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The only documents we want to see when we dine in restaurants are the menu, the wine list and the bill. Not a waiver absolving the restaurant in case you get sick after getting takeout or having your leftovers bagged.

That’s exactly what we got today after a late lunch at Mesa in the Atrium of SM Megamall. We’d ordered too much so we asked the waitress to put the leftover food in a bag, and she returned with this waiver. Of course we didn’t sign it. We like the food at Mesa but we don’t like this. Sure you can remind the customers that food taken out of the restaurant must be eaten immediately or refrigerated, but don’t get officious.

Has the establishment gotten sued for food poisoning, hence this waiver? We wouldn’t have thought it, but they brought it up.

Click on the flyer to enlarge.

Last week we tried the Crossover Brunch at Dusit Hotel. Our table was at Umu (Japanese restaurant) on the ground floor, but we could also do the buffet at Tosca (Italian) and Benjarong (Thai) upstairs. This required walking up and down the stairs carrying plates of food and glasses of prosecco (taking the elevator seemed absurd), avoiding the kids taking Sunday lunch with their folks, and lacquered matrons unaccustomed to looking where they’re going.

Walking turned out to be an excellent idea—we needed the exercise between bouts of stuffing ourselves. Our favorite station was the risotto counter outside Tosca, where they made the risotto using ingredients you pick out. Mmmm truffle risotto. There’s a wait.

Our finicky foodie friend noted that the buffet presentation was drab—it was like lunchtime at an office cafeteria, though the food is very good. We were so full we skipped dinner.

To those who like walking, this city offers a choice between getting sideswiped by a jeepney or contracting lung disease. If you want to stretch your legs in the open air you have to take your walk inside one of the ghettoes (Forbes, San Lorenzo etc), eliciting the suspicion of security guards (Not only are you a stranger, but you’re not driving!), or wait until the weekend when the Makati business district is mostly empty.

The UP campus is a great place to walk; getting there in this traffic is a tribulation. (By the way, has the crime situation been dealt with?) We end up going to the mall and walking back and forth, forth and back, seeing the same stores and the same displays over and over until we buy something out of sheer boredom.

A few weeks ago, to relieve our tedium, we decided to take a walk at Bonifacio High Street. The weather must really be broken because this summer is balmy, not infernally hot. Lately it’s been cloudy, which is our favorite weather for walking. We were walking down the street when we noticed this.

We felt like Balboa on first seeing the Pacific Ocean, yes our lives need excitement. The High Street has been extended! And the new complex is actually nice, with wide paths and lots of places for people to sit (Serendra is cramped, fussy and the artworks are too big for the space; the older High St looks like an outlet mall in Nevada).

The new restaurants look interesting: Italian, Japanese, Mediterranean/Asian (Mediterrasian?), Filipino, desserts, juice. We had the Reuben sandwich and the red beet burger, both very good although Ricky thinks the red beet should be served as a wrap rather than a sandwich. Last night Otsu had the salad with caramelized onion tarts and we had the beef belly, both very good. For dessert we had the Cecilia: meringue and coconut cream works.

Another suggestion: The stairs leading to the fountain are nice, just the right height, but at nighttime the edges are hard to see. They need to put more lights (but that would take away the effect of the lights under the plant boxes) or attach some sort of fluorescent thingy on the edges so people with poor depth perception (points to self) don’t stagger.

Laing, 2 ways at Mesa

We’re collaborating with Mike of the Walk and Eat blog on a quest to find the best laing. First we’re going to try the laing served in restaurants in the Metro Manila area.

Laing we’ve tried so far

Mesa
C2
Cafe Bola
Recipes – Forget it. Go straight to General Cho’s chicken.
Via Mare – Forget it. Get the pinais na alimasag.

Of course we’re going to try the laing places recommended by Claude Tayag in Linamnam, but first we’re eating around Metro Manila.

Do you know of a good laing place? Please post recommendations in Comments. Thank you!

On Monday we tried 7 doughnut varieties at J. Co Donuts and Coffee, which opened last week at the Mega Strip, Megamall Bldg B in Mandaluyong. No we did not eat all the doughnuts—we weren’t running a marathon afterwards nor did we have a defibrillator in our bag.

Oh all right, we ate the whole Alcapone and then Franco confiscated the Green Tease. But for all the other flavors we took just one bite each. This required an iron will.

We chased down the doughnuts with a cup of J. Coppucino. We recommend drinking this cappucino without sugar, the better to taste the coffee. The beans are grown in Indonesia, where J. Co was born.

L-R: Mona Pisa, Alcapone

1. Mona Pisa. Our taste buds were primed for doughnut so they got confused: this one has the texture of a doughnut but it tastes like pizza. Weird, but likeable—good for a quick breakfast. (As Munch noted in Law and Order: SVU, coffee and doughnuts is the breakfast of champions.)

2. Alcapone. J. Co’s bestseller in Indonesia, with good reason. Much as we like doughnuts, most doughnut brands are too sweet—after three bites you get a sugar high and start running around the room; 15 minutes later you crash. The Alcapone (as in mascarpone) is just sweet enough, with cream filling and lots of sliced toasted almonds to give it an interesting texture.

Clockwise: Blueberry More, Green Tease, Avocado DiCaprio

3. Blueberry More (like Barrymore, get it?) is a cake doughnut with cream filling topped with blueberry jam. The cake is soft but solid, not airy.

4. Green Tease, as the name proclaims, has a subtle green tea flavor that fools your brain into thinking you’re eating something healthy. It is our credo that all yummy things consumed in moderation are good for you. This is our second favorite in the bunch.

5. Avocado DiCaprio. Strange at first taste, but it grows on you quickly. It would never have occurred to us to fuse the concepts “avocado” and “Leonardo DiCaprio”. By the way do you realize that Titanic came out 15 years ago? So when the 3D reissue opens, teenagers and people in their early 20s will be shocked at skinny young Leo without the grooves between his eyebrows.

L-R: Jacky Chunk, Heaven Berry

6. Jacky Chunk. Chocolatey and peanut-y, a combination that always works.

7. Heaven Berry. Too sweet for us and way too pink.

We also tried the Cheezy Rich. Cake doughnut with four types of cheese equals ensaymada.

All J. Co doughnut varieties cost 42 pesos each. A box of 6 goes for P230, a dozen P350, two dozen P550. Two dozen doughnut holes—J. Pops—cost P250. The Cheezy Rich is P45.

J.Co also serves yogurt with a variety of toppings—we picked lychee. Good way to end our doughnut sampling session—we walked out on our own power, with a box of partially-eaten doughnuts.

We visited Abaca in Cebu last January. It’s a small hotel, exquisitely designed, with good food and a private beach.

Congratulations to our friend Mike at the Walk and Eat blog on completing his quest to eat at all the restaurants in three dining guidebooks. We joined him a few times on his “research” and we had a blast. (“Ang mahal mahal dito tapos ang dinnerware yung makapal, parang sa pansiterya sa kanto.”) Mike’s summation: He liked less than 8 percent of the restaurants he tried. Picky eater. That’s why we’re friends.

And here’s one of the resident cats.