My wife Lydia and I celebrated 39th wedding anniversary this past Saturday by treating ourselves to dinner at a fine dining establishment. Now as I mentioned in my original post ("An Expat's Perspective on Life in The Philippines" Part 2, Aug. 7, 2008) eating out can be a dicey proposition due to many restaurant owners' indifference to and lax enforcement of health regulations. Then there's also the 22% surcharge to the check (12% VAT and 10% service charge) to contend with.
Still, it's good to get out once in while and let someone else do the cooking, even if it's uncertain what's going on in the kitchen. Just patronize well known restaurants that appear clean and that value repeat business. Based on these criteria, here are a few establishments in the Metro-Manila area where we've have had positive experiences.
For all you meat lovers, there's Gulliver's Restaurant located in the Great Eastern Hotel, on Quezon Ave. in Quezon City : This establishment is part of a chain based in California, and there is another branch in Makati City. Gulliver's specialty is prime rib, a dinner for which is a prix fixe and includes several side dishes. For two people the tab for this selection including drinks, VAT and service charge is about Php2,200. For a table with a view, reservations are recommended; phone 371-8282 (Quezon City) and 898-2888 (Makati City).
A very popular fast food restaurant, also a chain operation is Jollibee, which is based in the Philippines with many branches throughout the country and a few in the U.S. as well. Jollibee has a wide selection of dishes, including the hamburgers, fries, chicken, as well as native dishes of course. I especially like their breakfasts, such as crispy bangus (fish), which comes with rice, egg, and a beverage of your choice (Php74). Another good morning order is pancakes with beverage included (Php 42).
No review of restaurants in the Philippines would be complete without mentioning at least one Chinese restaurant. One of my favorites is China Bistro located on C-5 across from Eastwood Ave in Quezon City. This place has an unusual setting: a section of an office building lobby. But don't let this anomaly interfere with your enjoyment of their large menu of tasty and authentic selections such as sweet and sour pork, beef with asparagus, and frog legs. One delicious beverage that that I had there and which I haven't found anywhere else is sugar cane juice. Dinner for two including three ala carte dishes and drinks: about Php 1,500. Reservations not required for a small group, but it's probably best best to do so for a party of 6 or more; phone 6310556
(Note: do not confuse China Bistro with nearby Shanghai Bistro in Eastwood City. The latter is more well known but their food is not nearly as good. Further, Shanghai Bistro is more expensive, and their service is lousy).
Back to our anniversary celebration: We dined at 22 Prime, located in the Discovery Suites Hotel in Pasig City. This restaurant which is located right across the street from the Podium takes its name from its location on the top (22nd) floor of the building, and its culinary emphasis on quality meat dishes. Our prix fixe prime rib dinners included potatoes and vegetables. The side dishes are soup, bread with three different dips, a salad bar, and dessert. A word about salad bars: Normally, that is something in which I have no interest as they are usually IMO very dull. However, the salad bar at 22 Prime is unique. It's really more of a selection of delicacies , including shrimps, grapes, egg plant, and dates, just to name a few. By themselves, the choices that I mentioned sound ordinary, but they're all prepared in a special way and are delicious. By the time our main course arrived, we were both already full and wound up taking half our meal home. The only blot on the experience is that it turns out our take home portion was missing the leftover potatoes, which we had specifically ordered to be included. Prime rib dinner for two including VAT and service charge (drinks excluded) totals about Php 2,200. For a table with a view, reservations recommended; phone 683-8222.
Some people eat to live; other live to eat. As I mentioned in "An Expat's Perspective, the latter choice is very much a part of Philippine culture, and there are restaurants in Metro-Manila to suit almost any taste and budget. I can't overemphasize the need to be prudent about dining out here, and what you see in the dining area aesthetics isn't always what you get in the kitchen. Still, if you're lucky enough to select a restaurant in your food choice and price range and that complies with proper food handling and preparation procedures, dining out in the Philippines here can be a rewarding experience.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Friday, October 9, 2009
Condominium Living: Practival vs. Prestigious
This has not been a great few weeks for Metro-Manila. First there was the the tropical storm on Sept. 26 which flooded the city and surrounding suburbs. Now we are experiencing rolling power outages as the result of equipment problems at Meralco, our electric utility. This situation which began on Oct. 7 will likely continue until tomorrow and possibly beyond.
My wife Lydia and I live in a high rise condominium building, and in the event of a blackout, we residents depend on a backup generator located on the premises that powers the elevators and illuminates the common area including the stairwells plus one emergency light in each unit. When the first power interruptions occurred, they lasted for several hours. In each of these instances, there was a long gap before the generator kicked in. This meant that during this wait time, occupants--especially those on the upper floors--were stranded inside (and from) their units unless they were willing to fumble and grope their way through unlit corridors and darkened enclosed stairwells. A similar generator failure which lasted much longer occurred during a typhoon-related blackout a few years ago. In such situations, the prestige associated with living on the higher levels of a 26 floor high-rise like ours becomes meaningless. In fact such a location can turn into a hazard for those residents.
Before I arrived in the Philippines four years ago, Lydia preceded me here and was the one who selected our condo. She had a choice of a unit on the 25th floor or of another on the seventh floor. She wisely selected the latter knowing in the event of an emergency, especially if elevator service were unavailable, it would be much easier to evacuate from a lower floor.
In such a crisis I also prefer to have a basic cell phone that has a flashlight to a more expensive camera- equipped and / or Internet ready model which does not. What does this have to do with power outages? When the building generator failed, my cell phone performed double duty by illuminating the blacked out common areas thus allowing me to leave (and return to) our condominium at will in order to go about my business, to stay in touch with Lydia (who decided to stay indoors), and to contact other family members to see how they were faring. By way of comparison what additional services can a fancy mobile phone perform in these instances? Its expensive features might as well not even exist. (Speaking of phones, here's a tip: If the main telephone for your residence is a cordless connected to a landline, the phone will not function during a power interruption. Keep a modular corded phone as a backup. This unit will likely still work as long as service is available from your phone company, whether or not you have electric power).
I've met some residents here who are status-conscious and proud to the point of bragging about living on the upper floors. But in my opinion, in a disaster such as a fire or or earthquake a simpler life style that for example entails having to traverse on foot only seven floors instead of twenty-six to leave the building, and using a cheap but practical mobile phone to light the way out trumps dwelling in and maybe being trapped in a higher and more expensive unit any day.
Oh well, in case of a disaster I suppose while those occupants in the top floors are sitting and waiting to be rescued, they can use their state-of-the art cellphones to take pictures of each other and browse the web.
My wife Lydia and I live in a high rise condominium building, and in the event of a blackout, we residents depend on a backup generator located on the premises that powers the elevators and illuminates the common area including the stairwells plus one emergency light in each unit. When the first power interruptions occurred, they lasted for several hours. In each of these instances, there was a long gap before the generator kicked in. This meant that during this wait time, occupants--especially those on the upper floors--were stranded inside (and from) their units unless they were willing to fumble and grope their way through unlit corridors and darkened enclosed stairwells. A similar generator failure which lasted much longer occurred during a typhoon-related blackout a few years ago. In such situations, the prestige associated with living on the higher levels of a 26 floor high-rise like ours becomes meaningless. In fact such a location can turn into a hazard for those residents.
Before I arrived in the Philippines four years ago, Lydia preceded me here and was the one who selected our condo. She had a choice of a unit on the 25th floor or of another on the seventh floor. She wisely selected the latter knowing in the event of an emergency, especially if elevator service were unavailable, it would be much easier to evacuate from a lower floor.
In such a crisis I also prefer to have a basic cell phone that has a flashlight to a more expensive camera- equipped and / or Internet ready model which does not. What does this have to do with power outages? When the building generator failed, my cell phone performed double duty by illuminating the blacked out common areas thus allowing me to leave (and return to) our condominium at will in order to go about my business, to stay in touch with Lydia (who decided to stay indoors), and to contact other family members to see how they were faring. By way of comparison what additional services can a fancy mobile phone perform in these instances? Its expensive features might as well not even exist. (Speaking of phones, here's a tip: If the main telephone for your residence is a cordless connected to a landline, the phone will not function during a power interruption. Keep a modular corded phone as a backup. This unit will likely still work as long as service is available from your phone company, whether or not you have electric power).
I've met some residents here who are status-conscious and proud to the point of bragging about living on the upper floors. But in my opinion, in a disaster such as a fire or or earthquake a simpler life style that for example entails having to traverse on foot only seven floors instead of twenty-six to leave the building, and using a cheap but practical mobile phone to light the way out trumps dwelling in and maybe being trapped in a higher and more expensive unit any day.
Oh well, in case of a disaster I suppose while those occupants in the top floors are sitting and waiting to be rescued, they can use their state-of-the art cellphones to take pictures of each other and browse the web.
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