I had initially wanted to hold my birthday celebration at the Fort, but during our deliberations, Kong Kong wanted to get another glimpse of the Roxas Boulevard area, which we fondly refer to as Dewey Boulevard, its old name. Of course, we reminisced about the good old days and how the Aristocrat Restaurant has been there since pre-war era. Gwammy was telling us that early on, the original restaurant was called Blue Moon and this was subsequently named the Aristocrat in the late thirties. Erika chimed in, reminding us that the wedding reception of the parents was held at the then newly opened Aristocrat branch in Cubao.
We arrived early at the restaurant, and it seems that some interior renovation was instituted by the Reyes family, and the place is pretty much improved from our last visit a couple of years ago. It was good that we got in early, we were a group of almost 20 people and we were lucky to get a long table. We had a big Sunday lunch--
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| Potato Salad for Gwammy |
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| Crispy squid, a favorite of Tito Tony |
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| Pancit Canton for long life! |
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| The omnipresent fried rice |
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| Crab Foo Young! |
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| The all time favorite--Chicken Honey! |
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| This one goes for the kids--Lumpia Shanghai |
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| Gwammy likes Camaron Rebosado |
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| Laing, which was not as spicy as I expected |
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| All-around Pakbet |
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| Anita just loves Callos! |
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| Pancit Sotanghon Giusado |
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| Vicky's request--Kare Kare! |
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| Dinuguan |
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| From the Aristocrat Bakeshop, my birthday cake! |
The food was quite good, except for the dinuguan, which was very watery, had no flavor and had very little meat (this is best cooked with thick sauce, salty with a slight tinge of sourness from vinegar). We started at 11:30 am and finished close to 2:30 pm, as Tony, Anita & the kids had to leave to watch a UAAP basketball game at the newly built SM Arena. Overall spend came to approximately P600 per person, which is a bit high for the Aristocrat, but reasonable because of the variety of dishes that we ordered. Note that I wasn't able to get a picture of the chicken and pork BBQ dishes, as these came in late, right when I was busy wolfing down my own lunch spread!
1 comment:
Chicken Honey was still good. But everything else seemed so-so. BBQ seems beter at the fastfood - Reyes BBQ stands rather than the ones we got. I wasnt too happy that they mentioned corkage for the cake M brought after we had them slice and serve it...Oh well :)
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