Mesa

It was the birthday celebration of Julian, and the clan trooped to Tomas Morato for a Sunday lunch at Mesa, which serves modernized versions of Filipino favorites.  Due to its popularity, the place gets to be full by 11:30 am, so if you don't have reservations, it is best to come early, so you can find parking space.  Their car park staff was efficient though, and we were immediately guided to on-street parking along Scout Fernandez St.

We arrived a bit after noon and found that Michaela had already ordered some appetizers--a platter full of seafood pica-pica (shrimps, dilis, oysters, fish & squid) and crunchy wraps, commonly called "bomba" or "sipa" in some other restaurants.  While the usual crunchy wraps are filled with typical lumpia shanghai filling (ground pork), Mesa has a different take, and their concoction was filled with sisig instead--I liked it!

The seafood sinigang (tamarind) soup was served on a candle top warmer, which was good for us since Erika and Kong came in a bit late, and despite that, still enjoyed hot soup.  The dishes came in freshly cooked and were quite tasty-- pork adobo, bam-i, tilapia cutlets and crispy pata.  They also had 2 kinds of laing, the dry version and the wet version (with rich coconut sauce); since I'm a fan of good sauce, I consequently liked the wet one better.  However, the best dish for me was the steamed beef with quinchay leaves, which was something new and delightful for me.

Not contented with all that food, Julian ordered an additional dish of a large crispy fried hito (catfish), which came in just in time for Kong's lunch.  Kong recounted how Erika had brought him to a chiropractor for his back-ache, and we were all glad that he he felt a little better after the back massage.  All in all, I understand that Julian spent something like P500 per head, and we came out much heavier in the process!