Bravo! & Apartment 1B

Salcedo Village has a lot of good finds if you're after a cozy dinner or a relaxing night cap with that neighborhood feel. Our favorites include New Bombay, Bravo, Apartment 1B and Bugsy's. It's been awhile the last time we ate in Bravo along HV Dela Costa so we decided to have dinner there with a good friend who's visiting from New York. I told her it's not our favorite Famous Ray's Pizza in NY but Bravo serves good Italian comfort food.   Our "hungry" group of four (Marco was busy taking pictures)  ordered two huge bowls of salad, the insalata di aranchie, two family size pizzas and three kinds of pastas.

The insalata di aranchie had lettuce, arugula, walnuts, tomatoes and fresh parmesan shavings. A simple salad just enough to tease the palate for the pizza and the pasta. We forgot to take a picture of the salad up close coz everyone started digging in. 

We had  the spaghetti gamberi ( shrimps, tomatoes and lots of garlic),  penne al granchio ( with crabmeat ) and the carbonara to break the two tomato based pastas. 

 I love the gamberi coz I like a lot of garlic with  tomato based pasta. The penne with crabmeat was good too though it could use more of the crab. The carbonara was creamy , a good blend of egg and heavy cream , with the Italian bacon providing the right amount of salt. 

The pizzas are the best. Bravo!'s pizza crusts are all thin crusts but it doesn't crack or collapse when you bite it and they have that nice bubble burst on top. Both the margherita and vegetariana tasted delish. 

                                              margherita pizza

                                             the vegetarian pizza..notice how thin the crusts are..

                                            

We were full already but there was still a bit of space for dessert at Apartment 1B. We ordered the apple crips with vanilla ice cream and the crepe cake . We wanted to compare the crepe cake with Manhattan's Lady M cake boutique which is famous for serving the best crepe cake in New York. 

                                           

The apple crisp which is a deconstructed apple crumb pie was really good. It blended well with the vanilla ice cream. It's the second time we had this dessert and the taste and texture is still the same. The crepe cake was pleasant, it wasn't too sweet and you can see the 30 layers of crepe but we still personally prefer Lady M's version. 

                                             the crepe cake and a cup of hot chocolate

Apartment 1B serves more than dessert, they have good brunch meals, appetizers and dinner entrees.  Our favorites are the porkchops and the meatloaf with potato gratin. I didn't check though if they have new dishes because it's the same menu 3 years ago but it's worth a visit if you're in the area.