Food Trip Tayo!

Good news for CBTL lovers in DLSU! The CoffeeBean and Tea Leaf shop will be ready to open its doors to customers starting January 30! The shop will be located at One Archer’s place on Fidel Reyes street.

And there’s a promo running from opening day until February 5, 2012 in celebration of DLSU’s 100th year. Customers can come to the store from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m and purchase any of their favorite drinks for only P100. Ain’t that nice?

I do miss La Salle. College life has been a happy one for me. Maybe I’ll come and visit soon.

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Beer drinking is a favorite bonding activity of Filipinos.  Be it after work, over the weekend, or just for a nightcap, beer has apparently become part of our lives.  And who wouldn’t think of beer without thinking of sisig?  Though sisig originally refer to fruits or sour foods to snack on (see wikipedia article), it now also refers to meat being marinated in a sour liquid, like vinegar, and then cooked and seasoned with salt, pepper, and spices.  We, Filipinos, like our sisig in a variety of ways.  My preferred taste of sisig is a bit salty, but with a douse of sweetness, and, most importantly, lots of crunch!  And I think I may have found the perfect embodiment of my perfect sisig.

I found my kind of sizzling pork sisig at Nuevo Sitio Restaurant in Marilao, Bulacan, just along MacArthur highway.  And for just Php 140, you can have a plateful of this sizzling goodness!  Place is great for friends who want to have a night of catching up with each other’s lives with live band music in the background.  Lots of open airspace so one need not smell like smoke all day.  It’s a refreshing place.

But don’t misunderstand that this is merely a beer-drinking place.  It also offers Chinese and Filipino meals.  Resto is open during daytime also.  Here are some of the food we had there:

Hacao, siomai, and yang chow fried rice that’s good for 3-5 persons.  Nothing outstanding about the dumplings.  But I kinda like the yang chow fried rice because it’s not that oily and I like the color!

Fried cream dory fish fillet…tastes good, but I’d rather have it served steamed or maybe cooked in butter.

So, there you go.  Maybe when you pass by this little place in Marilao, you can try out their food, but especially the sisig.  Gah, this post is making me want some sizzling pork sisig right now…

It’s just one of those times that my folks and I were craving sushi. However, expensive sushi restaurants are just out of the question at that moment. But when there’s something like this to catch your attention…

…surely you’ll give in to your cravings.

I love how the colorful plates go round and round the conveyor belt, with cute bottles of flavored soda water interspersed among them. There’s a list on the side of each table, bearing the color codes of the plates and corresponding prices. The ebi sushi above, which is served on a green plate is priced at P79. Ebi tastes sweet but it separates from the sticky rice. Or rather, the not so sticky rice. Hmmm.

Of course we have to have california maki. I was quite surprised how big each piece was. Too big for just one bite. I rather have a california maki that is just small enough for one bite rather than have to bite through it and have all the components fall out. Each order contains 8 big pieces. And it’s a bit dry.

And yes, sukiyaki! I like my sukiyaki to be sweet, not too oily even with the egg yolk, and not too salty. These are fulfilled by Sakae sushi’s sukiyaki. It’s not the best, though. But it’ll do.

I have to say though that I was slightly annoyed by the customer service. My dad asked one of the staff if he could take photos of the colorful plates on the conveyor belt because it amuses him and is one of the reasons why he was attracted to the place. The server said no. But I still took pics anyway, though I don’t know if they’ve noticed. They should be briefed about the advantages of camera phones and mobile internet. Haven’t they realized that they could get more potential customers if they have let us take the photos, which we could have shared to friends online and IRL? Well, I suspect they are not aware of this. Whoever franchised the store doesn’t even have an official website for it. So sad because I would want to be updated about new offerings or promotions. They don’t even have a facebooj page (except for the original store in Singapore).

So unfortunate, this store seems to be promising and yet…oh well…

Will I come back? Maybe. But I don’t think it’ll be something that I’d crave again and again.

My rating: 3 spoons