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BE MY VALENTINE

Several boyfriends and several Valentine’s days after, I cannot think of any memorable V-day celebration. Not one! Well, if you count my high school experience, that was it. OMG. How sad is that??! Is romance really outdated when you hit your twenties?

Here’s a tip to all men (and women*, apparently) - don’t forget the flowers ;-) Flowers are never tacky nor old… Forget the white roses, though. But then again, that’s just me.
So anyhow, I swore to make this year’s celebration memorable, to make up for the ones lost or forgotten.
To start off, I had, not one, but FOUR dates. Yahoo! Hahaha.
Dinner was with the girlfriends from work. I suggested this roadside Greek taverna (glorified carinderia) I read about in other blogs. The last time I tried Greek cuisine was in Portland, and I loved the whole experience. (except the fact that one of those times I went was for an anniversary with the ex, but nah.. past is past!!:))
MZ (not her real initials, haha) made the reservations and we were surprised that not only did we get one just a few days before V-day, but we were able to make schedule changes on the day itself even. While it was definitely a good thing for us, it made us wonder whether that was a bad omen for things to come inspite of the good food reviews I read.
But, disappointment was not in the menu. Fortunately!
For appetizer, we ordered the Saganaki, which is a tomato-based shrimp/bread dish, which can also serve as dip. We partnered this with the homemade wheat bread. I loved it!
For the main course, we decided to share 4 dishes for the 5 of us, which turned out to be still more than we can handle :) We ordered one of the taverna’s specialties - the mousaka, which is a lasagna-like, eggplant/potato/minced meat dish. It’s cooked in extra virgin oil (which comes from the owner’s plantation), as is everything else on the menu. It’s really delish, though the serving is definitely quite heavy, even for non-dieters :)
We also ordered the pork chops (sorry, don’t remember the greek name). It was lemony, and very very tasty. The fries and vegies that came with the dish were also fresh and delish.
The Greek red wine I ordered off the menu helped balance the richness of the food we ate that night. Next time I’ll try the Ouzo and/or the Metaxa.

Then we ordered their popular dessert called Baklava. It’s nutty, sugary, and has a taste of cinnamon… I liked it though the other girls were not so much into it… We had no more room for the Greek coffee (that might have went well with the dessert), but certainly something we’ll go back for..

We shelled out around P275 each for the food… It was well worth it!! Even just for the wonderful dinner we had. The food was great, the host (Manos, I guess) was hospitable (he would check in on the guests and he personally assisted in the parking and backing out of the parking, which was kind of a nice touch), the ambiance had this homey feel to it.. Nothing too pretentious. The place is not air-conditioned but it had an authentic feel inside, with the white and blue theme. I wonder though if open-air poses a problem for summer dining with the heat and the fumes. Well, it’s in Tagaytay, and the mountain air is still refreshing. So all is well :) It’s also on the other side of the road, so no Taal views from this resto. But, well, I’ve seen the view a million times, and while it’s nice and all, the food at the taverna makes up for most of the misses I can think of (sablay daw the restroom, but I didn’t get to check it out, so no opinion on that end).. So, it’s highly recommended, and I will come back for more :) (I wanna try their gyros/shwarma).

After dinner, we proceeded to the Cupid party at Melrose Place, err, Gov Hills :) It was the usual crowd, plus a couple of new faces and guests. Nice turn out. Food and drinks - ok. Thanks to Ampost for the sponsorship!! It was helluva fun night, but we missed your antics and Steve Jobs stories!! Hahaha!! And thanks to our housemates (Joseph, and Nevo - yan ha, special mention na), for the heart lollilops, even if you failed to give it to us that night.. Hehehe!! Sweeettttt!! :)

02/14/07. Now that’s something for the books. Lovely dinner with lovely girlfriends. And (another) great party with the Gov crew. Not bad.

* According to housemate Joseph, he likes getting flowers… I’ve never given flowers to men… hmmm… Food for thought.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 17th, 2007 at 11:12 pm and is filed under Food and Drink. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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