Saturday, January 27, 2018

January Get-togethers

My friend Jesse was in Manila for the Christmas holidays but she didn't have time to meet up in December. As such, we decided to meet up in early January while she was still in the Philippines. She wanted to meet up in BGC and she asked for Filipino restaurant recommendations so I suggested Locavore and she very readily agreed. Basil hadn't tried Locavore before and as he tried the Lechon and Oyster Sisig and the Sizzling Sinigang, he thought it was so good that he wanted to schedule our next visit to Locavore already LOL. After dinner, we went on over to Casa Italia (this combination of dinner in Locavore and coffee and dessert in Casa Italia is really a favorite of mine) where we all had gelato.

A couple of weeks later, I met up with my friends Mike, Reb, Martin, and Jane for a late lunch in Greenbelt. Martin had just arrived in Manila and was jetlagged so he suggested a late lunch since he might not have the energy for dinner and interestingly enough, a late lunch schedule worked best for everyone since Mike had work that morning and Jane was also sorting out some errands earlier that day. I suggested that we meet up in Bizu since I miss the food and dessert in this place. There was a whole lot of catching up since it had been ages since I got to hang out with all of them together. I had initially planned on ordering one of Bizu's solo cakes like their Samba or Roca but when I saw the Chocolate Souffle on their menu, I decided to order that instead. :)


Finally, Nenen and Suzanne came home to Manila since Nenen was celebrating a milestone birthday and she wanted to do it with her family and friends in Manila. We ended up dining in Your Local in Legaspi Village. This was the first time our group was meeting up over dinner in a place other than BGC so the change in scenery was quite refreshing. :) Your Local only has two dessert options but they said we could order coffee and dessert from Yardstick which was right next to it - I guess they have the same owner/s or they have some sort of tie-up? - so I ended up getting a salted caramel waffle and coffee from there. Our set of friends are scattered across Asia and North America - a lot are based in Manila and in Singapore and a few are in the US and in Canada - and in the last get-together, it was discussed that we should have some kind of grand reunion somewhere in the world. We continued this conversation over dinner while celebrating Nenen's birthday and while the options that were narrowed down are not the cheapest international options, we had some time to save up for it. :) I do hope it pushes through; if (when?) it does, it will be awesome.

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