random thoughts on a random evening

my friends back in la will tease me as soon as they see me. they'd say i put on weight again. if that is at all possible.

oh well. why would i not. i've been eating the best food this planet has to offer. no kidding.

the past week has seen me eating with my various sets of friends and co-workers in different dining places that i definitely recommend.

this week, went to dampa in libis. first time there. the concept is the same with the original in paranaque. buy stuff (and by stuff i mean seafoods, meat, fruits, etc) at the market (located at the back of the place). bring the fresh food to the weighing station. choose which kitchen will cook your meal (at libis, there were l6 to 7 kitchens). leave the merchandise and get inside the dining hall and wait for your food.

what we had: a kilo of suahe (shrimp) deep-fried. yum, crispy! about a kilo of tanguige made into kinilaw. yum also. just like the way they do it in davao. a medium pompano became pinaputok na pompano. a kilo (mixed) of marinated pork belly. marinated in soy sauce and calamansi was yummier than the one mixed with garlic and pepper. a kilo of tuna belly became sinigang sa miso. plus a medium watermelon. had lots of left-over but the food was great. i broke into sweat when i sampled the kinilaw because it was peppered with siling labuyo.

then, with my dorm friends. went to pier one in tomas morato. i thought that pier one was just an inuman place. i didn't know they served food.

what we had: grilled pusit, grilled tadyang ng baka, sinigang na ulo ng maya maya, kilayin, gising gising and cripy pata. the guys had steamed rice, i opted for the aligue fried rice. everything was consumed fast, except for the stuff i ordered: kilayin and gising gising. their kilayin looked like tinumis, tasted a bit like kilayin but nothing compared to how my mom cooks it. the gising gising i ordered because i liked the gising gising at both sentro and recipes. who knew that pier one's gising gising is like everyplace's salt-addled chop suey. bad. i finished my aligue rice. not the kilayin and gising gising.

for dessert, we went to annabel lee. our friend e has been wanting to go there. when all of us saw each other last march, we wanted to go to annabel lee but for the love of god, we could not find the damn place. this time, we found it. in fact, we just walked from pier one to annabel lee. we had a host of different drinks and mango cheesecake and ube/pandan cheesecake. i thought. it was not cheesecake. it was almost cheesecake. it was good.

for lunch. gerry's grill on jupiter. what we had: oriental-style sashimi, mango salad, bulalo, tinomok, sinuglaw, puso ng saging. tinomok is like bicol express and laing. meatballs are wrapped in gabi leaves and then cooked like laing. sinuglaw (i think this is a dencio's word) is a mix of kinilaw na tanguigue and grilled pork belly. puso ng saging with ground meat is good. my mom's version? still way better.

met up with my "oldest" friend for dinner at megamall. went to rai rai ken. had sukiyaki and niniku garlic gyoza while m had katsudon. my sukiyaki was good. it also cost half the amount i would normally pay for a decent sukiyaki in little tokyo. not bad. the gyoza was flavorful. we were supposed to cap the night with a cup of hot chocolate at cafe xocolat but they were already closed by the time we got there. bummer. headed to seattle's best instead. had white chocolate mocha. i'm such a sucker for white chocolate mocha. it's the same stuff i ordered from annabel lee last nyt.

and i still wonder how i gain weight fast. hah!