Time for another quickie, this time about a newly opened restaurant in BGC. So! Only after googling it did I learn that this unassuming place is owned by celebrity chef (?) Erwan Heussaff, or more commonly known as the boyfriend of Anne Curtis and the brother of Solenn 'so yummy' Heussaff (okay, that sounded so weird..). Well, to be honest, I couldn't care less if it were Obama's, because my judgment of a restaurant is never affected by who owns it (sabeee?!)
So in my previous quickie post, I was talking about how we have limited food choices given the location of our office and the price range of the nearby restaurants. But on this particular payday Friday, we actually went an extra mile to visit one of the popular bakeshops & restaurants in BGC - *drum roll please* - Conti's!
They say Bonifacio Global City is one of the best gastronomic destinations in Metro Manila, but if you're like us who work in a building located in the outskirts of BGC (read: isang tumbling na lang to C5), then I dare say you have some pretty limited options. This, of course, is true when 1) you only have one hour for lunch and 2) you basically just don't have enough money to burn at fancy restaurants (and since we're talking about the BGC, prices can get unreasonably high). Or...we just really have too many excuses :p But there are times when we get tired and fed up (pun intended! teehee) of the P55-meals we order from koya, our always reliable lunch boy. This is especially true during payday, when our taste buds would suddenly feel this inexplicable need to take a rest from the regular adobo/menudo/mechado/sinigang rice meals. Lels.
Quic kie is my blog's newest section that features short posts about random things - stuff that don't require the whole weekend to write and publish! ;) Here I'll feature quick eats, quick trips, quick picks, etc.! And what better way to kick off this new section than to write something about food! This blog post is fresh off the grill (pun very much intended) as we only visited this small deli a few hours ago! (which is very unlike me as it takes me at least a month after the event/trip happens to attempt to post)
So anyway, I'm talking about Almon Marina in SM North The Block. We had more than half an hour to kill before my schedule with the ophthalmologist and since we were starving (an hour after we had lunch!!), we decided to stroll around the mall and look for light snacks other than KFC. When we reached the ground floor and saw a girl looking at Almon Marina's menu, we got curious. When we saw that it serves subs and salad, it was a done deal ;) If there's one thing that'll definitely test the patience of whiny tourists like moi, it has got to be an overnight camping trip in a place 4 hours away from Metro Manila and where there is no electricity, no cellphone signal, and no comfortable rooms to spend the night in (duh, it's camping! Silly me). Yiz, I'm talking about Nagsasa Cove (slash the alternative to the more popular Anawangin cove).
While everyone was busy shopping in SM North, Trinoma and Divi ten days before Christmas, Toto and I decided to hang out at R20 Lifestyle Hub (I know, it sounds so fancy). It's a new place located in the intersection of Road 20 and Mindanao Avenue in Project 8, Quezon City (scroll down for the map!).
It was a laid-back kind of Sunday for the two of us who decided it was best to avoid the holiday rush in the malls but wanted to get out of the house. I thought I could do a bit of shopping in their bazaar but nothing really caught my attention. Everything was just super marked-up Divisoria stuff anyway. But hey, at least the bazaar venue was air-conditioned! And the entrance was (and still is) free. There were more or less ten food stalls and a beer station in the 'hub' so it's not exactly what foodies would call a food heaven, but the choices were more than enough for us who just wanted to chill. Besides, a beer station is always more than enough ;-) We spent two hours eating overpriced isaw, listening to aspiring rock bands, criticizing their voices, and talking about random things. R20 Lifestyle Hub, although not as bongacious as Noel Bazaar nor as popular as Banchetto / Mercato Centrale / Mezza Norte, is a good alternative for people who just want a relaxed venue to drink a couple of bottles of beer and chat the night away with good friends :) If it weren't for a raket, Toto and I wouldn't be able to visit La Mesa Eco Park this soon. It's not exactly in our list of places-to-visit-this-holiday-season but we just couldn’t let the opportunity pass. As expected on a Sunday, there were already A LOT of people in La Mesa when we arrived at 11:30am. There were families picnicking, bird watchers holding onto their binoculars every other minute, photographers taking pre-nuptial and pre-debut shots of their clients, kids rolling on the garden, college students holding their team-building activities and couples taking a nap. It’s like a bigger, greener, relatively cleaner but noisier version of Quezon City Memorial Circle.
After walking aimlessly along Maginhawa St. on a humid Saturday night, Toto and I finally decided on trying Don-Day Restaurant in Malingap St. I've never eaten in a Korean restaurant before because I heard their food tastes weird (and they probably think the same about Pinoy food) so I didn't know what to expect from Don Day.
|