Sunday dinner at El Chupacabra

After going to the Pink Ribbon Sale at Bench Tower on October 26, 2014, Chea and I decided to have an early dinner.

I wanted to have some rice, but I was thinking more of java rice or some other flavorful variant. We drove from BGC to Makati CBD. Chea then mentioned about this new place near their office in Bel Air called El Chupacabra. It was always full so Chea and her office mates never got to try it out yet. Not to mention that it had been featured already on Kris TV, so getting a table was now near to impossible.

We got to the place, and even if it was just around 5pm, it looked packed already. We decided to try another place. We drove around Makati for a few minutes, but Chea wanted to really try it out, so we went back.

We drove by the place again, had our name listed, and went to park at Chea's office which was just around the corner.

We were still third on line, so we waited while looking at the menu. We had a chance to chat with a waitress and one of their grill cook.

Chalk board menu

I wanted some rice, but it wasn't on the menu. We were told that they sold mexican rice for 39 pesos, so I planned on going with that.

Most of the menu were priced 100 pesos and above. And most of them were either tacos or gringas (quesadillas I think). The only dishes that could be taken with the rice were pork barbecues (20 pesos each), chicken skewer (50 pesos), and the sisig I think. I opted for two pork barbecues and a chicken skewer. Chea and I could share that with two rice servings.

The grill

Their barbecues were one of the most popular so we were told that it usually takes about 20-30 minutes for the order to come through. I was a bit hungry already but it was ok.

Chea also ordered a taco, Carne Asada (95 pesos).

The frontage

El Chupacabra was directly beside a side street. It looked like a house refitted to be a small canteen. There were some space inside where the bar was located, with about 6 small tables. It could probably fit 12-20 persons with the mix of chairs and benches.

Wall scribblings

It was dimly lit, since it's a bar foremost, and the mood lighting was mostly tinted red, which is why most of pictures are dark and, uh, red.

Some decors

The place and the items are a mix of mexican and filipino (but mostly mexican). It's really a dive bar as their facebook page says, so it's mostly short dishes that matches well with alcoholic drinks. It's a bit al fresco, so you only have a smattering of wall mounted electric fans around the area. It was good that it was almost night and there was a short shower, so it was tolerably cool.

View of the grill from inside

The walls, benches and even the ceilings are covered with messages and scribbling of patrons. At that time, they were already in the Halloween spirit with cotton cobwebs already adorning the place.

Some of the patrons

Outside, you have the grill, and a long table filled with some Korean patrons. Since there were still some customers waiting to be seated, some of them being foreigners, that they had to bring out four more sets of plastic tables and chairs which they placed onto the street already.

Chea and I were lucky we arrived a bit early, and we were seated inside after just a few minutes of waiting.

This is probably how a menu looks to Cyclops

Inside, I ordered a bottomless Iced Tea. Unfortunately, they were out, and they offered me a Horchata instead. It's rice tea with some cinnamon. It came in 12 and 16oz. I chose the 16oz for 69 pesos. Basically, it felt like water you washed rice with, with cinnamon sprinkled in.

So red. No wonder Cyclops started getting crazy in X-men Last Stand. Kidding. It was a terrible movie so he willingly had Jean Grey kill him.

Horchata. Googled it. Yep, rice water with milk and some cinnamon. Some has sugar and some vanilla. Called it. Lol.

Chea's Carne Asada taco came first, along with the mexican rice. The taco came with two almost paper thin pita breads about 6 inches in diameter. The main meat of the dish looked like it was about four to five spoon fulls. We carefully separated the filling to the two breads, rolled it, and ate it with the garlic sauce. They also had the spicy sauce, which, if you didn't use too much of, wasn't that spicy.

Carne Asada taco. 95 pesos. Am debating with myself if it's cheap or not.

The pork barbecue and chicken skewers, as mentioned, took about 22 minutes (checking on my Swarm check-in, lol). There was supposed to be 2 sticks of pork barbecue but the other was still being cooked, and we managed to eat our food before it came, so we just took that one to go.

Chicken skewer (50 pesos) and Pork Barbecue (20 pesos)

The grilled pork tasted exactly like grilled meat. But unlike Filipino pork barbecues which are thin stips of meat, El Chupacabra's were chunks of meat. The nice part is that it wasn't dry and there weren't any fat on it. The grilled meat came with vinegar.

The chicken skewer tasted great. I don't know what spices they put in, but it tasted differently than your average chicken meat. It was also soft despite being grilled. It was a bit small, but bigger than what you think you'd get for 50 pesos especially when you compare it to a 100peso chicken meal at a fastfood joint.

Mexican rice

The mexican rice was subpar. There wasn't any stand out taste to it. It didn't taste plain, but it wasn't appealing either. I wish it had more spices to it, like dirty rice. And when we asked the waitress if they had plain rice, we were told that they didn't serve any. Although we heard someone yelling for an order of plain rice among the staff. Oh well.

During the wait, and when we were eating, we saw other dishes ordered by the other patrons. They were big orders and they varied from tacos, and nachos, meat dishes, and they look pretty delicious. So there's a pretty good reason that you'd want to come back and try those other dishes out. Cheap, no frills delicious food. Total bill for this meal? 365.20 pesos

If we're ever around the area on a Sunday afternoon again, I'd definitely go back here.