Salmon Spumante at Simple Treats, San Pablo City

"Simple Treats" is a restaurant here in San Pablo City that my wife Ilyn and I go to regularly, but for some reason, I haven't written about it beyond a short mention earlier in this blog about coffee. Yep, they make the best coffee in San Pablo City.

It's about time I talked about their food, which I have enjoyed quite a lot.  Tonight I had "Salmon Spumante" (pictured above), which includes grilled salmon in cream with aioli pasta. The salmon, combined with the cream, was just delicious. The aoili is what I would expect aoili to be, pasta in garlic, olive oil and peppers. It was very nice, although I would have loved a bit of parmesan cheese on it.

Ilyn  had "Grilled Salmon", a dish we've been ordering for a long time. It came with rice and a lemon-butter sauce. It's very nice, as we've always experienced it to be.

Although we did notice both dishes were on the salty side. Perhaps it's our less sodium diet that's affected our taste buds, but that's how it seemed to us.

But beyond that, both dishes were just excellent.

It's the weekend, so there were preparations from some musicians as they set up to start performing at 7pm. They usually have musicians come in Friday to Sunday, who play simple music. One dude just plays guitar one day, and the next day a couple of dudes are on keyboard and violin. They're pretty good too.

Simple Treats is located at the Malinaw Lodge, Zulueta St. Corner Azucena in San Pablo City. It opens at 8am and last orders are taken at 12 midnight.

Simple Treats on Facebook.

Serendipity Tea Bar, San Pablo City

I finally got around to checking out Serendipity Tea Bar here in San Pablo City. I've been passing this place regularly and always wanted to try them out. If you're looking for it, it's right next to that big Indian temple that's being constructed near the corner of the San Pablo Diversion road and Maharlika Highway, walking distance from SPC Medical, 7-11, and Liempo Republic.

The first thing I immediately noticed was how young the clientele was. Practically every customer in there was clearly 20-25 years younger than me. I guess it's safe to say it's a hit with the young adults because the place is almost always full with them. Irrationally, I felt kind of out of place for a brief moment. But I guess that's just silly.

True to it's name, it's a TEA bar, not a cafe. So there's no coffee in here. Their specialty is their milk tea, which I hear is very good. I say "hear" because there's probably not a chance that I'll ever check it out for myself, being lactose intolerant.

Ilyn ordered Yakult Peach with Nata De Coco. She said it was very good although she came away with the feeling that it was spiked with something because half an hour later her adrenalin shot up and was pretty much bouncing off the walls for the next hour. I don't mean "spiked" in a bad way of course. Perhaps it had caffeine? Whatever it was, Ilyn was kind of a little too excited and talkative for a while.

As for the food, I ordered Seafood Pasta:

It had shrimp and squid and as a whole it tasted quite nice. It's not something I would lose my head over, but it was good enough for me to want to come back and try what else was there.

Ilyn had Seafood Pesto Pasta:

She said that it was OK, not overwhelmingly awesome, but was simply all right. I tasted a bit of it, and it tasted like pesto. Like I expected anything more.

Now I almost didn't want to write this review because I already had a feeling I wasn't going to rave about it, but I thought well, I can't just rave about things on this blog. I really have to be honest.

And so yes, here are some of the not so nice things I experienced here.

The staff was friendly and helpful enough, so I had no problem with that. The first problem is probably the fault of my own expectations. You see, Ilyn had written down the menu on her notebook the first time she ate here some weeks ago so she can show it to me.

What I immediately noticed was they had a "Garden Fresh" burger. I assumed it was a vegetarian burger because other dishes from other restaurants with the "Garden Fresh" tag was vegetarian. Like Greenwich's Garden Fresh Pizza for instance.

So I looked forward to ordering that, along with their onion rings, which Ilyn said was very nice.

Imagine my disappointment when it turned out the Garden Fresh Burger had a beef patty, but just had a lot of greens and other vegetable stuff in it. No fault to them, of course.

However, they also told me that their onion rings was unavailable. Ouch. You see when reviewing restaurants, I have a scale that goes from 1-10, 10 being excellent. As soon as I enter any restaurant, they have an automatic 10. Points would be subtracted every time I was disappointed.  When they don't have an item available that's listed on the menu, that's a major disappointment for me. So I subtract one point.

I thought OK, I'll just have a pasta. I chose Pasta Bolognese. Also not available. OUCH. Subtract another point. This wasn't looking promising.

So I settled on the Seafood Pasta. I also ordered Chef's Salad, but I didn't like the dressing too much. In fact, I wasn't able to finish it.  Subtract half a point. At least I was able to finish the pasta, which I actually liked. It's not something I want to try again though, but it was pleasant enough for me to try other things on their menu.

One last thing. They didn't have a change for my money. I don't know, maybe it was just me, but I swear I could hear the dude in the kitchen in kind of a pissed off voice saying that they couldn't possibly have change for my money. I didn't want to make an issue of it, so I let it pass. Subtract 2 points.

In fairness the dude who served us was very nice, and very friendly. In fact, he remembered Ilyn from the last time she visited.

All in all, I wouldn't say it was a completely awesome experience. But it was an OK experience, and like I said, I wouldn't mind trying it again. I just hope that I no longer hear "not available" anymore. That's actually one of the big no-nos a restaurant can commit. And yes, always have change. I hope they can fix that.

Simple White Pasta Sauce

This is probably one of the first recipes I've ever learned. I got the idea from the editor of my first comics job, JR. Mercado, around 1992.

It is really very simple. These are the basic ingredients:

Cooked Pasta
1 can Campbell Mushroom Soup
2 tablespoons Cheez Whiz

Cook the pasta (spaghetti or macaroni or whatever you like). Cook the Campbell soup according to package directions, which would require you 1 can full of either milk or water. I prefer water because I'm lactose intolerant. Add the 2 tablespoons of Cheez Whiz.

And that's basically it.

However, you can consider this simply a base on which you can add more stuff in. You can chop and fry (or boil) some cold cuts, whichever you prefer. I would recommend bacon and ham. Tonight, so it would be more healthy, I used chicken ham and fish sausage. I chopped some asparagus lying around and threw that in the sauce. I boiled it for a couple of minutes to cook the asparagus.

Upon serving, I topped it with some Parmigiano-Reggiano (you can use parmesan cheese) and some chili flakes.

It's a pretty flexible dish. You can add whatever cold cuts you like, although I would advice NOT using those red hotdogs because the red color kind of leaks out and turns your white sauce red.

Or, you can opt not to have cold cuts at all. Totally up to you.