Tonight was probably my third time eating at Red Plate, a little restaurant along Mabini Road here in San Pablo City. I think they've been in operation only for a few months, if I'm not mistaken. If I visit a place more than once, then that probably means I like eating there. Or at the very least, my first experience there was good enough for me to want to come back and try other things on their menu.
Now this Seafood Platter (pictured above) is NOT on their menu for some reason. I only knew that they served it after seeing a photo of it at their Facebook page. I had wanted to order this because it looked really good and I wanted to try it.
Now I do want to say that after eating at the now defunct Hi-Kari restaurant in Ultimart a couple of years ago, I developed a really violent distaste for anything that's breaded. I avoided breaded anything. Squid. Shrimp. Specially breaded fish. Most specially breaded dory. It also put me off eating breaded chicken, but there have been exceptions. I still like KFC for instance.
Anyway, with this in mind, I don't know what possessed me to try this dish, specially after seeing it laid out in front of me and seeing everything was freakin' breaded. But it looked pretty nice. And it was a LOT. I think this would have been enough for Ilyn and me. I didn't even need rice. If I had been a drinking man, this would have made awesome pulutan.
I tried everything, and I thought it was pretty good. My distaste for breaded stuff seemed to have taken a break. I particularly liked the breaded gindara. I never knew gindara tasted so nice. It was the first time I'm tasting this fish. I might go ahead and buy some of these ginadara steaks I see at groceries and try cooking them for myself.
This dish is a bit expensive at 600 pesos, which I only found out after I got the bill. Like I said, this wasn't on the menu. But I think it's only appropriate for the amount of food on it. And as I said, it's a lot. I wasn't even able to finish it. I had at least half of it wrapped to take home.
As for drinks, I wanted to try their house blend ice tea. The flavor of it was interesting. It reminded me of aratiles. Aratiles actually tastes very nice, but having grown up eating it, I got sort of sick of the flavor after a while.
Later, I had their house coffee, which is also interesting. As I've mentioned in other posts, I always try to taste the coffee of all the restaurants I eat in. The coffee beans were freshly ground and brewed so that's a plus right there. The coffee did come in packaged, meaning they already included cream (or milk?) and sugar and chocolate sprinkles on top when they give it to you. It was just OK, but I do like to have the choice whether to add cream on it and how much sugar. I really don't take cream or milk in my brewed coffee. But their coffee tasted nice so I really have nothing to complain about.
Ilyn had the Beef Stew, which she really liked. Although she did say it was slightly "ma-sebo". I don't know the exact translation. The closest is probably "fatty". Whenever I cook beef, I pre-boil the beef for a few hours to soften the meat. And then I would put it in the ref for a few hours or overnight. The following morning, you can see that all the fat had solidified on the surface of the liquid. That is something I take out because that's what gives beef the "ma-sebo" taste.
It's an ample amount of serving for 130 pesos. Everything is cooked absolutely soft, specially the beef which is just right for something like this.
Next time I go back, I will try their Burger, which I hear is pretty good.
No comments:
Post a Comment