food

A Greek feast at Cyma

cymaSunday morning. I had like 2 hours of sleep under my belt. I had to go to mass. With two words, Joannaman perked me up instantly. “Cyma tayo“. I dragged my tired body and even if I wanted to crawl under a rock and wake up the next day, went to mass earlier than I planned (I was planning to just go by myself later in the day) coz of the promise of the lunch after it. See I loved Cyma the first time we went. Clearly evidenced by my blog post found here. And nothing can soothe my tired soul like a good meal. Ordered basically the same things, and since we had mom along, ordered a couple more. Tonnos salad is feta cheese, olive oil, tomatoes, and a whole lotta other stuff with seared tuna. Got the solo coz we knew from experience that the solo was enough for two people. Also ordered the tzatziki, which is cucumber dip, with pita bread. This was my favorite. Joannaman’s too. We both said we wanted to come back to Cyma and just eat that. Ordered the flaming sausages just so we could order an OPA! thing on the menu. (When it’s marked with an OPA! on the menu it means the dish is flaming and all the servers shout OPA! when they serve it) And since mom couldn’t get the chicken gyro she originally wanted, she ordered the Roka pasta instead.

Everything was gooooooood. The clean flavor of the tzatziki was the perfect contrast to the greek sausages we ordered which I can only describe as hearty. The pasta with arugula and pine nuts and olive oil, way oily but good oily. The salad, bliss. And in true form, we tasted each dish but couldn’t finish a single one. We ended up taking home a little bit of everything. All in all a hazy meal but a good one, which I washed down with their iced tea, which is one of my favorite blends of iced teas out there.

All in all a perfect ending to a whirlwind weekend.

food · Jodythinks

Has anyone been to the Chocolate Kiss lately?

chockissThe Chocolate Kiss Cafe in UP Diliman is one of my favorite haunts. This is clearly evidenced by my former blogposts here and here. It’s quiet. It’s like a hop skip and a jump away from our house. It has simple, unassuming food that’s not too expensive. It has my favorite blueberry cheesecake.

But my last visit two Sundays ago with the family had me sorely disappointed at the quality of the food there now. I haven’t gone in a while (like a couple months) and the triumphant return I envisioned was a bitter defeat. I don’t know if they changed the chef, or they’re just using lesser quality ingredients, but gawd. Everything was different from what we knew. Ordered the usual Hungarian sausage and penne pasta, baby back ribs, and chix in a basket. All our usual favorite orders. The sausage in the pasta was different, the ribs were lesser quality and smaller, only the chix in a basket was almost the same quality. And that’s only coz we almost never order it.

Thank God the cake was the same. But we left feeling gypped. What happened to Chockiss?