February 22, 2014, +maria cessna galecio and I, went up to Antipolo to visit Thirdy. He's been staying at his grandparents' house for the last two weeks.
His yaya, Rona, wanted to go home to Samar and stay there indefinitely. We tried having Tita Fe take care of Thirdy at home by herself, with my parents helping once in a while. Still, Thirdy really is a handful and he needs someone watching him all the time. So after a week, we decided to bring Thirdy to Antipolo and have him stay there for a few weeks.
So on that day, we wanted to check up on Thirdy and spend some quality time with him. We left home before noon, dropped by the Columbarium, and then got hungry by the time we reached Katipunan Avenue.
Chea learned via PopTalk about a new eatery in XavierVille named O'Ini Taste of Kapampangan. It got positive reviews so we decided to give it a try.
It's actually beside the building which housed a spa Chea and I went to before. I forgot the name though.
From the onset, I had problems with O'ini. First of all, it had no parking. The sidewalk in front of it could only afford a single car, parked parallel to the street. And if someone did decide to park in front of it, well, they'd block the entire entrance of the canteen.
So we asked the guard of the building next to O'ini if we can park there for a while to have lunch. Fortunately, he agreed. Probably because it was Chea who asked. And I doubt any guard could say no to a sweet pretty woman like my wife. Which is why I always let my wife do the talking.
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| The dishes |
O'ini is basically divided into two parts. The main area fronting the street is open air, and all of the dishes are there, behind a glass counter. That's where you basically order your food. This is nice, since if you're not dining in, you can just wait there and not take up space in their dining area.
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| The pretty wifey. Behind her are the seats and tables |
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| The view indoors. |
The second area is the dining area with the tables and seats behind a glass partition. I don't remember if there was air conditioning, but it was cool at the time we were eating despite it being the middle of the day.
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| The soda in cans were sold at 40 pesos. This was at 65. Do the math. |
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| Free soup. |
Since the food was already prepared, there wasn't any wait. I ordered the Dinuguan, while Chea ordered Binagoongan.
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| Dinuguan. Good enough. |
The dinuguan was ok. There was a lot of meat and some chunks of coagulated blood. But the pork blood stew was very thin. It was a bit sour than most, but that's ok in my book.
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| Binagoongan. Very salty. |
The Binagoongan was definitely salty. So if you're not into salty dishes, you should consider avoiding this. It's basically meat covered with a lot of bagoong.
Chea and I each had a platter of rice but I found the servings a bit small. Chea had to give part of hers to me as I was still hungry. So if you're a normal rice eater like me, chances are you should be ready to order for another platter. The bad part is that each serving is about 20 pesos. I wanted to actually order another plate of rice even after eating part of Chea's, but I found the 20 peso price tag too much. It's just a matter of principle I guess.
Since both dishes had more meat than there were spoonfuls of rice, we decided to have them packed to go, and eat it when we get to Antipolo.
Another complaint of mine was the price. Each dish cost about 70 - 80 pesos which I found a bit expensive if they're trying to pass off as a canteen-style food establishment. Even the canteens in Ortigas serve dishes anywhere from 40-70 pesos. And even some food establishments in most foodcourts in the malls serve dishes around the 80 peso price tag, that already includes a serving of rice.
With O'ini, it's basically 100 pesos everytime you eat there. It's probably acceptable, given the area. It is of course Xavierville, so 100 pesos is practically change for the people who frequent the area.
After lunch, we went to Antipolo, and arrived at Maia Alta before 1pm. Thirdy was sleeping when we arrived, but half an hour or so, we decided to wake him up so we can spend the afternoon with him awake. We weren't planning to stay overnight. Around 4pm, Chea decided she wanted to take Thirdy out so we cleaned him up and went to SM Masinag, with just the three of us.
I've only been there once, but only to pay some bills so I never got to check out the entire place, so this was the first time I've had a chance.
We looked for an activity play store for Thirdy and found Kid's Venue. Chea was wearing a dress, so she was having second thoughts if she could chase around Thirdy. We decided to just pay for about 15 minutes (60 pesos on a weekend) so there'd be a less likely chance of her having a wardrobe malfunction. Lol. She also had to buy socks from them since she didn't have any on.
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| Kid's Venue. Where's Thirdy? |
The 15 minutes felt long enough, and the place was small enough, that somehow Thirdy spent up most of his stored up energy and Chea didn't have to chase him all around.
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| The rates. A bit expensive in my opinion. |
When they finished, I asked Thirdy if he enjoyed himself and he said "opo" when i prompted him to. When I asked if he still wanted to play, he said "play" too. I told him that we'd come back again next week, and he didn't resist when we started walking away from Kid's Venue.
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| There's about 2 to 3 employees at any given time. Two at the counter and one inside. |
Kid's Venue at SM Masinag is pretty ok for 4 yr olds and less I think. They have inflatable bouncers that younger kids would like. Unfortunately, they don't have pipes and tunnels they can go through or ropes, ladders and bars that they can climb that the more active and older kids would enjoy. The place is big enough for toddlers to walk around, but small enough for their guardians not to get tired chasing around the kids.
The price is pretty cheap especially if you compare it to the bigger play centers like Active Fun. However, i still find it pretty expensive with an hour costing 180 pesos on a weekend.
After that, we headed back to Antipolo to drop off Thirdy and head back home. During the drive, Thirdy fell asleep at around 8pm and we were told that he actually slept until 8am the next day.
We then drove home and picked up Nina (Cyrus' girlfriend) at the MRT2 Santolan Station. We didn't have dinner yet, so Chea opted to stop over at the UP Diliman Town Center.
Chea wasn't in any particular mood for anything, but I was definitely craving for some noodles, so we decided to try our Ryu Ramen and Curry. It was the first time we were eating there, so we have no idea what to have and what the prices were.
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| Ramen should be yellow and Curry should be red. Just my opinion. |
Since UP Diliman Town Center is small, there were only a few food establishments there, so most of them packs easily. So when we entered Ryu, we had to wait for about about 5 minutes even if it was already 9 pm. We looked at the menu, and most of it were expensive. Most of the ramen dishes were around 300 pesos which is about 100 pesos more than I was willing to pay for noodles.
I whispered that to Chea later and she commented that she ate a 600 pesos ramen in a Makati restaurant. Pricey.
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| We asked for smaller bowls. |
When we were seated, I commented that the servings look big and I don't think we could finish them with one serving each. So Chea opted to just order two, and share it among the three of us. She ordered their bestseller, Tantamen (310 pesos) and some other I can't remember.
We ordered the mild variants as I've mentioned before, Chea and I aren't into spicy food. I think we repeated the word "mild" several times to the waitress to stress that fact.
While looking at the other tables, we saw that the bowls looked big and since Nina just ate, and Chea was still full, Chea thought that we might not even be able to finish two bowls of ramen. So she had the other dish cancelled, and ordered the breaded pork cutlets with curry.
They didn't serve bottomless drinks so I settled for a single glass of iced tea. I found it too strong, so I had to water it down with another glass of water.
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| Iced tea. Passed on the soda this time. |
The Tantamen arrived first. The bowl was big, so I guess it would be enough for a hungry average sized guy. It had about 2 slices of pork in it, and a few slices of hard boiled egg and the ramen. When I looked at it, there were several small circles of red liquids in the soup. Just looking at it made me think it was spicy.
We asked if this was mild before eating it. The waitress affirmed that it was. But I had my doubts.
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| Does this look like mild to you? |
When the bowl was placed in the serving area, it was placed next to a bowl that was for table no 5. The waitress asked where the 2nd bowl (which ended up at ours) was for, the guy in the kitchen said table 5. The waitress had to clear it up with the guy since table 5 had only one more ramen order. There was some hesitation on the part of the cook, and he had to go through the order slips, and later proclaimed it for table 6 (us).
It looked like he misread the order for table 5, and further misread it as the same previous order of table 5, who, I assume, ordered the spicy variant. Because as soon as I sipped on the soup, it burned its way all the way down my throat. I even had to cough several times whenever I sipped on the soup.
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| Stirred up the bowl a bit to see what's lurking beneath. |
I didn't want to start up a fuss on the order. Since it's still edible, I'm not allergic to it and it's not a dish that I'll never ever consider eating, I just let it go. So we just ate the ramen as is, which was pretty hot.
The pork curry arrived later. I ate a small chunk of the pork and it tasted like regular breaded pork, just with some curry on it. I don't remember how much it cost, but it's something I wouldn't pay more than 200 pesos for.
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| Pork curry. |
Aside from the order mix up, another complaint is the water. I asked for a glass of water and even with the glass sitting a few inches in front of me, I could see something floating in it. It looked liked piece of vermicelli a few millimeters long.
I'm not sure if they didn't wash the glass correctly, or the water pitcher, but we asked to have it replaced. I was actually amused to see the waitress get another glass, put some water in it from the same pitcher, and held it up for a while to see if there was anything floating in it, before coming over and handing it over to us.
Honestly, they should have dumped the contents of the pitcher and filled it up again before putting the water into the new glass.
Good thing I'm not as delicate as other customers as I still eat fishballs and other street foods.
After that, we headed to Novaliches, dropped off Nina at her place and headed home.
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