Food Trip: Cookie Bar Manila [Food Tales of a Kapitolyo Resident]

Hello! It is a busy time for me friends (I know, what's new right?) but I just have to squeeze in this story about Cookie Bar Manila -- a new cookie shop here in my lovely neighborhood of Kapitolyo.

Last week, my cousin Lek and friend Clang came over to my place to hang out because it was Pasig Day and there was no work. We had pizza and pasta delivered for lunch and stuffed ourselves silly, but when the afternoon came, we felt the need for merienda (afternoon snack). We thought it would be the best time to pay Cookie Bar a visit since we've been checking out the shop's Instagram account for a while and the cookies look beyond tempting. 

Cookie Bar is located at East Capitol Drive and is only a very short drive from my place. In fact, it's walking distance, but we've been having unpredictable weather so we opted to drive there instead. It's easy to find because it's right in between Poco Deli and Thai Dara. Just look for the black gate with the pink and brown striped Cookie Bar sign and press the doorbell beside it. 

THE VIBE

Cookie Bar is a tiny bakery. The shop is also the kitchen where the actual cookies are made. They have a couple of small tables out front, but it's really not a cafe or restaurant. Most people go there for cookies to-go. You can call and order cookies by the box beforehand, but you can also buy per piece at the store.

Freshly-baked cookies still on the tray was the sight that greeted us when we first came in. They have quite a variety of yummy cookie treats. There are Cookie Cups, which look like little cupcakes with a whole range of different toppings. Stuffies are cookies stuffed with Oreo, marshmallow, Nutella, or Reese's peanut butter cups. Jumbo Cookies are double the size of your average cookie. Vegan Cookies are made without dairy and egg. Nutella Bites are cookies topped with Nutella. Then there are the novel Cookie Shot Glasses, inspired by the creations of Dominique Ansel (the creator of the Cronut). 

Tales of the Culinary-Challenged: Green Smoothie - First Try

Green goodness!

I tried making a green smoothie for the first time yesterday! My friend Clang got me to use my mom's ancient Osterizer blender again, and to my surprise, it still works. I've started making smoothies with it, and it has been such a joy to have fresh fruit shakes for dessert after dinner with the husband. While grocery shopping last weekend though, I thought I should try making green juice with the trusty blender. I'm no stranger to it because of Juju Cleanse, and though at first the taste was hard for me, it grew on me eventually.

Green juice love!

I also watch It's Judy's Life on YouTube - a vlog by beauty guru Judy - and the entire family's always having green juice. Her husband, Benjie, has his own healthy food channel called BenjiManTV, and he posted a green smoothie recipe a while back that was done with an affordable blender (he usually uses a Blendtech or a juicer). I've been wanting to try it for ages, so I finally did yesterday.

Green Smoothie How-To (Affordable and Quick) by BenjiManTV

Food Trip: Epic Coffee Roastery [Food Tales of a Kapitolyo Resident]

Kapitolyo is brimming with restaurants now, but cafes only started popping up recently. There used to be just one coffee shop in the entire neighborhood, and whenever I found the place full I always wished that more cafes would open here.

When Epic Coffee Roastery opened, it was like the answer to my wish. At last, here was another neighborhood cafe I could go to for a breather and a cup of joe. I've been there a few times, and each time has been really nice. 

The Epic sign from outside

Epic is a quaint little cafe on East Capitol Drive -- Kapitolyo's main food street. The place offers coffee and cakes of course, and it recently started serving sandwiches as well. 

It was put up by the same people who own Poco Deli, which automatically gives it a plus in my book. Poco Deli is one of my favorite restaurants of all time, so it's easy to fall for their cafe extension of sorts. Epic even has a Poco Deli menu that you can order from, which is pretty cool since it kind of brings the best of both worlds together. 

Cake and coffee

Home Base: The Life Domestic - Birthday Breakfast and Dinner at Kanto and Mozu

I just realized that I never posted about my birthday here. It was pretty uneventful since it fell on a weekday this year, but I celebrated it with my husband in the best way possible given the circumstances. How? Why by starting the day with a food trip and ending it with another one, of course!

We woke up early to have breakfast before work at our new favorite 24-hour all-day breakfast place, Kanto. It's a hole-in-the-wall kind of restaurant that serves gourmet food -- what a juxtaposition, right? It's a new neighborhood discovery for us, and I'll be posting more about it on Food Tales of a Kapitolyo Resident soon. It was one of the very few places open so early in the morning in our area that's not Jollibee or McDonald's, so it was the obvious choice for us.

Kanto

Random Cravings: Binondo Treats

Exploring Binondo was a blast, and we got to take home a few treats from the Chinese pastry shops in the area to boot. This post is all about those treats, which we are actually planning on coming back for soon. Our stash ran out within a couple of days -- well, we got some for family too, we didn't keep everything we bought -- but it was all just so good. Here's a rundown.

Custard Hopia from Eng Bee Tin
I had no idea this existed until my friends opened the cooler at Eng Bee Tin and I saw hopia packets labeled custard and ube. Hopia is a sweet filled pastry. There are a ton of varieties and fillings, but the custard one is new to me, and let me tell you, it was insanely addictive. The husband and I just loved the cold custard filling. It kind of reminded us Camiguin's pastel, but with softer pastry.

Trippin': Exploring Binondo, Manila's Chinatown - Church, Crystal-shopping, The Wai Ying Experience, and Bakery-hopping [The Cityscapes Series]

Last week, April 9 was a holiday (Araw ng Kagitingan), so my friends and I took the opportunity to have an urban adventure in Binondo. It is the country's Chinatown, and is actually the oldest Chinatown in the world, dating back to 1594. A lot of ethnic Chinese live there, and it is a place brimming with awesome and unusual food, as well as unique stores with great prices.

My friend Cielo -- who is part-Chinese and knows the area well -- thought up and organized the entire thing. Our former officemates Verns and Luis joined us, along with my husband Aleq. (The last time I was in Binondo was actually with the same group of people plus our other former officemates, and that was years ago.) It was a fun day exploring a part of Manila that I don't know well. Here's the story.

Binondo

Food Trip: Maple - First Visit

I've been curious about Maple since it opened in Shangri-la's new East Wing. I've heard that it's owned by the same people who own Pancake House, which I have loved for years and years -- only, it's an upscale version of the all-day breakfast place. The day came two weeks ago, when a friend suggested we have dinner there. Well, it was an interesting experience. Read on.

THE VIBE

Maple's a cute, homey place. It has a country sort of feel to it, but polished and not as casual as Pancake House. When we were there (a weeknight), it wasn't crowded at all. In fact, it was just me and my friends plus two other tables.

View of the restaurant from our table

Tales of the Culinary-Challenged: Overnight Oats - Tweaked

One of my first posts in this blog back in February 2013 was about trying Lauren Conrad's recipe for overnight oats. I like overnight oats because I'm usually a zombie in the morning and I like quick breakfasts. Since it is prepared the night before and requires nothing more than throwing ingredients together in a jar, it's really perfect for me.

A different kind of instant oatmeal

Since that post, I've tweaked the recipe with more accessible products (those available locally) and according to my own preference. I just use products that we have in our fridge, and oatmeal really isn't a problem because the husband eats it all the time -- for breakfast, after working out, or as a midnight snack! When I was making this tweaked version of overnight oats last night, I decided to post it here for reference because I'm always tweaking it as my tastes change. My latest one involves the slightest of tweaks, but it still made a difference.

Food Trip: Caffe Pascucci - First Visit

I've been noticing this new cafe called Caffe Pascucci at the new Glorietta wing for a while. It looks pretty chic from the outside and is located at a somewhat secluded spot along Hotel Drive. My friends and I considered going there some weeks back, but somehow we ended up somewhere else. I finally had the chance to try it out when I met up with my friend Irish last week.

Red and black

Food Trip: Watami Japanese Casual Restaurant - First Visit

I love Japanese food, so I'm always on the lookout for a nice Japanese place. That is why when my college friends had a meetup, I suggested Watami. It's a new Japanese restaurant at the new Glorietta wing that is not a katsu place.

THE VIBE

At first we actually walked into Lugang Cafe next door by mistake. The two restaurants had signs on a pole between them that were a little confusing. When we walked into Watami they said people going to Lugang sometimes end up at their restaurant too.

Watami looks really polished, but manages to maintain a casual vibe. It's large and comfortable, with lovely dim lighting. It's a franchise from Japan (with over 700 branches all over Asia) so we expected authentic Japanese food, and we weren't disappointed.

Our table

THE FOOD

The food was amazing! The flavors were somehow different from other Japanese restos in the metro. The menu was extensive and everything looked attractive, so we had a tough time choosing what to order. While waiting, they served us some lovely house tea.

Mmm!

We started with the drinks because those were the easiest to decide on. A lot of Watami's drinks are huge, which we liked. I chose the Green Citrus Yuzu Marmalade Soda, Kitch went with the Fresh Kiwi Squash methinks, and Payi and Yong shared the Milk Tea with Black Tapioca. We all liked our orders. Mine was full of citrus-y goodness. I felt like I loaded up on Vitamin C that day, heh. 

Humongous glasses

Random Cravings: Foodie Discovery - Vom Fass

My friend Geli and I met up last week for lunch and tea. We wandered around Shangri-la Mall's new East Wing a bit and ended up making a foodie discovery. It's a new store called Vom Fass, which looked like a wine store from the outside but had so much more on the inside.

Vom Fass actually sells wines and spirits, but it also offers vinegars and oils. The unique thing about the store is that you can choose your own poison in a very personalized way. The place is filled with casks of hard liquor; earthen jars full of vinegars and oils; and flavored liqueurs in big, clear, bottles.

Caffeine Kicks: Keurig Unboxing and First Cup!

My husband and I love coffee. He pretty much can't function without it, and he would be such a grump in the morning if he can't have his regular cup of joe. He almost always has a cup of coffee beside him whenever he works, whether he's in the office or at home. I, on the other hand, live on chocolate and not coffee, but I love it as much as tea. To me it's a comforting drink, made for long conversations with friends, intimate talks with my husband, or introspective alone time.

That is why when we got married, we really wanted a nice coffeemaker. We wanted a Keurig Brewer specifically, because we have tried it several times at A's aunt and uncle's place (who are big coffee lovers too) and we loved the taste of the coffee. We liked the sleek look of the machine too, as well as the large variety of fun K-cup flavors. I have also encountered it in several YouTube videos (which I had A watch), and these further made us want one.

 

Keurig Demo by Ingrid (MissGlamorazzi) and Luke (LukeConard) | DIY: At Home Coffee and Tea Bar by Blair Fowler (juicystar07) 

The Keurig is a single-cup brewing system that brews your coffee or tea or hot cocoa for you in under a minute. That's about 3 minutes (rough estimate) including the time to heat up the water. You load pods called K-Cups into it, it punches a hole in the pods, and then you have a fresh beverage. With it, you don't have to deal with the mess of filters and pots and such. You just fill up the water tank, push some buttons, put a mug on the drip tray, and that's it. Also, it makes coffee, tea, and hot cocoa, as well as iced coffee or tea. For iced, you just need a cup filled with ice and an iced coffee/tea K-Cup and you're good to go.

The problem was that Keurig isn't available here, but A's aunt and uncle, who were also principal sponsors at our wedding, offered to buy it in the States for us as a wedding gift. Of course we said yes! So they went, and they got back from the US a while ago, but they shipped their stuff to the Philippines and the box took some time to get here. (Thank you Mama Punk and Papa Choity!)

It eventually did, but we had to find a place for it in our apartment. We also needed a cart for it, plus a power transformer. Last night, we finally put our Keurig together! I'm usually a nerd when it comes to these things, so I did a full unboxing, like I do with gadgets I love. I'm not going to do this for microwaves and other appliances, but if we get a juicer or something like a Blendtec one day, you can bet I'll unbox it!

First brew!

Before I get to that though, let me tell you about our first cup! We chose a flavored K-Cup for our first time -- the Timothy's Kahlua Original from the variety pack that came with the machine. A and I chose to share a medium mug because it was midnight when we finished reworking the apartment. As expected, it was excellent. It had the sweet, distinct Kahlua flavor of rum, caramel, vanilla, and coffee.

The thing is, this particular coffee was supposed to have a sort of light roast only, but it had me feeling wired the entire night and aggravated my insomnia. I fell asleep at 5am! Coffee usually has an adverse effect on me -- it makes me sleepy -- but last night it was the opposite. No more late-night Keurig sessions for me. The husband, however, who pretty much has coffee running in his veins and is probably immune to it, had a good, sound sleep. Okay, let's backtrack to the unboxing!  

The box

Food Trip: Silantro Fil-Mex Cantina - First Visit [Food Tales of a Kapitolyo Resident]

Silantro Fil-Mex Cantina is one of the newest restaurants to open in Kapitolyo. I thought it would be great to start off the Food Tales of a Kapitolyo Resident series with a fresh place. 

This newly-opened eatery was a random discovery. The husband and I rarely ever venture down East Capitol Drive, but one Sunday, we decided to hear mass at the Kapitolyo church for a change. We had to park a few steps away from the church, and on our way back to the car after the service, we spotted Silantro. We were actually planning on having dinner somewhere else in the neighborhood, but we readily changed our plans because we were so hungry that we were quite happy to find a place already right in front of us. I didn't have my camera with me because I didn't know I was trying a new restaurant that day, but I was mighty glad we found this place. 

Packed on a Sunday night

Silantro is a casual dining kind of restaurant. It has an al fresco area and an airconditioned area, but the place is on the small side, so expect it to be packed at dinner time, like it was when we went there. We liked that it's packed though, as that boded well for the quality of the food. Luckily, we were first on the wait list and we only had to wait a few minutes.

The Munchies: The Start of the Kapitolyo Food Trips

When I first moved to Kapitolyo in 2009, it wasn't the vibrant food hub that it is today. I've been coming to the area for years, since my husband has been living here since our college years. It was a quiet area, and there weren't a lot of good restaurants. Our favorite places to eat at were few, because there really wasn't much to choose from.

One is the Pasig institution that is Three Sisters, which serves one of the best barbecue sticks in Manila. Another is Poco Deli -- a quiet, tiny, corner deli that serves fantastic comfort food. Tokyu over at the Pioneer Center serves very affordable, but great Japanese food. Jade Palace, an authentic Chinese place just off Kapitolyo in Shaw Boulevard is another favorite. There are others, like Cafe Juanita and Kainan Au Gusto, and Bahay Pansitan that served Filipino food and have been in the area for ages, Good Burgers, which does quick burger deliveries, as well as Lia's bakery, but somehow we never ate much at/ordered from those places, or never went to them at all.

Then, Charlie's Grind and Grill with its Black Angus burger, and CAB Cafe, with its scrumptious desserts opened, and those quickly became our new favorites. After that, the neighborhood simply went food crazy. Fast forward to four years later and Kapitolyo is now a bustling, busy neighborhood, absolutely filled to the brim with cool food and parking problems, heh. The best part about it is that new restaurants are still popping up all over!

Even LooLoo's Fearless Foodie's Field Guide to Kapitolyo Map couldn't fit everything in. A lot of restos aren't here. 

Since my husband and I live smack dab in the middle of this wonderful foodie neighborhood and this is a new blog, I thought I would do a Kapitolyo Food Trip series. I will be writing about my old haunts, as well as document my experiences when I try out all the new restaurants. If you haven't been to Kapitolyo, I hope this convinces you to come here, and if you've already been to Kapitolyo, I hope this persuades you to come back again and again. This neighborhood just keeps getting better and better, and I'm very lucky I live here.

All Kapitolyo food trips will be up at this tag: Food Tales of a Kapitolyo Resident. Keep checking back for new posts. This is going to be fun!   

Food Trip: Yakitori One - First Visit

Up until last Saturday, the hubby and I have never been to SM Aura. It's just one short trip down C5 from our neighborhood, but we just haven't gone somehow. We finally went there this past weekend, just to try the new yakitori (Japanese barbecue) joint, Yakitori One.

There are a number of good yakitori places in Manila (our most recent favorite is Nanbantei), but proper yakitori fastfood has been non-existent since Tokyo Tokyo phased out their chicken yakitori. Enter Yakitori One, which opened at the SM Aura foodcourt -- Food on Four -- earlier this year.

Tales of the Culinary-Challenged: My Favorite Spinach Recipes

A lot of people assumed I started learning how to cook only when I got married, but unbeknownst to many, I've been trying for years since I've been living with my parents until I became independent and lived alone. Cooking just really doesn't come naturally to me, that's all, which is weird because I come from a family of people who cook. However, I am pretty surprised that I haven't had many cooking mishaps. Maybe that's where the family cooking genes come in.

Now I am trying to learn my parents' recipes. I miss their home-cooking and I would like to be able to eat those dishes with my husband. Before I got married though, I learned a few recipes in an effort to be healthy. [Check out Cooking Edamame and Breakfast Oatmeal with a Twist!] I thought I would share a couple of my favorite, very easy, very basic spinach recipes. I must say I'm not a big vegetable person, but spinach was a veggie I naturally gravitated towards. Maybe it was all those Popeye cartoons that I watched when I was a kid, heh, but I think mostly it was because I was having lettuce/salad fatigue at the supermarket that day I decided on spinach. Plus, I was always cooking broccoli and cauliflower already, and I wanted something new. I'm rambling as usual, so here you go. I usually cook these recipes when I'm on a diet. I eat these for dinner without anything else, but on days when I have diet fatigue they make great side dishes.

Garlic Spinach

You need a few cloves of garlic of course, a bunch of spinach (I usually use half a bag for just me but for regular non-dieting appetites one bag should do it), and extra virgin olive oil, which is important because it tempers the spinach's natural bitterness.

Tales of the Culinary-Challenged: Breakfast Oatmeal with a Twist

In my first Tales of the Culinary-Challenged post, I wrote about cooking edamame. For some, boiling soybeans in water is no big deal, but for the cooking spaz that is me, it is. The thing is, I try to eat healthy these days because I'm on my wedding fitness regimen - I'm training hard at the gym and making sure I have a healthy diet. However, I went on a similar regimen like this a year or two ago for a Boracay trip, and I kind of felt diet fatigue then. I rarely cook, and I relied on buying prepackaged stuff or fastfood deliveries, and until now I'm sick of the food I used to eat during that time. This is why I'm now forced to stock healthy food in my apartment as well as learn to cook healthy things I find yummy.

So here's my first try. It isn't cooking per se, but it's preparing food that I normally would not do. I made Overnight Oats - a recipe I got from LaurenConrad.com. The first try, I just made up the ingredient quantities and it came out super wrong. (Hello Julls, did you forget that you're culinary-challenged? You can't just wing it and have it turn out okay like how other people do it!) I tried again last night and this time I followed the recipe to the letter. It turned out yummy! I love that it's super healthy, but it also filled me up so much I had a lot of energy this morning. As usual, I took pics!

2/3 cup Cowhead Lite Low Fat Milk

Half-cup Quaker Instant Oatmeal

The recipe called for greek or vanilla yogurt, but greek yogurt is hella expensivo here, and I couldn't find vanilla, so I just got boring, plain, regular yogurt. It's probably tastier with better yogurt, but I'm making do. 

 

Mixed all the ingredients together and finished it off with a pinch of cinnamon.

The recipe said to put the mix in an airtight jar and leave it in the fridge overnight, but I don't have mason jars so I made do with an old coffee jar haha.

I loved this so much! I'm going to alternate it with my everyday cereal. It gave me the impression that it's super high fiber and high protein though, so just take that in mind. It's so quick and easy too. Mix ingredients in jar, stick jar in fridge, wake up to oatmeal goodness. This morning I mixed in a bit of brown sugar for an extra kick. Next time I plan on putting in some fruit, like a banana or something, plus a little orange honey. Yum!

Recipe after the jump!

Tales of the Culinary Challenged: In Edamame Heaven

Back when I was still making bento, I was really obsessed with finding edamame. Edamame is a Japanese word that means cooked soybeans in the pod. It's a popular snack in Japan, and the restaurants serve it as an appetizer. All the cool bento lunches on the Internet had it too, but unfortunately, I could never find it here. Whenever I would go on bento paraphernalia sprees, I would also scour the Japanese groceries accessible to me for it, but to no avail.

Now though, bento boxes can be easily bought at Daiso, Saizen, and Japanese Home, and one of my favorite Japanese restaurants, Yabu, serves edamame in their appetizer sets. I knew it was about time edamame showed up in stores. Yesterday, it finally did. My friend Cielo found it at Kang's - the Korean grocery store at Valero St. in Makati! Since my fiance, Aleq, is her officemate,  she accompanied him to the store and he got me a pack. Thank you Cielo and Aleq!

I already had an idea how to cook it, but Cielo sent me this page with instructions so I followed that today, and wow, was it awesome. I took pics of course! Here's how I did it.

This large pack of edamame cost 160 pesos. It had enough to make 2-3 bowls - pretty good deal. 

Random Cravings: For the Love of Soba

I love food and have quite a lot of favorites, but soba is one of the few things in the world that give me an instant jolt of happiness. Yes. Seriously. It's an incredibly simple Japanese dish, but it is also one of the tastiest, yummiest, most scrumptious, delectable things I have ever had the pleasure of eating.

Soba is what the Japanese call buckwheat, and also refers to the thin, grayish noodles that, in my opinion, are one of the best things to come out of Japan. It is usually served with soba tsuyu - a sauce made with  shoyu-based (soy) dashi broth with mirin (rice wine) - along with a variety of condiments.

I first tried soba on a trip to Tokyo, Japan back in 2007. Here's a Tumblr entry about it:

It was actually aboard Japan Airlines on my way to Tokyo in 2007. My flight tray came with a teeny bowl of soba noodles and a cute bottle of soba sauce. The rest of the meal consisted of shrimp salad, a bread roll, butter, Kikkoman sauce, beef with veggies, and an ube dessert. The soba noodles were truly the highlight of that meal. I couldn’t believe noodles could be so good plain! It wasn’t even proper soba at that since it was instant airplane soba. From that day on, soba became one of my favorite foods.

Since then, I've been obsessed. Unfortunately, soba is hard to find in my home country, the Philippines. There are so many Japanese restaurants here in Manila, but only a select few offer it on the menu. Sure, it's probably available at the more high end Japanese places, but I don't want to have to do fine dining every time I want soba. What I'm saying is, it's here, but it's not readily accessible. This is why it's the first thing I check whenever I try a new Japanese restaurant. I'm always on the hunt for it, and I'm totally thrilled whenever I find a place that has it.

Chocolate Dependency: Marina Bay Sands Sweet Spot Chocolate Box

When my cousin Sheila is in town, she always brings me sweets from SweetSpot - the sweet shop at the Marina Bay Sands Singapore, where she works. This box of strangely flavored, absolutely decadent gourmet chocolates totally made my weekend. 

Flavors: dark chocolate, bacon, espresso, salted caramel, calamansi, Earl Grey, Peace Tea, white pistachio, wild berries, peanut butter and jelly, Bailey's, orange, Jack Daniels, strawberry balsamic, Gianduja.