Hanami **1/2 (of 4) $$1/2

In Japanese Hanami means the Japanese tradition of watching cherry blossums.  Yes, I said watching.  Not picking, not smelling, not sticking them in your girlfriend’s hair, just looking at them.  People take picnic lunches to the river parks in Tokyo when the cherry trees bloom and have a quiet afternoon by the water, just appreciating the beauty of the trees.  It’s very Zen-like.  I would need a boom box and a portable TV to watch a baseball game to indulge in Hanami.  Then again, I’m not very Zen-like.

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Here in Angeles Hanami is the name of a fairly good Japanese restaurant, located on upper Perimeter Road.  While I think Niji has overtaken Hanami’s sushi offerings, with far tighter and more professional maki rolls, Hanami has its high points.  In fact, the menu is overwhelming in its number of items.  You can select from a huge variety of soups, teryaki, sashimi, sushi, yakitori, and bento box specials.

All are well-prepared as you wait.  If you’re adventurous and don’t mind the idea of raw fish, try the sashimi.  A huge platter of assorted sashimi, good for 4 or so people, will cost you between P390 and P865, depending on the fish you select.  The sashimi hana-mi with tuna, salmon, ika (squid), uni (sea urchin), and hirame (flounder) is freshly sliced and delivered with the standard soy sauce, pickled ginger, and wasabi for a reasonable P390.  Please don’t expect the nasal-clearing wasabi that you might get in fine Japanese restaurants, however;  what you’ll get here is the stuff that comes in a tube.  Oh well, I guess I need to keep my prescription for allergy medication.

P125 will get you a kappa maki(cucumber roll), or you can splurge and pay P250 for a signature rainbow maki (tuna, salmon, lapu-lapu, kani, mango, and cucumber).  I’d actually advise against getting the fancier rolls with lots of ingredients unless you grew up using chopsticks–they’re darned hard to pick up and tend to fall apart on your shirt because of too many ingredients.  I know they’re all the rage, but I personally don’t like these designer rolls.  Just give me a tuna roll, a kappa maki roll, and a plate of sashimi and I’m set.  Convincing your Filipino or Filipina friends to eat that–well, that’s a topic for a different article.

You’ll find a few other winner’s here.  The tongkatsu (breaded, boneless pork chop) at P235 is nicely done.  I generally like any meat that you pound flat, bread, and fry, but these guys do it well.  The yasai tempura (deep fried, battered vegetables) is also tasty for P170.

I have a few issues with the restaurant, other than the non-spicy wasabi and the loosely rolled sushi.  The prices tend to be a bit high.  Nevertheless, they serve the food promptly, the waitresses are clad in traditional Japanese garb, and the sushi chefs wear well-starched crisp white uniforms.  Faux rice paper divides the public dining area from the private.  It’s certainly worth a visit.  Maybe it’s even worth a few visits if you’ve got a hankering for Japanese food. -copyright 2008 ACEats.com

CUISINE: Japanese | COST: $$1/2 | RATING: **1/2 (of 4)

Gerry’s Grill * (of 4) $$1/2

ANGELES CITY, Philippines     Gerry’s Grill is located in the SM Mall, Clark and is a branch of the seemingly popular food chain.  At least I assume they’re popular, or they wouldn’t have 35 restaurants.  From my several visits, I can attest to the fact that there always seems to be several table occupied.

I don’t know where this popularity comes from.  The food really is not very good.  To be sure, the atmosphere and menu of this Filipino restaurant are slick and inviting.  While the dining arrangements and tables appear to be ordered from a catalog, the ambiance and decorations are first rate.  In fact, they’re more than first rate.  Gerry’s reminds me of TGI Friday’s or Chili’s.  It’s a place that looks like a great hangout.

Unfortunately, they apparently spent more on decorations and design than on training chefs.  My stomach gets along just fine with Filipino food, but I’ve had far better at roadside stalls than I’ve ever had at Gerry’s.  If you order 4 dishes, three of them will be poorly cooked or out of stock.  The restaurant strikes me as a franchise struggling to get to its feet and find its forte rather than a well-oiled machine.

Some examples.  I love crispy pata, or deep fried pork knuckle.  It will set you back P405 at Gerry’s, which is expensive for a cut of meat which used to be tossed out.  Worse yet, Gerry’s version seems to feature tasteless, frozen and refrozen joints.  The baked mussels at P140 and baked scallops at P175 taste old and chalky.  They have promise—an interesting blend of cheese and garlic—but the freshness of the shellfish, or lack thereof, spoils the dish.  They should fire their supplier, in my opinion.  The Tanigue Kilaw (Mackerel in vinegar & chilies, uncooked, P160) and Pusit Kilawin  (squid in vinegar and chilies, uncooked, P170)  suffer from the same problems—lack of freshness and inconsistent preparation.

Give this place a pass unless someone in your party really insists on going.  Save your appetite for other places.   –copyright 2008 aceats.com

CUISINE:  Filipino | COST: $$ | RATING: * (of 4)

Cable Modem vs. DSL in Angeles City

ANGELES CITY, Philippines     Angeles City Cable, a subdivision of Comclark and a sister company to Saver’s mall, offers cable modem service packages that start at P688 for 384 kbps and wind up at P4000 for 2 Mbps.  If you’ve got cable in the Balibago area, you pay a deposit of P500 for the modem plus a deposit of 2 times the monthly fee you select, fill out a paper, and some fairly helpful guys will come out and hook you up.  It will save you a bit of cash if you already have a cable run to wherever in your home you want to place the modem, otherwise they’ll be happy to cable it for you—for a per meter cable cost.  The service works fairly well.  Personally, I’ve experienced download speeds of roughly 56 kbps to 80 kbps on the P2000 plan.  Not bad.  This was good enough for low bit rate streaming video, Skype, some heavy duty downloading, etc. More details on the plans offered can be found here:  Comclark link.

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The service had some downsides.  Depending on the traffic level of the network, some of the higher bit rate applications, like streaming video, could grind to a crashing halt.  You see, cable modem networks are shared networks, meaning that if 100 people are surfing, your service might be great, but if 1000 subscribers are using the network, your bandwidth will decrease.  Also, the modems they offer tend to be flakey, sometimes requiring modem reboot (shut down, restart) to get an IP address. That’s in a addition to all of the other things that can go wrong in either dsl or cable networks:  servers down, high Internet traffic, and so forth.

DSL, offered by PLDT and Digitel, also comes with a modem, but it delivers data across telephone lines.  It’s not available in all areas.  The reason is complicated, but we’ll try to make it simple.  You’ve got to have a doohickey built into the phone lines within about a kilometer of your residence.  The doohickey is an optical node, basically a fiber optic connection to your neighborhood.  The Philippine phone companies haven’t quite gotten around to putting those connections throughout their network, even in Angeles City proper.

 

Cost is roughly similar to cable modem service.  At the time of this writing, the plans offered ranged from P990 for 384 kbps to P3000 for 3 Mbps.  Installation is free.  PLDT charges P1200 for the modem, though the fee is waived for any plan above P2000 and certain other high ticket plans. Full pricing plan can be found here:  PLDT pricing.

My experience with this service, with PLDT, has been a mixed bag.  It took them over a week to install the modem.  Once they installed it, they forgot to authorize the modem (basically, punch a code in the computer at their office to turn it on), so I spent a lot of time waiting around for these guys, all told, over a week.  When all was done, the broadband service worked flawlessly:  fast, not variable like cable modem bandwidth and no senseless modem reboots.

Better yet, I’ve experienced twice the download bitrates for the P2000/mo. Package: between 76 kbps and 170 kbps.  A lot more is possible at these bitrates.  Higher quality video streaming, twice the number of downloads, and very very snappy Internet browsing.

Unlike cable modem networks, dsl networks are not shared, so you have a dedicated connection between your computer and the ISP’s server, in this case, the phone company.  This should lead to more reliable and higher quality broadband, and it seems it does.

I don’t have any direct experience with Digitel’s DSL.  The Web consensus is mixed.  People seem to either love it or hate it.  All three services seem to vary wildly in quality depending on where the subscriber lives.

Some critical comparisons.  Comclark’s field service is a lot faster and generally more knowledgeable.  Both, however, act like monopolies and are not all that customer service focused.  You have to wait, sometime all day, for their installers.  They seem completely unable to pinpoint a time when they might come to your house and their installers are either literally the only Filipinos in the country who haven’t learned what a cell phone is or their companies don’t provide them, so don’t expect warning calls.  If you work, plan to golf or play billiards, or have errands to run, you’re out of luck.  You’ll be forced to sit in your house waiting and waiting, or have someone else do it for you.  I was forced to wait myself, because I had some specific installation things I wanted to make sure they DIDN’T do, like run a cable to an open window in our air-conditioned room.  I recommend you do the same.  Angeles City cable, in particular, is notorious for installers who show up, punch a hole in your screen and run a cable through your open window.  They seem allergic to installing proper jacks, or at least drilling nice, neat hole in logical places.  PLDT’s favor slap-a-phone line in with minimal work trick is to run the phone line through your air-conditioning cage opening.  So you see what you just might want to be around to prevent them from doing a slap-dash installation job.

Comclark has better phone service:  you can get a real person on the phone if you have problems.  PLDT, the phone company, does not publish any phone support numbers.  Figure that one out! 

Comclark’s closest office is in Saver’s Mall and it’s professionally run and well-staffed.  PLDT’s is not that much further away, on the left side after the bridge as you head towards Angeles City.  The waits are longer and the staff is less knowledgeable.  They tend to specialize in form filling rather than phone service.

To wrap it all up, if you just need Internet access and want to turn it on with the least hassle, go with Comclark.  If you must squeeze every bit possible out of your connection, buckle in and take a wild ride on the PLDT express.  Once the service is up and running, it’s actually quite good.  Comclark is cheaper at low bit rates, while PLDT ends up cheaper at higher bit rates.       -copyright 2008 acexpat.com

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Niji (*** of 4) $$

ANGELES CITY, PHILIPPINES  Raw fish in general, and sushi in particular, make a lot of people squeamish.  It’s a shame.  A finely rolled maki or freshly sliced sashimi with wasabi and pickled ginger can tantalize the adventurous palate.

Niji, Angeles City, Philippines

Japanese entrepreneurs build new restaurants every day in the Philippines, it seems.  The most important ingredients to a good Japanese restaurant are fresh fish and good preparation.  Hanami does it right, for the most part.  Fresh fish goes into every one of their sushi rolls or onto their sashimi plates, and they can roll a mean maki.

When you enter, you’ll see a cascading fountain over glass.

Clean & simple style

  A nice touch.  Too bad Hanami, the Japanese restaurant just a bit further down the street, has the same decorative feature.  In fact, minus some structural variations, the two restaurants could be identical twins.  Or at least kissing cousins.  Minimalist wood and faux rice paper environment with simple wood tables are the formula, and, to be honest, it works.  Ok, the TV at the bar blaring the latest Filipino soap opera ruins the mood a bit, but the service staff are extremely attentive.

The sushi bar presentation at Hanami outclasses the Niji, with a longer counter complete with glass display, seating, and usually at least two uniformed sushi chefs.  Niji’s is more modest, nestled in the corner.  Nevertheless, they both prepare sushi and sashimi dishes in open view.  They have a back kitchen that handles the rest of the food prep–teppanyaki, yakatori, rice, and the like.

We’ve tried a number of the maki rolls, and they are better prepared than Hanami.  They’re tighter rolled and more compact, which makes eating them with the obligatory chopsticks easier.  Hanami tends to serve rolls that fall apart before they get to your mouth.

The yakiniku, or grilled meats, also satisfy.  Chicken, pork, and squid skewers run between P130 and P165.  They make great appetizers.  The teppanyaki dishes, designed to feed several people, are more pricey.  They’ll run you between P155 for simple beef and onions to P2000 for genuine Kolbe beef.  Personally, I don’t care for teppanyaki.  It’s an overly sauced rice topping (ok, that’s my opinion only), and you can theoretically feed an army with it, but it lacks finesse.  I never order it.

You can feed two people comfortably for around 600 pesos for a dinner.  My personal approach to Japanese restaurants is to order a couple yakiniku dishes as appetizers, and perhaps miso soup (made from soybean paste), but keep the menu in hand.  After drinking and conversing a bit, I’ll order a couple of maki rolls for me and my date.  That’s a filling meal, and with drinks, it should come in at the price mentioned above.

In all, this is my current favorite Japanese restaurant in Angeles City.  If you find a better place, let me know–I love Japanese food.       -copyright 2008 ACEats.com

CUISINE: Japanese | COST: $$ | RATING: *** (of4)

MacDonalds in the Philippines

ANGELES CITY, Philippines     I don’t think reviewing MacDonalds would serve much of a purpose, so I won’t try.  There are a few noteworthy differences between the MacDonald’s you might be used to in the rest of the world to and those you’ll find in the Philippines.  So here’s a quick list, most of which amuse me:

1.  MacDonald’s is referred to as “MacDo” here.  I guess it’s a bit too much work to say the whole word, or perhaps it’s a tad bit friendlier.

2.  The Ronald MacDonald plastic statues look decidedly Asian.  When I first moved here, it cracked me up a bit.  I think it would take an extraordinary act of genetic engineering to produce an Asian-looking, flaming orange-haired child with a pasty-white clown face.  If I saw such a beast walking down the street, I’d secure my wallet and then run.  Maybe that’s why Jollibee is more popular here.

Ronald is half Asian!

3.  The burgers taste the same, but the prices are cheaper.  Burgers and Cheeseburgers are less than P50, and large fries are around P30, depending on the outlet.  That’s about 30% off of the cost of similar items in the States.

4.  The food tastes nearly identical to stateside.  Unlike Wendy’s and Domino’s, for example, MacDo seems to strive to deliver a consistent product globally, meaning they seem to use the same meats, condiments, and buns.  I’m sure they source their ingredients locally, but they must have a hell of a quality control department to make it taste virtually identical.

5.  They do make some concessions to local preferences, offering fried chicken and spaghetti at many of their outlets.  For some reason, unknown to me, Filipinos LOVE fried chicken and spaghetti.  That’s not a derogatory statement, by any means, it’s just a simple observation.  Kenny Rogers Roaster, a chicken rotissery chain, went out of business long ago in the U.S.A.  It’s still going strong here, even opening up more outlets.  Go figure.

As I said, I won’t even attempt to review MacDo here.  It would be pointless and you probably know whether you like the food or no already.  I must confess, once in a while I enjoy wolfing down a Quarter Pounder with cheese and a large fries.  Which brings me to my final point:

6.  Don’t expect a 1 minute turnaround on the “high priced” items on the menu.  I know, I know, the prices are all cheap, but higher priced is relative.  If you order a Quarter Pounter at a whopping P80, you will surely have to wait while they make one.  Unless you’re in a hurry, this is no big deal.  Spend 5 minutes sitting at a table and people watching, the nice lady or gentleman at the counter will bring your food to you when it’s done. 

You’ll find 2 MacDonald’s in the immediate Balibago area.  The nearest is at the SM Megamall.  There’s another on base near Pure Gold Duty Free.  There are rumors that yet another will be springing up at the corner of Field’s and MacArthur, so stay tuned, MacDo fans.      -copyright 2008, ACEats.com

VFW Canteen (**1/2 of 4) $$1/2

ANGELES CITY, PHILIPPINES  If you think of the VFW, you probably picture a smoke-filled little clubhouse where ex-military types gather to swap war stories and compare shrapnel scars.  To borrow a phrase, the Angeles City VFW ain’t your daddy’s VFW.  Likewise, calling the VFW canteen a canteen is doing it a disservice.  It’s a full-fledged restaurant with a large, varied menu.

VFW Post 2485is actually the largest overseas VFW post in terms of membership.  On any given day, it’s a beehive of activity, with members gathering for a drink and watching sports in the barroom, playing pool, or picking up mail.  But you’ll also find some unexpected sights:  groups and families of Filipinos enjoying a meal in the dining room.  The VFW’s canteen is not only open to all, it’s prices make it darned popular with expats and Filipinos alike.

As might be expected, the cuisine is American, with a heavy focus on rib-sticking favorites like meatloaf, burgers, lasagna, etc.  Daily specials are particularly good values at 10% or more off, and they usually have two entrees, a soup, and another dish on the specials list, every day.

Try the pork schnitzel or the chicken Cordon Bleu–we recommend them.  For breakfast, the Eggs Benedict dish is tasty.  Avoid the “prime ribs” and any other rib dish.  They’re fatty, bony short ribs that are misnamed on the menu.  Service is prompt and attentive.  The waitresses have, arguably, the best command of English of any restaurant in Angeles.

One of our few beefs with the place is that the pricing can sometimes be odd.  Last we check, a small bowl of chili was P165 ($3.70).  That seems rather excessive for a simple bowl of chili.  Most of the soups tend to fall into this odd pricing scheme, as do the salads.

Expect to pay between P200-300 for an entree with a side of rice or potatos and corn or mixed vegetables.  For the most part, portions are generous, but not overly large.

The VFW Canteen is located in the Clarkview subdivision.  It’s about a block in from Perimeter Road at 381 Santol Street, on the corner of Santol and Pinatubo Streets.  Hours are 7 am to 9 pm, daily. (c) ACEats.com.

CUISINE: American  |  COST:  $$1/2 | RATING: **1/2 (of 4)

Zapata’s **1/2 (of 4) $1/2

ANGELES CITY, PHILIPPINES  If you walk into Zapata’s any given night, chances are, you’ll find full tables.  On a busy night, you might have to sit at the bar.  The place is popular–and not just with expats, well-heeled Filipinos dig the place, as well.

Sub Delicious **1/2 (of 4) $$1/2

ANGELES CITY, PHILIPPINES  You can’t beat the location, right in the heart of the Fields Avenue entertainment district.  The grub’s not bad, either.  Sub Delicious offers a nearly overwhelming selection of food, mostly dominated by the subs, pizza, and wings–the Holy Trinity of American foods. 

Cottage Kitchen *** (of 4) $$$

ANGELES CITY, PHILIPPINES  Despite it’s reputation as the culinary capitalof the Philippines, views actually doesn’t offer that much variety food-wise–unless you count the food courts at the local malls, which offer a whole variety of unpalatable, reheated selections from around the world.  Good food, therefore, is appreciated.  Consistency, even more so.

Cottage Kitchen wouldn’t win any barbeque awards in the States:  most of the food