Saturday, July 18, 2015

FROM LEBANON TO VIETNAM- food crawling on a shoestring budget

Are you looking for a place to satisfy your cravings for international dishes at affordable prices? If your answer is yes, then walk along  Maginhawa Street in Teachers Village, Quezon City, look to your right then to your left and you'll see restaurants that offer an array of foreign dishes with prices that would fit your budget.

Our first destination was Z Compound known for its restaurants that cater mostly to students. My sister Elsie and I had a Lebanese meal at the Meshwe Restaurant with cheese sambousak and plain lassi for me and falafel muhallaba for my sister. My cheese sambousak was really good and was probably made from goat's milk. The cheese was creamy and wasn't too salty. Elsie complained that her falapel was a bit hard to chew perhaps like a rubber slipper and so she wasn't able to finish it.

Our next stop was at Me Love you Long Time, a Vietnamese restaurant that also served authentic Thai and Indonesian food. We had pad thai made of flat noodles with sprinklings of chopped peanuts and glasses of calamansi juice. The pad thai was a bit bland and could have tasted better with more garnishings.

Adecsky Explorer and sidekick Elsie


Feeling full and with my thoughts wandering to my dogs as I still had to feed them and it was past 8:00 in the evening, we proceeded to the Blacksoup Restaurant for our grand finale- yummy dessert. Also along Maginhawa Street but a bit far from Z Compound, we had to ride a tricyle going there for a fare of 20 pesos. We had a splendid dessert of binanging saging. I wondered why the word binanging as it made me imagine bananas being tortured by banging before served to customers. We also ordered guyabano ice cream and basil with calamansi ice cream.The guyabano ice cream was just glorious as it was naturally sweet with bits of the guyabano fruit.

Beside the Blacksoup was a very artistic looking restaurant named Van Gogh is Bipolar. I wondered again why this name. Elsie, having been there once and having had a tete-a-tete with the owner, told me that it was owned by someone with bipolarism and that it offered different dishes suited for bipolars. The owner had researched on the ingredients for dishes good for bipolars and came up with a set meal priced expensively at above 1,000 pesos. I was raring to interview the guy and look inside since according to my equally nosy sister, it had interesting art pieces and the guy just enjoyed talking with people. Unfortunately, he was in europe. Well, I would certainly catch him once he is back and interview him about his art and special dishes for bipolars dressed in my Frida Kahlo costume. By the way, my total expenses for my food adventure was only 390 pesos. Can you beat that?




Cheese sambousak, a Lebanese food

Pad thai, a Thai food






A mural on the Vietnamese restaurant





















Van Gogh is Bipolar Restaurant



Some art pieces of Van Gogh is Bipolar

The Blacksoup Restaurant 

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