The breakdown of the framework

Well over the last few months the Lehman’s(or laymen’s as they seem to be now) and the smart Gordon gecko boys on Wall Street boys realized their framework for valuation of asset backed securities were useless and precipitated in the financial meltdown. I am using that an excuse for not sticking to the framework of my reviews for this post. (Perfect MBA thinking, Blame others for your frameworks problems) I have been lazy lately. That coupled with an increased level of work is creating the feeling of abandoning my blog. Well not so quick. So went off early to get a big cup of Americano (madras filter coffee for us Indians) and there it is I’m back to my twitchy fingers typing away about a place I visited last week.

I was in Baguio (that is a hill station of those who don’t speak Philippine geography) end of last week for some class session. There were a lot of nice cheap small eating places, even though it is considered a place for the rich of the Philippines (sort of like davos for Filipinos minus the snow, stretching my metaphoric humor)I got there on a Wednesday;

Joe’s steakhouse caught my fancy primarily because they had filet mignon for 250 bucks not because of "Joe the plumber" or Joe the chef or any of the US election left overs. The same dish would cost me an arm and a limb in Makati. So I quickly decided to utilize the arbitrage opportunity (complicated MBA term) and eat it up.

A closer examination of the menu told me filet mignon is for the “diet conscious “what a turn off- reminds me of the zero cholesterol Chicharon I tasted sometime back .chicharon is fried pork skin, secret weapon used by heart surgeons to increase their market size ! So glanced thru the menu and there were tons of stuff on offer, all at very reasonable rates. I am mentioning the prices a bit too much maybe it’s the overall economic gloom. I went in for a peppercorn steak. As the description reads..

“TENDERLOIN OF BEEF IN FRESHLY GROUND PEPPERCORN COATING AND BRANDY BASED SAUCE SERVED WITH SOUP,MXIED GREEN SALAD IN VINAIGRETTE OR THOUSAND ISLAND DRESSING PLAIN RICE AND DESSERT OF THE DAY..” 165 PESOS

That’s cheap if you ask me. So I ordered it. And here is what I got.

Soup served in what resembled a “well” nice generous portion. Soup was ok nothing to blog about (Internet version of the old idiom “nothing to write home about”)

They served the salad and it looked as if the chef wanted me to dice up some vegetables for him it was in a quarter-plate with a large island of thousand island dressing next to it. Again nothing much to blog about.

Then before I could finish either of them off, in comes the sizzling tenderloin dressed up on a sizzler plate shaped up like a cow. I have seen my fair share of fancy cutlery and crockery but never seen something as funny as this it looked nice. The sauce was really bubbling even got specks of it on my shirt. The brandy sauce smelled more of caramel and less of brandy but the pepper part was true to the script. And I had opted for mash potatoes. They were mashed really well. Fluffy would be an understatement. The dish tasted good, Again I do not know enough about steak cuts to understand whether it was really tenderloin or not.

But my naive guess it that I wasn’t because when I cut in to get my piece it was a bit graphite-ey, fibrous in the sense it came out in layers. Is tenderloin supposed to do that?( I don’t know. I’ll Wiki Steak cuts) It was not very tender. But the meat was tasty. And I had asked for a medium to rare. Well it was “well done” no speck of rawness in the meat whatsoever.

Again I’m being too critical, this isn’t any Michelin star rated restaurant. Metaphor would be a budget airline passenger asking for porcelain and metal dinnerware on a flight where u have to pay to use the loo (hey!! that could be a new revenue stream for budget airlines)

But anyway, I finished the whole thing up in no time washed it down with a bottle of pale pilsner. And my free dessert was pink gelatin with a topping of cream and a few specks of brown sugar dropped in for the contrast.as with all the other freebies it was…well just like pink gelatin.

There the framework is dead. I think I am more comfortable writing in this style.

The Breakfast post

Food fetish
I have been eating out a lot lately. So decided to log food intake on my Google calendar to keep track.(weird uses of technology ) also have a feedback mechanism to measure the amount of fun I have with food –The weighing scale was one of the first things I bought after I shifted to Makati.
So this time the place we visited was a coffee shop. Wanted to see if the blog review framework can be used for every review. T hats one of the drawbacks of Bschool, It tries to make your thinking very structured and in the process you lose some of the fuzzy Gut feel of life. Which incidentally is the 2nd problem with Bschool students- 2 word technical terms? “Core-competency”,” tactically guessing”, “leveraged inventory”,” flexible framework”. Most of them turn out to be oxymorons

Seattle’s best is the Red, warmer, cosier west coast-ish, jazz music ish version of the Green evil starbucks corporation (courtesy, Austin powers series) .I recently discovered to my amazement that It is actually owned by starbucks (yea that’s like a “Luke I am your father moment in star wars”) why would a company position 2 different stores selling the same thing right opposite each other barely 100 meters from each other. Different target markets (courtesy, marketing professor too much of MBA talk) this post seems to have a lot of borrowed courtesy lines in it.
Well let me get to the actual review. We went there for breakfast on Sunday
The ambiance.

Like I said nice San Francisco (I’ve never been there) feel great jazz music playing (I don’t know much about jazz music). Overall the feeling is more cosy and warm than starbucks. Red and black to them is what green and black is to starbucks. The items are priced marginally cheaper than starbucks. There was a big display container near the cash register; there were some nice looking pastries on display. The regulars like cheesecake and tiramisu shared the shelf with Filipino favorites like ensamada (sweet bun with sugar and cheese shavings covering it (triple bypass material) along with fancy French waters like Perrier and Evian.

The menu was displayed up on the wall. The breakfast menu must be in high demand because it looked like it was heavily used! .

The only thing that didn’t fit in with the décor was the packs of Doritos that were on sale. Alongside coffee beans harvested from the higher reaches of the Andes by children who were liberated from working for the FARC rebel group and whose parents will spend this money on educating them on the environment.(If you can say that in a single breath they will upsize your drink. JK) Corporate social responsibility crap, must have got it from daddy starbucks, which even claims to help the stray ant eaters in the tropical forests of Columbia by selling coffee to the wealthy

The food

Me being the gluttonous epicurean(2 word technical term) that I am, went for the biggest dish , swearing to myself that it would be the only thing I will eat that day. I got myself a cup of Americano which is my country equivalent of filter coffee but much lighter My big breakfast consisted of velvety cloth feeling scrambled egg(not quite Jeremy Clarkson of top gear fame when it comes to metaphors, yet .. ) think it had more milk and cheese in it than egg. tasted nice. Well like any scrambled egg I suppose. Not much of gourmet talk I can do about that. It was nicely displayed. The sausage I think had just come out of the freezer so the center was kind of hard. But what I loved about this dish was the pancakes. They were so beaten up and fluffy and moist. I have never enjoyed pancakes so much before. Overall it was good value for money. 210 bucks for breakfast in Makati Think flapjacks will cost you more.
Service, Other Observations

Well it’s a self service place so can’t really rate the service quality or cutlery ,well for starters the person over the counter didn’t seem to be too quizzical when u order: Small, medium, large, cream no cream, flavoring no flavoring, to go or dine in .had to answer only about 5 questions before I could complete my order. At least to me it seemed like less intimidating that the starbucks sales person. Maybe it was just the particular person.

Another thing my Friend noticed was on the cup
“our secret is to adjust the temperatures during roasting”
well duh!!.. It’s no longer a secret if you put it on all the cups you sell

Overall
Ambiance – 6/10 (better than starbucks, not a lot of newspapers to read)
Food/beverages - 5/10 (again better than starbucks)
Cutlery 6/10 – (for a coffee shop they had ceramic plates and stainless steel cutlery)
Overall – 6/10-(food was good, nice place to catch the morning sun in greenbelt)

I am still working on my HTML basics. I plan to layout this blog better in the future

Banana Leaf Greenbelt 3

The Second review

It’s been about 2 week since my first review. I went out to eat out more than a couple of times in the last fortnight but couldn’t carry around my freaking huge camera and the box.. I need to buy a smaller cover for it, walking around with the existing bag makes me feel like a pregnant kangaroo (no animals were harmed in the making of this metaphor.animal love is fashionable these days .aah bad joke).Have another easy week in school, playing a management game all week. This time I got my Indonesian friend Oni to come with me to try some Malaysian food; the place is called banana leaf in greenbelt 3.

Ambiance

It is not as upmarket as Italian’s and the table and the cutlery correlates to that. The edge of the glass table top was broken and pasted up with tape (yikes)

The forks and knives looked used but clean. There was no cloth napkin. But the fancy thing about this place is that u get to eat your food on the banana leaf. The waiters and waitresses were not as nice as italianni’s but the dress definitely is impressive; they have some outfit share agreement with Malaysian airlines I think, identical costume. Very nice.(the women that is..).There was a nice lighting scheme up on the ceiling made the place look very ethnic. The seats were comfortable and there was a textured wall which was lit up looked nice although I do not know what it had to do with the rest of the Malaysian decor

Menu

The menu is bright orange with lots of pictures and numbers right next to the dish with corresponding pictures on the opposite page. Ordering food as they say was “easier than ordering a latte at starbucks” no over complicated dish names but the descriptions were missing, but that gives you another excuse to talk to the pretty waitress :-).. This is fat turning out into a review about the stuff other than food. So I will try to get back to the US. The stuff we ordered looks very similar to the picture of the dish on the menu so there is no gap in expectations from the reality and what you expect unlike at McDonald's or Wall Street more recently with the sub prime and stuff.(that’s the only thing people talk about these days.).Most of the stuff on the menu is reasonably priced, an average meal should cost about 300 per person including a drink.

Food

We were greeted to some free crackers before ordering.For a person who is allergic to the smell and tastes of the Shelly creatures of the sea it’s never been a pleasant trip to Chinese restaurants. I get all nauseated pukish when I have sea food.And we ordered Nasi Goreng and Chicken curry with egg plant and sweet basil.

Despite out request to exclude the sea food from the nasi goreng there were still a few pieces of shrimp clearly visible in the golden colored nasi goreng. We also ordered some bread which was nice and flaky

. We ordered some beer and fresh juice to wash it down. The beer glass I got was wet all over, bad! The best places will give a nice chilled frosted glass. The chicken was nice and creamy cooked in coconut milk the eggplant was actually more tasty than the chicken, the chicken pieces was cooked to the right consistency to maintain that little texture to the meat and to make sure the meat sticks on to the bones (NO pun intendedJ, that would in my opinion be a good indicator of not over cooking chicken).The curry was a bit sweet but the salty slightly spicy nasi goreng complimented the sweetness. Since oni does not eat a lot (lucky me J) I got to finish up the roti and the nasi goreng. And as always I was too full so could not try dessert. The overall bill came to about 300 per head, so this place is very reasonable and not pricey.

Overall

Here are the ratings

Food – 6.5/10

Ambiance – 4/10(broken table tops)

Cutlery – 4/10(nothing fancy, forks and spoons looked old)

Overall – 6/10 ( the food was really good )

I might switch to a Star based rating (what people like me who are not strong with numbers do for reviews ..I am putting in more pictures.. as i get more comfortable with my DSLR )

The-wannabe restaurant reviewer

So finally after two weeks ,i managed to get my camera out and try and do a restaurant review..
Hit this place called Italianni's in Greenbelt 1
so took my gear and a notepad to take down points.
the moment the restaurant waitress saw that she thought i was some pro reviewer and i got star treatment hehe.. little did they know that i am just a first time wannabe reviewer.. anyway here's what i think abt this place..
Menu
The menu couldn't be any more complicated that this.It looked like an Over studied text book . You know the kind that has pages sticking out post-its all over,they seem to have a good spread. lots of stuff all Italian(duh ! obviously ! ). Most of the Items on the menu had pictures and a small description, and of course the price listed.. which had one too many zeros next to it
Ambiance
The place is nice.Got an Italian feel to it. fancy wrought Iron chandelier and beige colored walls.nice wooden sturdy seats,kinda like the whole checkered table cloth ,makes the place look very Italian.The waiters and waitresses(trying to be gender sensitive here -:) ) are friendly or should i say very Filipino . the only thing that did not fit into the whole decor was the huge haagen dazs( spell checker went crazy trying to spell check that one! ) display freezer right in front ! what were they thinking! I know its an expensive brand of ice cream but kind of sticks out like a sore thumb against the nice sober setting. My seat was at one corner perfect for a single guy traveling with a bagged up digital slr.There was a bottle of chardonnay from new zealand and a bottle of fiji water set on the table along with a lot of condiments and sauces the only one i could identify was olive oil.I liked the labeling on the back of the premium niche drinking water fiji, don't know if they were trying to be funny
."untouched by man,until you drink it ?"

The food
I went for a minestrone soup , a chicken caprese melt and a lemonade.total damage was about 600 bucks. but hey i got free bread with olive oil and mysterious looking black sauce.free food always tastes great ! . The soup was good but liked the presentation more than the soup.The main dish chicken caprese melt,was just the right size came on a huge plate .A piece of breaded chicken with mozzarella cheese and tomatoes embossed on to it, sitting on a bed of fettuccine which was drowned in pesto,personally feel the chef or whoever made it kind of over did the olive oil bit. It had too much olive oil,Yea the olive oil does add to the taste.the cheese melt and tomato went very well with the breaded chicken.
Overall

I will definitely go there again.(especially since I got a freebie dessert for filling up a feedback form ;-) I am such a sucker for free food(I am an engineer,that explains it..)I never got to try the desserts since I was too full by the end of it
Food - 6.5/10
Ambiance - 7/10
Cutlery (?) - 5/10 (table could have been arranged better)
Overall - 6/10
I am in the process of improving my quantitative skills ,That explains the use of numbers in the review.

The first post

So am finally on the blog-wagon…

I have always wanted to do this. Write about what I eat, and try to be funny about it.A few weeks back I spent enough money on a DSLR which will make me feel guilty about pursuing a hobby in photography. But how can a photographic hobby develop in a guy who doesn’t travel that much. I mean the only places I go out to are restaurants and bars. I eat. That’s what I do the best. My weight (the force with which my body is attracted to the center of the earth) would be a good way to judge how good I am at that. I’m close to 100 Kilos (that’s 220 pounds for those of you who don’t talk metric. Or was it English.Damn I’m supposed to be an engineer.).

So I merged my first love with my new want to be love. The focus here is on food …specifically eating out in Makati, manila…

I am here for another 12 months and plan to eat out and write about it. Will try and be regular and structured. oh boy have read that on a lot of 1 page blogs that died down after their first post the day blogger.com opened shop..

Few guide lines I would like to follow.

1. Overall ambience of the place.

2. Menu and how much it costs

3. Cutlery -weird… I tend to look for that at most places I eat out at. 90% of them in India are made by some company called Venus!! It’s like all zippers are made by YKK. Check your zipper chances are there is a YKK engraved in it somewhere. Blame the Japanese.)

4. waiters/waitresses – have a major thing for them. Yes I have a hooters t-shirt.

5. Food presentation, quality of food.

7. And anything else I notice

In case you haven’t noticed. I can come up with a useless framework out of thin air like most 1^st year MBA’s who think they know everything.

So watch this space for more pictures and updates. I will post some of the old pics (crappy ones I took using my phones camera.

Watch this space for updates