Early February, Bhogs and I had finally agreed upon dining out. It had been quite a while since we last went out, only the two of us and enjoy a night and play romantics and of course be carefree with our choice of meal. It had been a quite engaging January with two wedding projects on our sleeves, family celebrations and bills up to our necks, but eventually God has been magnificently taking care of us and our family so I guess that would be more than an excuse to eat out.
So out we go to Burgos Circle, though it took us hours to look for a parking site on the first Friday of Feb, it didn't fret us enough to go to Chef's Lab, and hey wouldn't you believe that, I finally found Kitchen's Best.
The air was chilly and the walk to Forbes Town was far and all I could think of is how the dinner would be amazing.
After being seated inside the resto, near the service area you could immediately see and expect the place to be filled with amazing kitchen aroma, and from where we were seated I can hear the sizzling action in their quaint kitchen.
The dinner began with Grilled Corn Chowder, and boy, what a way to start the table running. Cobs of corns were grilled and grounded to a puree, thickened and flavored with bacon. The chowder was hot enough to ease the uncomfortably cool weather. But as I got to savor more spoons of it, I tasted something that was not quite right, thus we proceeded with the salad leaving our bowl half empty.
The Vegetables and Greek Salad was good but typical.
My hope was still high though, after all, this joint is owned by my favorite chef, Chef Bruce Lim.
I was deeply saddened when I found out that Chef's Table closed down, and I've been dying to try again his Calamansi Tuyo Pasta, which I tried from their other resto, Hyphy's, well which also disappointingly closed down. And finding out that it was not in the menu of Chef's Lab, this really put me down.
Eagerly waiting for our main dish, I had ordered a glass of Mango and Black gulaman concoction, which would be a must when visiting here. It's a slush of perfectly blended and creamed mango, sweetened more with luscious pandan-flavored black gulaman.
For our main, we had a plate of tender and succulent Honey Glazed Salmon and robustly-flavored Bistro Steak. The Honey Glazed Salmon would be a trade-mark of Chef Bruce' cooking, I suppose, were he literately use fruit compotes or syrups and honey to put more flavor in to the meat, in this case the fish. The steak slices were laid on a bed of crunchy veggie nibs. We had the two with plain rice.
But nothing spectacular yet though.
Then there's dessert. We had a sizable serving of the decadent Chocolate Mousse and a delightful Fruit Tart.
The Chocolate Mouse was okay, with every spoon as silky and chocolatey as could be, but what I really like about the it is the crunchy topping, a number of what looked like sticks on top of shaved milk chocolate were put as adornment but to me was simply fantastic, making me want to make a batch of it at home. What they are really, are just candied orange peel which was crispy with every bit of that citrusy orange aroma.
I really can't say much about the other dessert. It is actually a tweak on the regular fruit cocktail though made more syrupy and set on a hard pastry shell.
So, what happened here? Where were those dishes that I've dreamed of, which actually defined what fusion is for me.
Wishing still that I can glint the luster which was previously there when I chanced upon the glorious creations that was, from a good celebrity Chef.