste of the broth. When I tried Yushoken's shoyu ramen, I was simply amazed. The broth was really great. It was more than great, it's stellar. It was rich and complex and I appreciated the flavors of soy sauce and sesame seeds. It's the kind of ramen you don't easily forget.

Their gyoza was seared just right and it had just the right amount of ginger in the mixture inside to make it a pleasant mouthful.

Their aji tamago was also surprisingly delightful. The delicate umami taste accentuated the soft yolk and paired very nicely with the ramen. Their karaage (fried boneless chicken) is also pretty awesome.

Next time, I'm thinking of trying other kinds of ramen, like the shio ramen (light, milky broth) or the miso ramen.

Their menu may not be extensive or complicated, but everything we've ordered so far has been wonderful. If you're planning to try them out, head on over to Molito (beside Alabang Town Center). It's best to arrive around 11am to beat the busy lunch crowd. They only make a limited number of bowls everyday so it's best to come before 7pm so that they don't run out of noodles. Yes, they run out of noodles.

Also, they don't allow take out orders. This is to make sure the quality of their ramen is not compromised. If you love ramen, this ramen house is a must try.

 

Holiday Chocolate Fix from Risa Chocolates

I love chocolates. I am a self-confessed chocoholic, and my favorite kind is dark chocolate. One of our favorite places to get dark chocolates is Risa Chocolates. My husband prefes their coffee flavored crave bars, but I always order their bittersweet cuadro bars.

No nuts, no marshmallows, no fruits. Just plain dark chocolate that reminds me of the taste of tablea. I just love it. As much as possible, I always buy made to order, handmade or homemade merchandise. Aside from supporting local industries and home based businesses, I find that most of these businesses take pride in their work and make products that are better than commercialized counterparts. They also take the time to get to know many of their clients and cultivate a good relationship with them. Risa Chocolates is a great example of this.

This time I tried something new. I ordered 6 pieces of salted caramel praline. I like caramel, but not too much. I was just curious how it would taste with their awesome dark chocolate. When I bit into the dainty little square of chocolate, the caramel just oozed out. It was wonderful. I was expecting something too sweet and sticky but the caramel was only mildly sweet, even my husband (who never eats anything with caramel on it) loved the pralines. I want to order again next year and try other flavors. I want to try their tiramisu and strawberry vinaigrette pralines. Well, actually, I wanna try them all. 🙂

Merry Christmas to me!

 

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Mesa, the Second Time Around

My husband and I went back to Mesa today to try out some new things in their menu.

We started out with the tofu salad. I love soft tofu, I love century egg, and I love shrimp (even if I am allergic to them). Who would have thought that combining these elements would make such a wonderful appetizer. I kind of had an extremely strong craving for Cyma's Avga Me Roka afterwards. This appetizer is a must-try, and I'll definitely order this again next time.

Next we ordered their squid in olive oil. On our first visit, we had the adobo squid and enjoyed that immensely, so I thought we'd try another squid dish. My husband and I absolutely loved this a lot more. The garlic-y and smoky taste was truly pleasant, and the squid was soft and tender. There was nothing to dislike about the dish. Mesa definitely knows how to do squid.

We also ordered the boneless crispy pata, which was okay except that I found it a bit underseasoned for my taste and the skin needed to be fried a bit longer because it did not quite reach that crispy texture that we've come to expect from crispy pata.

It was a pleasant meal, all things considered. The service is very prompt and friendly, the food was great (non-crispy crispy pata notwithstanding), the presentation quite thoughtful; it's a really easy restaurant to love. And like what my husband said, nothing comforts you more like familiar food, and Mesa serves familiar food, with a modern twist.

 

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Le Ching–No Frills Chinese Food

Today my husband and I went to Greenhills with my brother and sister-in-law. We had lunch at Le Ching (after waiting in line to get seated, the lunch crowd was crazy). The thing I like about Le Ching is that the food is simple, straightforward and no frills. Even the furniture is quite utilitarian and not very comfortable. You eat, pay up, and go.

I ordered the fish and tofu. Not exactly stellar, but it was good enough. Again, just simple, no-frills, decent Chinese food.

Everybody else ordered the asado rice. My husband found it to be on the dry side, but decent enough.

We had several orders of beancurd roll, which was pleasantly meaty and firm, but my favorite among the dimsum that we ordered is their siomai.

I think it is my second favorite siomai (first place still goes to Masuki). My pet peeve with siomais…clumps of pork fat. I just hate those. Le Ching's siomai had a pleasant texture, no clumps of pork fats, and it tasted good. I think I will keep coming back if only for the siomai. 🙂

 

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Sumo Sam’s Beef Ozuyaki

Sumo Sam is one of our favorite Japanese restaurants. My favorite ramen is the one with shrimp tempura in it. The handmade noodles, flavorful miso soup, and shrimp tempura is just absolutely exquisite.

My husband prefers the wagyu ramen. I like the shrimp tempura more, but the wagyu beef was tender and had a pleasant, smoky taste.

Of course we always order the California maki, and of course it was good (as usual).

The most pleasant surprise for me was the beef ozuyaki roll. It was our first time to order it and it was really quite awesome. That first bite into the warm beef and mushroom center was a bit jarring at first, but the flavor just spreads pleasantly in your mouth. The mushrooms in the middle had a slightly salty, buttery taste, and the juices taste a bit like bone marrow. It's really a must try in their excellent menu. I'm certainly going to add this to our usual order everytime we eat at Sumo Sam.

 

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Awesome Dinner at Mama Lou’s

My husband and I went out for burgers at this new burger joint in BF Homes (itago nalang natin sa pangalang BM). Goodness, for P165 per burger, it was AWFUL! A-W-F-U-L. My tongue felt itchy and hot with the taste of preservatives, and the “bacon” that was supposed to be on the “beef patty” was nothing more than bacon-flavored meatloaf. It was horrible. To wash that awful snack off our memory and palate, we decided to head on to one of our favorite restaurants in the area.

Mama Lou's is a place where we usually go for a quiet dinner, especially when the day has been rough. It's relaxing, the food is great, and the people are friendly.

We started off with bread and Oriental Salad. The serving was big, I think it can be shared by three people. The dressing was a teeny bit too salty for me, but my husband enjoyed it thoroughly.

My husband ordered marbled ribeye steak, medium rare. I just love how they do their steak. It's soft, cooked perfectly, and explodes with the taste of garlic, beef and mushrooms. It has this pleasant melts-in-your-mouth quality that I loved. I don't usually eat steaks, but I think I will order this next time.

I ordered their grilled salmon. Of course I forgot to ask what part of salmon they are using, and I was a little disappointed that they didn't use a bigger fillet. The disappointment quickly faded after the first bite, though. The fish was flaky and moist, just perfect. I loved it!

We finished dinner off with Italian tiramisu. It is so deceptively simple-looking, but I fell in love with it instantly. The coffee-soaked lady fingers and fluffy mascarpone-cheese cream in between and on top was delightful. I enjoyed every creamy bite.

Mama Lou's never disappoints us. I absolutely love the dining experience.

 

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Mesa–Reasonably-Priced Pinoy Comfort Food

For our date night last night, my husband and I were trying to decide whether we want to eat Italian, Japanese or Chinese cuisine. We went to Southmall's food strip and ended up going to Mesa. It was our first time there, and I must say, it was a pleasant surprise.

We started the meal off with baked scallops. The scallops were soft and it had a pleasant cheesy, buttery, and garlic-y taste.

Everytime we eat at Filipino restaurants for the first time, we always order kare-kare. It's our go-to Filipino comfort food. Mesa's kare-kare did not disappoint. The beef cuts and tripe were so soft and did not have that gamey after taste that twalya sometimes has. The serving size was good for two people, and the price was very reasonable for the quality and quantity of the food.

We were also in the mood for some squid, so we ordered adobong pusit. All I can say is that I can eat two more plates of that, sarap papakin. It doesn't have an overwhelming fishy/squid smell and taste. It was a pleasant, comforting dish.

Partnered with plain rice and calamansi juice, we really enjoyed our dinner. Mesa is a great place to get awesome Pinoy comfort food at a reasonable price. Plus, the service is prompt and friendly.

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