Lucky Finds: Ox & Palm Corned Beef, Landana Cheese

I love going to the grocery. I always say it's kind of therapeutic, but it's more than that. I really enjoy going and seeing all the colorful and interesting things in it. There's something bountifully optimistic about them. That said, if I don't have money it's deeply depressing stepping into one. But when me and Ilyn have a bit of extra cash, we indulge in one of our very few guilty pleasures, and that is food.

A couple of weeks ago we went to Rustan's in Makati to see what new and interesting things we can take home. I love going to Rustan's because it has so much more than what your regular grocery usually offers.

For one, they have an absolutely awesome deli with incredible selections of cheeses and meat. In the old days we would buy things like Roquefort and Brie because they're the famous ones. Roquefort is notorious, being a blue cheese, for it's dark greenish mold all over it. Sounds disgusting? It smells weird and tastes weird, but strangely awesome. Check out this video of me eating Roquefort. To me Brie smells even weirder. Ilyn likes it. I like it too but not often. Because these cheeses are so er... unique and well, rather intense to eat, we don't get to eat it often so it just sits in the ref until it expires. And it's just too bad.

So anyway, when we went to Rustan's we decided to check out other cheeses. There were so many to choose from. Randomly I chose two: Gruyere and Landana Gouda Olives and Tomatoes. I don't know why I chose them, I just did.

That's not the actual cheese package I bought (that's just some random photo I saw online). The one in the deli was a big block and I asked to get just 200 grams, sliced thinly. The gruyere we got as a block because it's a hard cheese and it's usually grated.

Wow, did we luck into these cheeses! We love them both! First the gruyere. It's actually a melting cheese that's put in pasta and soups and can be eaten as a snack. I love eating it as is because it tastes really mild and not overwhelmingly salty. It also works really really well with pasta. It melted right on the pasta without any additional heating and added a really nice taste.  But the Gouda. Oh my God. It smells very slightly weird, but you forget about it as soon as you put it in your mouth. It's mild, and the olives and tomato are just in the perfect proportion to give a slight herby taste. We couldn't get enough of it. We finished all 200 grams in just a few days.

I also did a grilled cheese sandwich combining both gruyere and gouda and Ilyn really enjoyed it!

We loved it so much that when we went to a different Rustan's the past weekend (Marketplace at BGC), we got another 300 grams! At around P170 per 100 grams, I think it's very worth it!

Earlier in this blog I wrote about my favorite Corned Beef. My favorites included brands like Delimondo and Purefoods, both local Philippine brands. I really, REALLY hate to say it, but I found a new favorite in Ox & Palm. I only heard about this brand from a few, well, older people on Facebook, asking if we of the younger generation even heard of this brand. I do vaguely remember it, but I haven't been seeing it on the shelves at all lately.

So when I saw it at Rustan's I knew I had to get one. It was actually kind of expensive at P145 for a 200g can. I think that's twice as expensive as Purefoods. Would it be worth it? You see I love to try different canned corned beef brands. And more often than not I come away disappointed. I don't like brands like Libby's or Target because the meat is shredded a little too fine. I like my corned beef to have some body and heft and still looks like it did come from beef.

When the first spoon of Ox & Palm entered my mouth it was like holy crap this is awesome. It has a slightly intense smoky beefy flavor that was seasoned perfectly right. The beef still had some body to it like the beef had just fallen apart (and not mechanically shredded).  It was amazing. At P145 it's absolutely worth it. Sorry Purefoods and Delimondo! I still love you guys (and will still hang out with you once in a while), but for now Ox & Palm is my beef buddy!

EXTRA!  I'm always on the lookout for new and interesting sodas, or different iterations of common brands. So when I saw this Coca-Cola Life, I just had to try it. They say Coke tastes better when cane sugar is used. I actually couldn't tell the difference taste wise, but drinking this, which is sweetened by both cane sugar and stevia (the new hipster sweetener), it felt softer in the mouth, a bit more subtle.

Anyway, that's it for now. If ever we visit the not so usual grocery again like Rustan's or Makati Supermarket (which is curiously in Alabang), or South Super Market (in Los Baños), I'll make sure to post some of the unique and interesting things we might find.

Cafe Juanita: I Died and went to Food Heaven

Yesteray Ilyn and I went to Manila and finding ourselves in the Barangay Capitol Hills area, we decided to eat at Cafe Juanita. It's a restaurant I've heard so much about. In fact, it's been voted many times as the best that serves traditional Filipino food.

Oh yeah? We went ahead to try it out.

The first thing you notice upon entering the place is the visual assault of the many things that decorate the interior. I can't even begin to describe it. Here's a photo, showing just a small segment of the dining area.

Ok, that didn't even begin to show how crazy the decor is so I'll just leave it at that. The food is the important thing anyway. So how was it?

Ilyn and I ordered two things: Corned Beef Sinigang and Laing.

Seemed simple enough. I tasted the Laing first (pictured above). The Laing was presented in quite an ordered way, unlike the usual mush of leaves stirred endlessly together. They rolled the leaves over a meat of some kind and sliced it. I took a bite of one of the slices and oh my God, it was so awesome. I've eaten laing so many times before from so many different places. I don't understand how they can make it taste even better, even spectacular. My eyes were literally rolling in their sockets. I tend to do that when I taste something awesome.

I was eager to try the Corned Beef Sinigang next.

Ok, so they didn't just open a can of corned beef and made sinigang out of that. Apparently, they made their own corned beef but it still looked like whole pieces of beef, cut into thin slices. And once again, oh my God, the beef was probably the softest that's ever passed my lips (softer than that Donovan's steak). It's so soft that the mere pressure from a fork crumbles the beef into shreds. The soup itself is perfectly tart for sinigang, but it has something else in there that makes the taste so soft to the taste. Perhaps bayabas? I'm guessing it is.  Whatever it is, it's brought this dish right to the edge. Once again, I can't believe I'm saying this... I've tasted corned beef before, I've tasted sinigang before, but I'm not kidding when I say this is the best damned corned beef and sinigang I've tasted. It's kind of insane.

The nice thing about their sinigang is, they actually give you a small cup with some of the soup for you to preview its tartness and saltiness. The would ask you if it was all right or if they need to turn it up a little bit or lessen it. I've never seen anyone do that before.

Cafe Juanita, I love you, dammit! I'm coming back and next time I'm bringing my mom and dad.

Cafe Juanita is at 2 United Street, Barangay Kapitolyo, Pasig. Be sure to call to reserve a table at peak hours because apparently, we were lucky to find a free table when we came in. All the tables had "Reserved" on them! (02) 632-0357

Roast Peking Duck at Wai-Ying, Binondo

I lived in San Miguel, Manila for15 years, and lived an additional year in P. Noval, near UST. Both places are in striking distance to Chinatown in Binondo and for the life of me, I don't understand why I never went there to eat in all that time.

I guess I never really became a "foodie" until around 10 or so years ago. Before that, I just pretty much ate wherever was convenient. Nowadays, I've become more discriminating. I no longer just want to "eat", but I want to "taste". And knowing there's so much to taste out there just drives me out of my mind, because one can really only eat so much.

Now that I live in San Pablo City, some 85 kilometers away from Manila do I suddenly get the urge to go Binondo food hopping. I've heard for many years how nice the food was there but I really didn't pay it any mind. Now I'm making up for lost time.

One of the first places I wanted to visit was Wai Ying Restaurant along Benavides St. It's the kind of place where their chickens and ducks and other food items are out on display on their front windows. It's almost like a hole in the wall. Frontage is very narrow, but the restaurant goes pretty deep, and it has a second floor.

At 11am the ground floor was already full so we went up and we were lucky to find available seats. I hear this place fills up pretty quickly. I ordered the Peking Duck Rice and Hakaw. Ilyn ordered the steamed bokchoy.

And man, this duck is the softest and tastiest roast duck I've ever had. It was maddening. I've had plenty of duck in other places, but this is probably the first time I'm tasting duck at its best. Both the hakaw and bokchoy were also pretty good, but I was just so bowled over by the duck it was pretty hard to get over.

I have no complaints at all about the food, but if there is one bad thing I didn't like was that their service started to suffer during their peak hours. At 11am it was still OK, but when we were trying to get our bill at around 12 or so, the servers seem let go of the ball a little bit. They tend to forget things. It's harder to catch their attention. It's clear to me that they can solve their problems if they had a bit more manpower. The bill took 15-20 minutes to get to us after we asked for it. And we had to remind them several times. It was a needle in an otherwise very pleasant experience.

I would recommend that you go because the food is just terrific, but visit during off peak hours to prevent any hassle.

Chili Lobster at Harbor View

I've never had lobster in my life. I think I tasted a bit many years ago in Escolta, but that doesn't count because I only tasted a small bit. I never really had lobster properly. Today was the first time.

I wanted to try it just once in my life (that seems to be my motto nowadays), taste it and experience it, and never have it again. Because really, it's just too expensive to really indulge in.

I browsed the Internet on where to find the best lobster in Manila, and it pointed me to this Chili Lobster from Harbor View Restaurant, near the Quirino Grandstand. I thought, yeah OK, I'll try this.

Today me and Ilyn had an opportunity to visit Mapua in Intramuros, and I thought this would be the best time to go to Harbor View for lunch. I didn't even look at the menu too much. I knew what I was going to order.

Within 20 minutes our Chili Lobster finally came, looking really awesome.

What's the verdict?

My immediate reaction was that it was pretty good. It tasted like a cross between crab and prawn. The chili sauce that went with it made the entire dish really really good. But I thought it wasn't the earth-shatteringly awesome taste experience I spent a large part of my life expecting.

But as the day wore on, I can't help but think of the lobster, and how good it was. If I kept thinking about it, then it must have been better than good, right? Because for the better part of the day, I just couldn't get it out of my mind. I want to have it again, but well, I just can't afford it.

I think I can approximate the chili sauce that went into it, so I guess I'll just cook it with these really big prawns I usually see in the local market. I'd do it with crab, but it's such a hassle eating crab. We'll see!

Harbor View itself enjoys a nice spot over the shores of Manila Bay. It's an open restaurant,  no air-conditioning. That allows you to enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of Manila Bay. Going there at lunch time probably wasn't the best time to go because I could see how dirty the seawater really is. The good thing is, polluted as Manila Bay is, it didn't smell bad so it didn't ruin the experience.

It's become a habit to order the house brewed coffee at restaurants I eat, just to see what their coffee tastes like. It's part of my never ending quest to find the best coffee in the country.  Ling Nam's coffee wasn't that good. See the restaurant review here. But Harbor View's coffee was actually pretty good. It's actually pretty thin and not really dark, but as long as it tastes good, I have no complaints.

Will we return to Harbor View? We definitely will. But we'll just have something else next time.

My History with Ling Nam

Ling Nam is a Chinese restaurant that has been operating in the Philippines since 1950. It's first branch is still operating and is still located at T. Alonzo Street in Binondo, Manila.

In the mid 90s, I was part of an Architectural firm that was responsible for designing and constructing several branches of Ling Nam across Metro Manila.  The branches I had a hand in are all closed now, but they were located at People's Park (now Trinoma), Divisoria, and Recto.

The branch in Recto (near National Book Store) I had a big hand in because I was the main designer. I also had the demented idea of putting a tromp l' oeil on the curving ceiling of the restaurant, depicting the bright blue sky with clouds. Since none of the painters could do it, I had no choice but to do it myself. So there I was for a couple of days in painter's gear, painting the ceiling.  It turned out pretty nice, I thought.

I feel kind of sad that the Recto branch was eventually closed. I had planned on taking photos of it, but I never had the chance.

I'm glad to see that Ling Nam is still going strong today. The branch I visited earlier today is next to Tiendecitas in Pasig. When I saw it, I knew I had to eat there!

I had Chicken Noodle, Hakaw and Ilyn had Sweet and Sour Fish and Garlic Spinach. Now Ilyn is pretty picky when it comes to Chinese restaurants, but she seemed to really like the food at Ling Nam.

As for me, I thought the noodle tasted as nice as I remember it back in the mid 90s. It's not earth shatteringly awesome, but it tastes better than a lot of chicken noodles I've eaten at similar restaurants. The Hakaw, which is I believe steamed shrimp dumpling, was also pretty nice, although the other covering seemed a little to chewy. The inside tasted pretty good though.

Like Ilyn, I too like it better than say,  Chow King or Hap Chan. Don't worry, I won't leave it at that.  I think they both deserve their proper reviews in this blog one of these days.


As for Ling Nam, I wouldn't mind coming back, although whatever branches are available aren't easily accessible to me.