Breakfast at Antonio’s

Yesterday, we went to Tagaytay for Breakfast. At Antonio’s. For a change, we went up early. You know, when the air is still chilly and there’s still a bit of fog. We went straight to Breakfast at Antonio’s.

Well actually, straight is not accurate. I got caught up enjoying driving a bit too much and somehow ended up to the end of SLEX. So I had to backtrack via the back roads and ended up at the far end of Nuvali. Thankfully, the guard allowed us to pass through after some good-natured chit-chat ;)

So anyway, we did finally get to Tagaytay and Breakfast. It was already crowded when we got there. But we we’re able to park and get seated reasonably easily. Ordering and getting the food served took a bit longer. But not too long either.

I ordered Beef Roesti. Per Wikipedia: Roesti or Rösti is made with coarsely grated potato, either cooked or raw. Depending on the frying technique, butter or another fat may be added (and usually salt and pepper). If not, oil is used for the frying. In this case, it is fried to crunchiness and topped with roast beef, poached eggs, and cheese.

breakfast1

Michelle ordered Eggs Hemingway, a variation of Eggs Benedict. Per Wikipedia: Eggs Benedict is an American dish that consists of two halves of an English muffin, topped with ham or bacon, poached eggs, and Hollandaise sauce. With Eggs Hemingway, smoked salmon is used instead of ham or bacon.

breakfast2

Both our sevings were large, tasted great and were a wonderful departure from the usual simple breakfasts like something-silog or something sandwich. They’re a bit harder to prepare which should be part of the reason they’re expensive. The other reason is, I expect, the general expensiveness of everything in Tagaytay.

Service is generally good and the staff is quite attentive. But there are occasional lapses such as when it took a long time to get an extra slice of bread. One slice. We followed it up and the waitress said it’s been punched in. And yet it wasn’t on our initial bill. So we actually had to ask them to re-check and recompute. And there there’s the missing staff at their shop.

Good place for when you feel like a special breakfast (and willing to pay the price). But can certainly still be improved.

Moringa

Cooked tinola for lunch today. I had the usual stuff: chicken, chayote, ginger, onion, garlic, and fish sauce. I also have my favorite green leafy vegetable for tinola: moringa, locally known as malunggay. It is a superfood: The leaves are rich in protein, calcium (4x that of milk), potassium (same as a banana), vitamin A (same as a carrot), vitamin B, vitamin C (3x that of an orange) and minerals. The seeds contain 30 to 40% oil that is high in oleic acid which has its own set of healthy benefits. And get this, crushed moringa seeds can be used for water purification to settle out sediments and undesirable organisms! The tree grows quickly in many types of environments and has great potential as one of the weapons in the fight to eradicate hunger. Makes you appreciate it more, yeah?

Going Fruitarian

At least for lunch. A few weeks ago, Set and Neil introduced me to fruit bowls for snacks. I tried it a few times and I liked it. Then I tried it for lunched and it seems to work in the sense that I didn’t go hungry until dinner. So I decided to take the next step and make it more-or-less regular lunch. Should be healthy, yeah?

Pino and Pipino

After SeriAsia, we went with MBA friends to Pino for dinner and to celebrate Val’s coming of age :P Teachers Village, a heretofore purely residential zone, has seen some rather rapid commercialization in recent years. Among these commercial establishments are Pino and the related Pipino. Pino is supposed to mean “fine” as in fine dining. But it most certainly is not. More realistically, pino means “Filipino“. Their menu is full of Filipino fusion dishes. And by fusion, it means a Filipino dish fused with another Filipino dish. For example, bagnet binagoongankare-kareng bagnet, and laing-stuffed crispy pata. One thing you immediately notice is that  these favorites are heart-stopping dishes. Yummy stuff but definitely not for the faint-of-heart. Good thing there’s Pipino just upstairs which offers healthier, animal-anguish-free, vegetarian meals. Pipino incidentally means “cucumber” which is a pretty accurate representation for a vegetarian restaurant. Hooray for choice!

Instant Valentine’s Day Dinner

I prepared a quick Valentine’s Day dinner when I got home from work. First, to keep her busy, I gave Jeanne a new coloring and set of crayons (for which she hugged me and told me “I love you, dad!”). Then it was off to the kitchen. For the main dish, I made Lemon-Rosemary Roast Chicken (which I’ve written about before so I won’t put it here again). For the side-dish, I surrounded the sides of the chicken on the roasting pan (side-dish literally) with marble potatoes. I then popped everything into the oven. For the salad, I got pre-packed leafy vegetables and Italian dressing. Tossed everything into a bowl, added some tomato slices, drizzled with pre-mixed Italian dressing, tossed, and served! Finally, washed everything down with Asti (a birthday gift from Paul and Ann, thanks guys!). C’est la vie!