Tourné by Chef Sandralyn Hataway

Tourné is French for turned and if you took culinary classes like me,  you would quickly associate it with the turned vegetables they ask you to do in one of the modules for knife/cutting skills. But as of late, this word is the name of the newest restaurant to open at the Fort Strip.  According to my office mate and friend who co-owns the place with the Le Cordon Bleu trained Chef Sandralyn,  Tourné  promotes the slow food movement, which means everything is cooked fresh , no shortcuts, no pre-mixed stuff , even their ketchup is homemade..simply put , from farm to plate. They also change their menu every two weeks so you won't get that diner fatigue of ordering the same stuff over and over again. It also shows how creative their chefs can be in coming up with new dishes on a regular basis.

For my best friend Teresa's birthday dinner,  they handed us the menu for August 1 to 15.

For our soup, we tried the Roasted Tomato Soup.

Roasted Tomato Soup

The tomato soup was good and hearty.  Warm and soothing , it doesn't leave you with that acidic feeling in the tummy when you have tomato based dishes.


We also had two kinds of salad, the Tourne cobb salad and the Asian chicken salad.

The cobb salad

Asian Chicken Salad

Their salads are presented or rather plated in a different way but  were okay nonetheless. The cobb salad looks like a sandwich because the two huge tomatoes stacks in between the chicken cubes, avocado and greens.  The asian chicken salad used crispy noodles instead of the usual fried wanton wrappers.


We also tried their pizzas, the wild mushroom and the buffalo chicken.

Wild Mushroom Pizza

Their pizzas are really for appetizers since they used a tortilla wrapper instead of a pizza dough. The wild mushroom pizza was flavorful , yummy and vegan healthy.

For our main course, we had three orders of the Soyami Chicken.

Soyami Chicken

The soyami chicken is named such because the large portion of breast is crusted with Soyami tofu chips and served with Mexican rice and salsa. The chicken was very moist and tasty with the tofu chips crust. Usually, chicken breasts have a tendency to be dry so they did a good job of retaining its moisture.

The celebrant wanted to try the vegan dish and ordered the Polenta with Shitake Mushrooms.

Polenta with Shitake Mushrooms

Polenta is a corn meal mush and it can be a starch substitute for rice and pasta . It can be combined with almost anything making it a comfort food.  I liked her dish too. The polenta was creamy and blended well with the sauce of the mushrooms.

Marco had the Mutton Stew and Mushroom Risotto.

Mutton Stew and Mushroom Risotto

I also tried Marco's dish and this was really G-O-O-D! The mutton was fork tender , braised in brown sauce,  perfect with the creamy mushroom risotto. This dish is rice intensive and would require another serving of the risotto .

The others ordered the Pulled Pork Sandwich with Kamote Fries and the Tagaytay Steak.

Pulled Pork Sandwich

Our friend Keetchee who ordered this said it was good and I can obviously see from her contented face.

Tagaytay Steak with Potato Gratin

Carlos, cousin of the celebrant and who also has a food blog (Foodie Manila)   , ordered the Tagaytay Steak with Potato Gratin. He was very happy with his order and raved about how good everything was - the steak, the sauce and the gratin.

Since it's Tere's birthday, they surprised her with a birthday cake with everyone singing including Chef Sandra and her sous chefs .

She got a Cloud Cake, moist sponge cake with pineapples and cream.  It was delicious and light.  To my surprise, they also gave me an advance happy birthday cake in the form of a Pili Tart with Vanilla Ice Cream. It was perfect and can rival the Pecan Tart for me.

Pili Tart with Ice Cream, drool!!!

Thank you Tourné for the surprise! It was the perfect ending to a wonderful dinner.