Abe means good food (?)

    Abé means good Filipino food.(http://anton.blogs.com) Probably. But good is never good enough for me. My friends and I like to say “nothing spectacular” if the food is not worth coming back to. Abé’s certainly fit the bill.

     Though we often dine at Serendra it was our first time to get out of our comfort zone (Contis) and dined at Abé just across. We had:

Hearty soup dishes

Suam of fresh native corn (Php 85) – minced and sautéed fresh young corn in light broth. Good enough. But like I say, good enough is never good enough. In fact my yaya’s version of this soup is better.

Abé’s specialties

Binukadkad  na pla pla (Php 275) – a Bistro Remedios original, overgrown tilapia butterflied and fried to delightful crispiness, served with balo balo relish and mustasa leaves. There’s nothing special about this dish except for the presentation. I guess the balo balo relish was the fermented rice. It was tasteless. There were no mustasa leaves.

Old Spanish heritage

Calamares en su tinta (Php 150) – fresh squid sautéed in olive oil and its own ink. They ought to add spices on this one.

Artists’ and Writers’ favorite dishes

Kare kare ala Bistro Burgos (Php 375) -  “The kare in the old Bistro Burgos was unforgettable.”( Adrian E. Cristobal) The kare kare version that I don’t like. Meat, veggies and sauce cooked separately. They just make fleeting acquaintances on the plate right before being served. The bagoong came 10 minutes late to the party, after all the veggies have gone. As a whole, this kare kare is good only for photos, not for the taste buds.

 Crispy tadyang “d’ original” (Php 395) – A Bistro Remedios original, marinated beef ribs deep-fried to delicious crispiness. Widely copied but in vain. I practically called every waiter and waitress following up on our order. I almost lost my temper and appetite waiting more than 30 minutes for it. Who would want to copy this dish? It was crispy all right, but not delicious. Definitely not worth the wait and the 395 pesos.

    For refreshments I had Tamarind shake. Someone told me it tastes like Knorr sinigang sa sampaloc mix. Sinigang is my favorite anyway, and we use Knorr for it. In fairness, the shake didn’t taste like Knorr at all. It’s delicious I almost forgot that their food weren’t. It’s made from real tamarind you can even see the brown bits at the bottom. I, however, could imagine drinking a sweetened cerumen shake.

    Eeoow!