Eightfold Lounge

The sinful crunch followed by the soft succulent pork meat that can almost melt in your mouth still lingers in my palate and imagination. I never heard of a Thai cuisine restaurant serving crispy pata but eightfold lounge can get away with it. No shit. Who cares if they eventually decide to serve laing pizza or kebab and still call their restaurant a Thai-asian restaurant as long as the food is great. Masterful Venerable Buddha would not mind Im sure. They make a mean pork and tuna sisig, sizzling hot you'd jump over to Manila bay or guzzle all the beer and wine to quell that kick that comes from the hot spiced sisig.

eightfold lounge offers a variety of thai-asian food. The menu and the cooking does not intend to shock one's food sense but is more downright honest in reaching out and maintaining the familiar with the Filipino palate. It must be the Asian tag that gives Eightfold Lounge the leeway to offer Filipino food like crispy pata and sisig. Hell yeah, that's the trick. The hyphen (- Asian)

And of course motherfuckers, believe me, they serve thai food. Otherwise, it would just be Asian food minus the Thai (-). Although Thai food is definitely asian by categorization, I am a bit lost on the categories but with the post-modern thing, i'll just let the food do the talking. They serve a malupet and wasak ang panlasa mo sa sarap Chicken pandan, pomelo or mango salad, and Pad-Thai thus still making eightfold lounge primarily a Thai cuisine restaurant. I never got to taste or learned the other food. Honestly I tried reading their menu and plan to retain the food line-up in my mind but it was washed by the raging beer that wiped everything I planned to remember for this blog. But,

the location is great for chilling and relaxing where one can wait and check out the Manila bay sunset while sipping cold San Miguel Beer. I think they have a good collection of wine (I just think because I know no shit on wine and anyway, I observed how my cousins guzzled the wine bottle by bottle, and because the wine bottles looked good arranged in a row inside the wine cabinet) reasonably priced (Merlot, Cabernet Chauvignon, etc.)

The beer, as always, we have no choice, its a fucking San Miguel monopoly.

Namaste.

eightfold lounge
San Miguel by the Bay
SM Mall of Asia

to contact: just meditate and the Boddhisatvas will lead you to the 8fold path to the bay.

Biggest Burritos, Ever.

The biggest burrito, EVER!

Imitating my three year old son Ponso’s sentence structure of adding ‘ever’ to impress the immensity of whatever he is describing, the entry of RISTRAS in the mex/tex-mex/cal-mex/cal-tex/petron/shell genre changed the Philippine restaurant landscape scene, EVER!

The BURRITO…the burrito is so freaking wasak BIG it can feed five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred people. No shit! It is so big and tightly packed with everything that is required to meet the requirement of becoming a burrito. One is given the privilege to choose beef or chicken (beef is the bestseller, survey says) to jump into the Mexican lumpia. But make no mistake about it esse, it might look like a Filipino fresh lumpia but it is not lumpia. It is a jumbo burrito! Dips for the giant burrito include jalapeno (green and very űber hot), salsa, and garlic sauce. I close my eyes as I bite the burrito savoring the exploding mix of tastes. It was very, well, Mexican for my lack of gourmand terms to describe the food.

I got excited seeing rows of foreign looking beer in RISTRAS’ Frigidaire, as we call it in the Philippines, or refrigerator, or chiller but freaked out when told its 200-450 pesos a pop depending on the bottle size. Anak ng pu talaga! Nahilo ako talaga sa kaartehan ng presyo ng beer. Magiging ginto ba ihi ko at maisasanla pag iyon ang ininom ko? I know that San Miguel Beer is the best beer in the world. My grandfather said so, my father said so and it is my filial duty as a dutiful Asian son to believe and respect their decision with reverence (as I happily sour grape thinking what is in store inside those dark lager bottles).

I like RISTRAS.

RISTRAS

J. Abad Santos cor. Lopez Jaena Sts.

San Juan City

Comfortable Cold Cuts

At the height of a typhoon, anything can taste authentic, especially if it feels like the last supper. Not really knowing the extent of devastation typhoon "Ondoy" caused Metro Manila at supper time, we walked towards the Mabuhay Rotonda area to check out a chinese restaurant known for we do not know because it just opened. But good words spread like wildfire, or rain, for good food and this is one place where foodies would give a good word for its good food.


It looked traditional chinese as we sensed its old chinese feel reminiscent of Old Ongpin-based chinese restaurants minus the over used furnitures and dirty interiors that would make you wait for Jacky Chan to come out and beat the shit out of those drunk tiger palm buddha kung fu fighters.

The service tea was good and the assorted cold cuts was just wonderful. Easy on the palate and tasted very refreshing without that aftertaste associated with the dreaded monosodium glutamate (MSG) assumed to be ever present in chinese foods. And the price was very reasonable.

Chinese food is comfort food in times of calamity and Luck Garden Tea House and Seafood Restaurant sure comforted my cold and hungry stomach.

Luck Garden Tea House & Seafood Restaurant 3 Kanlaon St cor. Quezon Avenue, Quezon City, 415-5825, 4156-5825