The Best Steak in San Pablo City

Me and Ilyn were fortunate enough to be invited to try out the menu of a restaurant being developed by friends here in San Pablo City. It's actually already semi-open, but not yet for the general public. It started out as a simple cafe for customers of a spa, but they're now trying to expand it into a full blown restaurant/art gallery.

The owner clearly not only loves cooking but is dedicated to providing the best they could possibly offer.

Our meal started out with an appetizer consisting of wheat pandesal with olive oil/balsamic vinegar dip. I didn't finish it because I didn't want to be full before I finished our meal. I did finish the salad which came next, which consisted of lettuce, alfalfa sprouts, baby arugula, candied walnuts, grapes, and orange. I liked it because it was different from the kinds of salad usually served in San Pablo restaurants (to be honest, I'm kind of tired of Ceasar and Greek salads) and it was very light and refreshing.

Next came Potato soup with croutons. Like the salad, it was very light and of an appropriate amount that didn't threaten to overwhelm the main dish, which was the steak.

The steak was an 8oz Rib Eye cooked medium rare which comes with gravy and mashed potatoes or rice. This, as far as I know, the only restaurant in San Pablo which serves steak specifying weight and one of the few that allows you to choose doneness. For example, you cannot specify doneness with Si Christina's steak. It comes in only one: well done. When I tried it, I was disappointed because it came out as super well done (meaning burnt). For a price tag of more than P1000, I think they could do a better job and get a better quality steak. You can choose doneness with Simple Treat's steak, but it's so thin sometimes it doesn't matter if you choose medium rare because it comes out as well done no matter what.

This 8oz Rib Eye was perfectly medium rare, and it's the softest steak I ever had, not only in San Pablo, but in the Philippines. The only thing that came close to the softness of this is the Filet Mignon I had at Donovan's in San Diego. I wish I could say it's the best steak I ever had, but this comes as a close second. The best steak I had was also served in this place a few weeks ago when they were trying out a much bigger Rib Eye, US Prime Angus Steak, 1 and a half inches thick and done medium rare. That was just incredible, and we're grateful that we were asked to try it. They will try to add it to their menu soon. I don't know how expensive that steak will be (I think it will be very expensive), but the 8oz Rib Eye they served us was P795. For that price, I guarantee it will be worth it. It's the best steak you can have at that price.

The meal was closed out with a desert of mini blueberry muffins, cinnamon roll, and a pot of hot Secret Garden red tea.

The entire meal cost P1,100, which is very much worth it, in my opinion.

David's Tea House, San Pablo CIty

My mom has been bugging me about eating at this new restaurant that was under construction for the past few weeks at Puregold, San Pablo City. It came to the point that she was bugging me almost everyday why the place wasn't open yet and of course I had no answer.

Personally, I'm always on the lookout for a new place to eat here in the city, and when I saw that David's Tea House was the name of the restaurant, I immediately looked it up online. It's one of many branches of a Chinese themed restaurant, and their menu looked really promising. To be quite honest, I was very excited. We do have a few Chinese themed restaurants in town, but David's Tea House looks like it's the most hardcore of the bunch. Hardcore meaning their menu is very deep with a lot of exotic and authentic Chinese dishes.

When I learned it had finally opened yesterday, I immediately set a date with the family to have lunch the following day, today.

I was so excited that I probably ordered more than we could possibly eat, but I wanted to try a lot of things and of course, we could have leftovers bagged for dinner. Some of the things had aside from the Seaweed and Century Egg pictured above were:

Hot and Sour Soup

One Half Fried Chicken

One Half Yang Chow Fried Rice and Beef with Ampalaya

Dimsum Platter

Hakaw

Shanghai Spring Rolls

Steamed Lapu-Lapu

WHEW! That was a lot huh? But I tasted them all, and all of them were pretty good.

I do have to give special mention to the Seaweed and Century Egg, which was just fantastic. I've never had seaweed before, at least not like this one. I was half expecting the green rubbery stems with tiny little balls, so this was some other kind of seaweed. It was served cold, which was a surprise. But as I said, it tasted quite extraordinary. Everyone on the table liked it.

Also, the the Century Egg was thankfully free of the ammonia smell that usually accompanies this type of egg. And that's how I like it. As dishes go, I give this 5 stars. I don't give this often, so that's probably saying something.

As for the rest, as I mentioned, they were perfectly good. I liked everything, specially the Hakaw and other items on the Dimsum Platter. The Hot and Sour soup was subtlety sour and not overpowering.

Their house tea (which is a complimentary item) was very nice. I was surprised it was Jasmine Tea. Normally, I hate Jasmine Tea because it smells like a Filipino wake. You know that smell. Similar to Sampaguita. That smell creeps me out now and depresses me. I don't want to be drinking anything that smells like that as well. But this Jasmine tea was nothing like that. When told it was Jasmine, I did start to notice subtle hints of it, but it wasn't enough to bother me.

I've really got nothing to complain about. The wait staff was very very attentive. They were very nice and even helped my mom and dad place food on their plates. The food arrived in a timely manner and we didn't have to wait for too long.

The only thing that disappointed me was that they didn't have any duck dishes. In fairness, it's not on their menu. It's not even on the menu on their website. But they do have a photo of it at that same website so it only made me wonder. I asked why they didn't have it, and they said that not enough people order the duck and the stocks just go to waste. Oh well.

Nevertheless, we had a great time. The food was great, and now my mom can stop bugging me.

Yep! Looks like we're a pretty happy bunch, specially my mom.

We definitely plan on coming back, specially me and Ilyn, to try their other dishes.

Home Made Ice Tea

I've been experimenting on and off creating my own ice tea from scratch. I've tried with different kinds of tea including black, earl grey, darjeeling and green across several brands, but it wasn't until I found this Organo Gold Organic Green Tea was I able to make something that was very satisfactory.

Basically what I did was this:

I had a sealable plastic pitcher in the house which can contain almost 2 liters of liquid. In this container I put about a liter and a half of really cold water. Into this water I squeezed the juice of at least 15 calamansi. (You can add more according to your taste.) I then added 3/4 cup of "segunda" sugar. That's sugar that's between white and brown. You can add more sugar according to your taste. It usually takes quite a lot of sugar to make tea like this taste sweet.

Now the reason for the sealable pitcher is I can close this and shake it around very vigorously. I do this to completely incorporate the sugar, water and calamansi.

In a 500ml container I steeped 4 teabags of Organo Green Tea in boiled water for around 8 minutes, then poured that into the pitcher. I shake the pitcher even more.

An added bonus as to why I use plastic pitcher is I can place it in a cache in the door of the our refrigerator's freezer. That would allow the tea to get really really cold.

I usually prepare this several hours before serving so the tea will be ice cold upon serving.

My pal Jonas Diego has made a nice graphic about this tea which you can find here.

Green Tea is by no means the only Organo Gold product I've come across. They also have some really fine coffees like Mocha, Cafe Latte and Black Coffee. Personally, my favorite is their Cafe Latte, which I found to be perfect for making iced coffee.  You can find out more about other Organo Gold coffees here.

Check out their Official Facebook Page here:
http://www.facebook.com/LuvACup