Kenny Rogers says Hi to Hainanese

When we went to Power Plant Mall last night to watch a movie, we decided to get dinner beforehand. We are big fans of Kenny Rogers Roasters, or Kenny's as we affectionately call it. I like how they blend healthy options and tasty meals under one roof. Mabie had told me that they now offer Hainanese chicken, so we thought we'd try it out for ourselves.

Kenny's serves one-quarter orders of the chicken paired with rice for PhP200. The rice itself is attractively garnished with cucumber slices, a parsley sprig and dried garlic flakes, and a small bowl of soup is served along with it. Accompanying the chicken are the ubiquitous three sauces: rich soy sauce, minced ginger sauce, and a very mild chili paste. Kudos to the Power Plant Mall branch for having our order served very quickly.

We've sampled Toast Box's Hainanese chicken as our very first experience of this Singaporean staple, and we were absolutely floored by the tastes and textures woven into this very humble food. That's our benchmark, then. 

How does Kenny's version fare? Unfortunately, it was slightly disappointing. 

Taste-wise, Hainanese chicken isn't far removed from our very own tinolang manok, so it's not that hard to pick apart and appreciate. That said, we think Kenny's stuck too closely to its signature roasting techniques preparing this, quick serving time aside. The chicken itself seems a bit overcooked and dry, without the characteristic savory moistness of either dish. It's as if the meat got squeezed out of its juices and served on the plate, with the liquid served separately as a soup. It might make for a "healthier" version of the dish but it's not quite as satisfying on the palate. 

Another thing: because the chicken is less flavorful and savory by itself, the rich soy sauce that would probably have been okay paired with more traditional Hainanese chicken suddenly overpowers Kenny's version. The best of the three sauces was the minced ginger. The chili paste was simply too mild to make an impression.

Kenny Rogers Roasters Hainanese chicken rice @ PhP200 per quarter-chicken order.

Chicken rice is not complete without its rice, and here Kenny's also comes out wanting. Maybe it's a nod to a more Filipino version of this dish that they used what looks almost like a dry sinangag (fried rice) and garlic flakes. It's not a bad combination to go with the chicken, but it just doesn't shout authentic Hainanese chicken rice, just like the rest of this dish.

Kenny's Hainanese chicken rice is simply okay, but it needs a little improvement here and there and we do hope we've been of help. We'll probably stick to ordering what we think they do best: good roast chicken, their signature classic corn muffins, a surprisingly good, heavy cheeseburger, and a nice platter of roasted salmon. Can't go wrong with any of those!

Tidbits and treats at Best Food Forward

So what did we eat at Best Food Forward? As it turns out we had quite a lot to chew on.

Moroccan's promotional catering flyer-cum-menu. This is just the first page!

There was a Moroccan food stall present (yes it's simply named "Moroccan"), and curious about Mediterranean food, I ordered a plate of chicken on couscous. Eating couscous is like eating finely chopped cheese, but with a faint curry flavor getting released instead. The dish has steamed chicken on a bed of the yellow grain, along with some slightly bitter vegetables - I'm not sure but they look like squash and eggplant. Overall the combination makes for a peculiar earthy taste. It certainly tastes pretty exotic, but I liked it, although it's slightly pricey at PhP150.

Check out their other offerings below in photos.

Chicken and vegetables on steamed couscous. This was my lunch!

Batboot: Moroccan-style pita

B'stilla: a sort of Moroccan meat pie or "empanada"

Carrot sharmoula and aubergine (eggplant) zalook dip/salad.
These are made with extra virgin cold-press olive oil and paprika.

Moroccan's Chicken B'stila

Moroccan is based in Galeria de Magallanes - rather close to home. If you want something to surprise your palate, give their unique cuisine a try. They have a booth at Mercato Centrale from time to time as well.
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Moroccan
Unit C-101 Galeria de Magallanes
Lapu-lapu Street, Magallanes Village, Makati City
8523658
(contact information courtesy of EYP.ph)

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The hilariously named Eat My GF serves up its eponymous garlic fries (the GF in the name). A serving gets you a cardboard tray full of hot fries, with large slices of mushrooms, a slathering of their in-house gravy, and lots of crispy garlic. Two short plastic forks are provided for you to stab the fries with.

This would not look out of place on Krazy Garlik's menu. The gravy makes the whole thing work. They're best eaten on their own, without condiments. Some mustard is okay, but ketchup just kills the taste they were going for, neutralizing the distinct garlicky kick.

Oh, they serve tacos too

Even the names on the menus are hilarious!

According to their Facebook page, Eat My GF will be at the Rockwell Tent on April 8-10, and will soon open in malls. You might want to watch out for the arrival of these fries with a garlicky sense of humor.

____________________

Eat My GF - Garlic Fries 

+639177941984

http://www.facebook.com/pages/EAT-MY-GF-Garlic-Fries/209255229090929

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Caution: The stack of roast beef on this tarpaulin sign is as big and as thick as it appears

Enzo's Shawarma sold like pancakes out there. It's hard to miss the thick slabs of skewered, thoroughly seasoned Turkish roast beef whose shavings form the innards of the shawarma. All of these are laid into a thick bed of pita bread - almost too thick, perhaps. Despite the breadth of the pita, the very flavorful beef wins out. Yogurt sauce fans may be disappointed though as there's not much of it...but I guess you could always order more.

One yawning tunnel of meaty goodness

Enzo's Shawarma has had three years of success in the University Belt area. Check 'em out!

____________________

Enzo's Shawarma
+639229905264
+639272744857
enzoshawarma@yahoo.com.ph

http://www.enzoshawarma.com/
http://facebook.com/EnzoShawarma

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Remember Tea.ology? This time, I made sure to try the Mojitea. I ordered it at 50% sweetness and with nata de coco.

To be honest...Mojitea isn't a very good name for the drink. The beer-colored non-alcoholic drink they served bore no semblance to the hazy semi-transparent cocktail it's supposed to be modeled after. Worse, the taste left a lot to be desired. It's very minty, but there's none of the punch or sparkle of the real thing - sensations brought to the palate perhaps by the alcoholic elements. Taste-wise, I couldn't tell if it was trying to be tea, mint, or some sort of beer, because it was trying to be all three things at once without much success.

Maybe adding some club soda would help?  

Mojitea with nata de coco, 50% sweetness

I'm pretty sure Tea.ology has great drinks, but the Mojitea just isn't one of them. The Dark Chocolate Tea I had prior was much better despite the chocolate soy milk impression.

Just in case you missed their contact details, here they are again below.

____________________

Tea.ology

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Teaology/148711248481135

http://www.mercatocentrale.ph/tea-ology/

+639339428691

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On to dessert. We had "yogu pops" at Picole, which is as simple as it sounds - it's yogurt frozen into a popsicle. We sampled the blueberry cheesecake yogu-pop at PhP40.

Check out all them yogu-pop flavors!

As Franz Ferdinand would sing, "Take me out!"

Ripe for a lickin'

I wasn't expecting a whole lot from this but I do have to say it's a great dessert. It really does taste like a blueberry cheesecake split in half, flavor-wise. The initial taste is genuinely blueberry; it even comes with tiny tidbits of the fruit studded into the yogurt base. As you swallow your bite, it lends a distinct cheesecake-like finish on the back of your tongue. Simple, but very impressive, and it's an example of "doing what it says on the tin," as the Brits would say.

Like Enzo's Shawarma, Picole has some presence already - this time in the malls. Check out their website for all their locations.

____________________

Picole Healthy Ice Pops

http://www.picolehealthyicepops.com/

info@picolehealthyicepops.com

When Lenten specials are too good for just Lent

Living in a predominantly Catholic country, we Filipinos know all too well how our food choices change whenever the forty days of Lent are around. Due to the practice of abstinence from the consumption of meat, we try to make do with alternatives - and most of the time the restaurant chains play along. Many of these offerings, frequently fish-based, are quite noticeably far removed from the usual menu and are a poor fit to any existing items.

Sometimes however, there are Lenten offerings that deserve to be introduced as menu items all on their own.

Mabie and I went to Pizza Hut Bistro at Glorietta 4 one weekend to redeem some complimentary pizzas (thanks to BPI's credit card promo). We noticed that they offered some pretty interesting items for Lent, so we decided to try them out along with our pizza. We ordered the Crispy Oyster Mushrooms for PhP139 and the Strawberry Passion Salad for PhP165.

I'll go describe the Crispy Oyster Mushrooms first. It's a simple enough dish - oyster mushrooms are deep-fried and served on a platter with three different sauces: mayo mustard, chunky tomato sauce and barbecue sauce. 

The surprise here is that it all just works. The mayo mustard may not be to everyone's taste, but the other sauces should go down well with almost anyone's palate. Pizza Hut Bistro is also quite generous with its oyster mushrooms too; if you have this as a side dish, it's good for two or three people.

Next up is the Strawberry Passion Salad. It has lettuce and mixed greens, along with the eponymous fresh strawberries, but it also has onions, tomatoes, sliced almonds and a strawberry vinaigrette.

I liked it. As with the fried mushrooms, there's something well-judged in how these ingredients just come together. The strawberry vinaigrette binds the whole salad and lends it quite a pungent, sweet-sour taste, helped along by the onions and mushy strawberries hidden in the greens. The fresh strawberries and almonds change up the texture and give body to the staple lettuce and greens.

Both of these items deserve a place in the usual menu and are too good to remain as simple "Lenten specials" in our humble opinion. Maybe the salad might be seasonal, due to the supply of strawberries, but both it and the crispy oyster mushrooms are solid year-round offerings.

Best Food Forward!

JM's officemate gave us passes to the Best Food Forward summer food fair (Thanks Ness!). Being a big fan of different dishes, we just couldn't pass this one. So earlier, we had lunch there and got to try a lot of food! 

Aside from a lot of free tastes, they also had a cooking demo inside the NBC Tent.

You already know by now how I am deeply in love with macarons. When I saw this stall selling colorful macarons, I just had to try it! I was able to try the chocolate macaron and it was heaven. The chocolate filling literally burst in your mouth. 

Stay tuned to see what else we had:)

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French Macarons by Christa

Box of 12 Php450

Box of 6 Php230

Baby Macs Php150

Lollie-Macs Php25

Macaron Towers start at P1500

Contact at: 09178905747

christaskitchen@yahoo.com

Tailor-made milk tea

The last time we tried out milk tea at Jatujak in SM Mall of Asia, Mabie wasn't particularly impressed. That hasn't stopped us from having another go at it though, which is what we did with Tea.ology in Bonifacio Global City's Mercato Centrale.

Unlike Jatujak's more, um, "purist" version of milk tea (which I imagine is what it would've been like, had we actually been to Thailand), Tea.ology's brews are flavored. I think someone saw the appeal for Pinoys hiding in this cold concoction and simply decided to tailor its taste to our palates. Some of the more outlandish flavors include Blueberry Green Tea and the non-alcoholic Mojitea. Hmmm. I'm a fan of mojitos myself. Maybe I should try that next time.

Sticking to the safe side for now, we got their Dark Chocolate blend, coming in a regular 12oz size for about PhP75. The nice bit with Tea.ology is that they allow you to further tweak your tea, notably with the sweetness level and add-ons. The range of sweetness levels is from 25-100%, in 25% intervals, and add-ons include the ubiquitous pearls. 

For the Dark Chocolate brew we ordered, we had it at 75% and with pearls. The ladies preparing our drink mixed it in a cocktail shaker; I guess that's where the control of the sweetness comes in.

So how did it taste? Well...for something that was purportedly dark chocolate, it didn't taste very dark at all. It reminded me of the chocolate soy milk that Fruit Magic sells in bottles, only a tiny bit stronger. In pure cocoa content, then, it was a disappointment, but everything else was pretty good. It was not too sweet (hurrah!), the consistency of the ice was quite fine, and those like Mabie who aren't fond of the strong, leafy "this is authentic tea" taste will find that it's sufficiently toned down to be enjoyable. We finished off the cup as we walked away from Mercato Centrale and back to Bonifacio High Street in the heat of the 10am sun.

That said, I wonder how much better the "dark chocolate" would have tasted had we ordered it at 50% sweetness. Or maybe I should just have had the Mojitea? Tea.ology has a myriad flavors to choose from and numerous tweaks for each.

____________________

Tea.ology

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Teaology/148711248481135

http://www.mercatocentrale.ph/tea-ology/

0933-9428691

Candied bacon...ice cream?!

Chalk another surprise up from Mercato Centrale. We just blogged about steamed burgers, which is a left-field idea in itself, but check out what we had for dessert!

A little stall called Merry Moo sells ice cream by the scoop. Now that doesn't seem so strange in itself, but a closer glance at their store fridge reveals a rather daft-looking flavor:

That's right, they sell candied bacon ice cream. Ever the curious ones, we were given sample spoons and took a little bit to taste. Eventually we bought a whole scoop for about PhP35.

If you were expecting the potentially ill-tasting mashup of ice cream and salty pork strips, well, you'd be disappointed. As it turns out, Candied Bacon is a pretty good flavor for ice cream. The operative word is "candied," which means it's been sweetened and caramelized. The taste of the whole ice cream concoction itself is actually rather mellow, somewhat but not entirely like sweetened vanilla, with the candied bacon bits adding a bit of texture. Try it before you knock it, we suggest.

Traditionalists will probably gravitate to their more conventional flavors, like their Sea Salt Caramel or their  best-selling Coffee Kahlua. We had a sample spoon of the latter too and concluded the Candied Bacon was actually better.

____________________
Merry Moo Ice Cream
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Merry-Moo-Ice-Cream/162781003769344
merrymoo@ymail.com

Johnny goes all steamy

Ever since my mom got me to tag along on her weekly visits at the Salcedo Market in Makati, I've appreciated perusing the alternative foodie offerings of such weekend marketplaces. Often, these are foods that you would normally not see in the malls or major grocery stores, such as specialty bagels, flavored milk teas and steamed burgers.

Wait a tick. Steamed burgers?!

That's exactly what Mabie and I had for lunch on our Sunday morning visit to Bonifacio Global City's Mercato Centrale. A place called Johnny Steams sells burgers with patties that aren't fried or grilled, as goes conventional practice, but steamed instead. Hmmm. Interesting...

The first thing I spotted on the menu was a riot. The basic PhP95 burger is called "JM's Burger." It isn't every day you come across a food item named after you...or someone who's got the same nickname as yours. Frankly, I would've tried this for kicks had I not noticed the item below it. I'm a sucker for spicy things, and the PhP115 Chili Cheese Burger seemed to fit the bill.

Mabie meanwhile ordered something further down the menu, the PhP115 "Opa! Burger," the name an obvious reference to Greek food. One of the headline features is yogurt sauce, and what seems like quite a bit more cheese than usual. 

Just as I had requested our order, the prioprietor, a kind Chinoy guy named John Mark Ongsiaco (so that's what the "JM" stood for) asked us if we wanted each of our burgers as a combo meal for PhP165. The extra dosh gets you a funnel cone full of potato wedges and some lemonade. I had my burger a la carte, while Mabie had hers as a combo.

Warming up the buns...

The burgers are prepared right before your eyes on a large electric hot plate. The special steamed patties, meanwhile, are fished out of a little rectangular tray, full of meat juices - and I was too slow to snap photos of these. Sorry 'bout that. They're thick and rectangular and pretty dense packed.

Adding the veggie trappings

Check out that patty!

So how do these burgers taste? My burger was pretty solid and filling. The patty itself is a little less flavorful than an equivalent grilled or fried one, but as a healthy option it's much better than I was expecting, and is very good value for what you get. The burger had a lot of hot sauce, which is a little disappointing, but redeemed itself with jalapeño slices all over. Mabie's Opa! Burger was a similar story, but with less heat and a cheesier, milkier taste - almost a large-sized hybrid between a cheeseburger and a doner kebab or shawarma. The potato wedges, while deep-fried, were very filling and I preferred these to run-of-the-mill french fries.

My Chili Cheese Burger...minus a few bites

Mabie's Opa! Burger, halfway through

Potato wedges - a very filling alternative to French fries

That said, I'm a little surprised that Johnny Steams doesn't ballyhoo the potentially healthful benefits of steaming its burger patties rather than grilling or frying them. Its wares are simply presented as cooked in an alternative, left-field manner, which is refreshing in an age where people are saturated with ads and signage invariably screaming "try this healthy option!" 

An interesting, flavorful alternative to Brothers Burger at a lower price. Pound-for-pound, we think they've got a winner here.

____________________
Johnny Steams
John Mark O. Ongsiaco, proprietor
+639178311156
johnnysteams@yahoo.com