Trying Out Chelsea's New Dishes

I was at Chelsea Market Cafe Podium last month as part of my week long birthday celebration but I forgot to take pictures of the food we ordered  because we went straight at it ! Anyway, last Saturday, we decided to have dinner at Serendra  and we picked Chelsea because they have new items on their menu but this time we made sure to take a snap shot of the dishes we ordered.

For our salad, we tried their version of the Greek Salad with Panko Crusted Feta. I love Cyma's Roka Salata so I'm curious if Chelsea's version will hold its ground. 

Greek Salad with Panko Crusted Feta P350+

Their Greek Salad was refreshingly awesome! I love the dressing , it was a cross between ranch and a Greek vinaigrette and didn't overpower the greens. The panko crusted feta , panko is just a fancy term for the Japanese breadcrumbs , blended well with the salad.  Imagine a warm, crispy soft cheese mixing with the plump, juicy tomatoes and the crispy greens, hmmm...gotta love the texture in this dish and the overall taste. 

For the main course, we ordered the Seafood in Tomato Cream Sauce with Linguini Pasta. This is one of their best selling dish . 

Seafood in Tomato Cream with Linguini P450+

I love this pasta, it's tomato based but not that acidic because the cream dilutes the sauce and bursting with flavor.  Topped with shrimps, calamari and mussels though the squid was a bit tough for me, it is satisfying and good for two. 

But the piece de resistance for that night was the newest addition to their menu , the Crisp Citrus Rosemary Roasted Pork Belly with Cranberry Chutney served with Mashed Potatoes . 

  Crisp Citrus Rosemary Roasted  Pork Belly with Apple Cranberry Chutney  P450+

What a long and fancy name for crispy liempo! Reading it sounds yummy already and it sure was , this sinfully good dish has huge chunks of crispy and tender pork belly or liempo with a crackling skin served with a killer sauce of apple and cranberry chutney. The sauce is a bit sweet and citrusy and perfect with the mashed potatoes and a few asparagus strips.  An interesting way of serving the liempo, just don't eat the layer of fat between the skin and the meat. 

It was a happy and really filling dinner , with the other tables ordering pretty much the same dishes we had. I've been dining at Chelsea way back in 2007 with Chef Sau Del Rosario still at the helm  and I'm impressed that four years later , the  place still gets packed with diners like us looking for a good and  heartwarming meal.

Orale!

As I've mentioned in my previous entries, I love Mexican food  so I was very pleased that there's a new one at the Fort called Orale! . Orale , based from what I saw online , is Mexican for  "hell yes!" or "right on!". They have the more or less the basic menu of tacos, burrittos , quesadillas, chips and rice plates.

We ordered the chips and salsa , I just can't recall their word for it, it sounds like a topopos but it's just your usual chips but theirs is home made and really good with the ranchero sauce!

For the main meal, we tried the grilled chicken soft tacos and vegetarian burritto. 

Grilled Chicken Soft Tacos

The grilled chicken tacos are a bit spicy but if you like a bit of heat in your dish , this is really good.

Vegetarian Burrito

The vegetarian burrito is ok but I'm not really raving about it.  Still, we're happy with the food and will be back to try their other offerings. Orale! 

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.

Hana Kazu

After having lunch at Mona Lisa , with a few hours in between to burn the calories, it was time to go Japanese for dinner. Dinner was at Hana Kazu, a small restaurant along BF's Aguirre Avenue and since I'm a northener , it was actually my first time to try a restaurant in this southern area.

Being a family dinner , in celebration of Marco's Lola Lettie's birthday,  we ordered a variety of dishes from the appetizer to the main course.

Potato Salad

I didn't order this but they said it was ok with the Japanese mayo and nori on top.

Salmon

Hamachi 

The salmon was ok , they said the hamachi had that fishy taste but the server told us the taste should be like that ..hmmm..of course not..

grilled squid 

Special California Maki

I love the special california maki, instead of kani, they used ebi tempura inside , I'm not really sure but it was crispy , maybe it was kani tempura..

Toridon

The toridon is actually my main course. It was ok.

Tendon

Some ordered the tendon. They said it was good , they dipped the tempura into the sauce already but you can ask for additional.

Chirashi Set

The chirashi set looks so cute, isn't it? Ria said it was good and healthy. There were lots of dishes we weren't able to take pictures of coz' everyone started eating but everyone was happy with their food.

Mona Lisa Ristorante

It was a Sunday down south a.k.a. Alabang and for lunch, we decided to try Mona Lisa at the Commerce Center. I've always wanted to try this restaurant because they serve for dessert cannoli, tube shaped pastry dough filled with ricotta cheese and Mona Lisa even serves it with gelato ice cream!

We ordered a classic Sicilian salad to start and the Spaghetti con Polpetine (Spaghetti with Meatballs)  for the main course. You can choose your own noodle so for a change, we opted to try the meatballs with linguini.

They give you complimentary bread with a variety of spreads, tomato, herbed butter and pesto. The bread is ok , I didn't indulge in the bread coz' I was preparing for the huge amount of carbs with the pasta and making room for the cannoli.

Sicilian Salad 

The Sicilian Salad is good for two , so we asked our server to split it already . It was very good and refreshing with the grapes, walnuts, mangoes, sun dried tomatoes and romaine lettuce. I love their home made dressing.

After the salad, enter frame the Linguini con Polpetine.

Linguini con Polpetine

The linguini with meatballs is good. I like that there are chunks of tomatoes in the pommodoro sauce and it tasted fresh. The meatballs were very savory , tender but firm texture wise and didn't taste like they put in a lot of breadcrumbs. Meatballs are a combination of ground sirloin and pork or sometimes even with ground veal. The serving is definitely good for two or three if you're having other dishes but since we finished it, we were so full there wasn't any room for dessert anymore.  Oh well, there's definitely a next time and we'll make sure to have that cannoli for dessert.

Mona Lisa Ristorante is located at the 2nd level of the Commerce Building , Commerce Ave., Filinvest Corporate City, Alabang , Muntinlupa

Kulinarya Kitchen

Kulinarya is an old favorite at the Power Plant Mall though I haven't eaten there in ages! Actually the original Kulinarya is along Katipunan extension after the flyover, where Fat Skillet presently resides. I love their Gamberi Pasta and other blue plate specials so I was pleasantly surprised that they're still open and newly renovated as Kulinarya Kitchen.

We tried their executive lunch specials . For a fixed price you get a soup and a main course with sidings and rice. I anticipated that it won't be enough ( and I was right) so we got an appetizer too.

Seafood Salad Maki

 The seafood salad maki is good! I highly recommend this appetizer. It came with a wasabi aioli dip and fresh mango cubes on top.

Grilled Chicken Teriyaki

The grilled chicken teriyaki is good, fully cooked yet tender and not charred. It was perfect with the fried rice.

Breaded Porkchop

If you want pork , get the breaded porkchop. You get a nice piece of meat without the thick breading though a small portion would be the fat ,typical of porkie chops.

Lunch was just right but not really full (executive lunch specials are really like this, they're not really heavy on the belly ). I guess if you're a hearty and heavy eater like me , there's still that tummy space that can only be filled up by another dish perhaps or a good dessert to cap the meal.

Shi Lin

Shi Lin at the Podium,  like Crystal Jade and Lugang, serves xiao long bao among other dimsum choices. The limited menu also offers noodle soups and rice toppings. It wasn't the xiao long bao that attracted us when we were checking out the menu but the noodles with spicy sesame and peanut sauce. Hmmm....So we ordered it plus the wonton noodle soup , vegetable buns and just to try their version, the xiao long bao. 

The xiao long bao is ok. The wrapper was firm enough to hold the soup inside but the filling was a bit tough for me. The xiao long bao of Lugang is better. Or perhaps it was just one of those days for the guys making this dimsum..

xiao long bao

The vegetable buns are just ok for me. It had a mild bitter after taste, I won't order this the next time.

vegetable buns

This is the noodles with spicy sesame and peanut sauce. It was served lukewarm , intentional I think and it was very rich! The sauce was good ,specially with the spicy sesame but it was thick that you needed some sort of  a chaser , or in this case, soup from the wonton noodles to dilute it  after a couple of spoonfuls. Make sure to share this noodles 'coz you will pause midway after having too much of that rich peanut sesame sauce. 

Noodles with Spicy Sesame and Peanut Sauce

Wonton Noodle Soup

The wonton noodle soup is ok. The clear soup tasted so mild, almost bland but at least it wasn't salty.  The wontons are better than the xiao long bao for me.