01522: Sunday at Makati

Proximity is a big factor in terms of where you spend your leisure time. As much as there are restaurants, store and other establishments that will feel very important to you regardless of distance, you will still find yourself hanging out at locations closer to home. It's just a natural consequence of human nature and the hassles of the Metro Manila traffic situation.

Given we're based in Quezon City Tobie and I rarely spend our free time at Makati. Sure, we both work there but we don't routinely invest time during the weekend to head over there. It's just a wee bit too far and Araneta Center tends to cover most of what we need - assuming we actually leave the house at all.

The one thing that routinely has us going to Makati is theater - especially how many local theater companies stage their plays at venues like the RCBC Plaza. And the Sunday afternoon matinee has pretty much become our ideal time for these Makati runs since there's enough time to get to the city even if we wake up late after a busy Saturday night and then time to go around and shop after the show in case we're still in the mood.

Today we caught the Repertory Philippines staging of Boeing Boeing, which was quite the delightful little farce. It reminded me a lot of Noises Off - and both Tobie and I really enjoyed the movie version of that particular comedy. And I'm really glad that we were able to catch this play today given it's the first show of the season - and thus this means the option to get season passes!

A subscription ticket, you see, is a ticket bundle that gives you access to the three shows of their regular season at a P200 discount per show. Oh, and you get  program for free too, which is at least P60 savings as well. I've always wanted to try this out but it's either (1) we miss the first show of the season or (2) one of the shows didn't seem quite as interesting as hoped.

But theater is always worth supporting and this year's set of Repertory Philippines shows looks pretty good indeed. Plus I want to catch their staging of the musical The Producers, which is set to run some time after the regular season shows.

Other than that, Tobie and I were able to go around the various toy stores at Greenbelt, which were oddly deficient in the toy department. Plus we explored the reopened areas of Glorieta, including a rather determined hunt for the new locations of the gaming store Neutral Grounds. Still didn't get anything though other than some awesome books at Fully Booked.

Best find of the day!

We also had the chance to eat at two different restaurants today. And to change things up, we tried places that we don't normally go to. Mini-review time!

First up is Café Mediterranean, which was our pre-play lunch.

Beef Gryo

Chicken Gryo

Tobie and I had both ordered gryo plates and opted for rice instead of pita bread. They were both pretty robust meals and they made a most interesting mix of flavors given all the different dips that came with them. We really shouldn't have gotten the appetizer though since it turned out to be the same cucumber dip that was a part of the gyro meal.

Still, great value for money and nicely filling. And I think the menu has inspired us to consider trying other dishes here at the Sietch.

Then for dinner, we ate at Ma Maison, which is touted as a Japanese Western Restaurant. We were hoping that it would result in some interesting fusion cuisine dishes, but in the end it was sort of sad.

Scallops

We started with this appetizer using scallops. They had to substitute the dressing for a vinaigrette instead of whatever the normal one is and this ended up pretty disappointing. Not much flavor and putting everything together did not result in a nice mix of flavors since the onions over-powered everything else.

Chicken Katsu\Curry

My main dish was the Chicken Katsu Curry set, which wasn't necessarily bad but it wasn't anything special either. It didn't seem particularly novel and the curry sauce wasn't at all spicy, which was the biggest disappointment. I always want my curry to have a little heat.

Chicken Teriyaki

Tobie had the chicken teriyaki meal, which really just looked like tocino. And the end result was indeed something that tasted like chicken tocino. Thus it was not very Japanese and definitely not a fusion of Japanese cuisine with something moren Western.

Tobie and I are planning on trying one new restaurant every month - or maybe every quarter depending on our schedules. So I may have most posts that talk about food like this.