Flapjacks

I first heard about Flapjacks from a friend who's studying at AIM for a MBA degree. His professor said that he heard that the place was worth checking out. I then kept a mental note to try out the place since I love eating pancakes.

It was towards the end of April when my friends from Davao arrived and wanted to try out new places. We then took a chance and tried out Flapjacks at Greenbelt.


My friend ordered the tapa plate. He said that it was a bit too spicy but tasted good. The tapa wasn't significantly different from any other tapa in the market.


I got the sausage plate (I forgot what it's called but the menu said that it's imported). It wasn't spectacular, tasted like sausage which you could buy at the grocery. The salsa that was included in the serving tasted funny and we thought it wasn't fresh.


We also got a free serving of pancakes. We chose the one with peanut butter and banana. It was quite good though I thought that the pancake tasted the same as those served in a famous fast-food joint.


Overall, the dining experience was a good one. The food servers were very gracious, friendly and fast. They also kept asking us if we were okay. The food though wasn't spectacular. To me it was quite ordinary, not much different from the well-established Pancake House. I guess my expectations were quite high since it was located in Greenbelt and the pricing was quite high. There was also no pasta in the menu which I found quite weird.

What to have: what we ordered was good and filling, just don't expect it to have a unique taste

What not to have: make sure the salsa doesn't taste weird

Price range: PhP400/person for a decent meal (no dessert yet), overrated and expensive

The Lakwatsera's Rating: it wasn't bad, but not a place I'd go out of my way to visit again

Portico

Spot.ph Series: Bloggers Food Tour
Restaurant: Portico
Place: Serendra

I've been having difficulty making posts about the bloggers food tour organized by Spot.ph since we had to visit about 18 establishments on the first day at the food tour at Trinoma and 24 establishments at the Bonifacio High Street and Serendra. It was a mean feat to accomplish! Anyway, I'm determined to blog about each and every establishment I went to and hopefully I'll manage to share my "reaction" on the food the we sampled.

Last week I had the privilege of going back to Portico and I thought of starting off this series of Lakwatsas with my Portico experience.



Among all the establishments I might say that my favorite "spot" at Serendra is Portico. Here's why:

1. The cheese fondue is THE appetizer to order. I love cheese so dipping bread on melted cheese is heavenly delight. Sweetie and I ordered it when we went out on a date last week and we almost licked the bowl clean (it would've been bad manners so we wiped the bowl clean with bread).

2. THE main course to order is the "pork barrel". Oh such cardiac delight! Ooops, I mean it was just perfect since it wasn't oily and crispy and chewy at the same time. I would've wanted the regular Mang Tomas sarsa to go with it though.

3. It was during our visit that Sweetie and I managed to eat dessert since we were so full during the bloggers food tour. We got the cream brulee and I just really had to ask Sweetie how they managed to make the caramel thin and perfect for the leche-flan-custard-like dessert. My tonsils are quite sensitive, but the cream brulee was the perfect dessert to order.

Other must-haves at Portico: salbicho pizza and the tofu filled omelet.
Can do without: fried chicken (too dry) and the mango fruit shake I had was overrated and maasim

Price range: PhP500/person and just share dessert with someone

Place good for: romantic dinner, dating, meetings

The Lakwatsera's Rating: Definitely going back but must save up for it

SM Science & Discovery Center

Miguel and I have been planning to go see the SM Science & Discovery Center for sometime now especially since I've enrolled him for a couple of sessions at the Lego Mindstorms Robotics Center. By some fortune and misfortune we ended up roaming around the gallery yesterday.

The place wasn't as big as I thought, but it had a really high-tech planetarium, a far-cry from the planetarium I visited when I was in grade school in Manila. We watched a short-film about the possibility of life in other planets. I kinda freak out over the thought of "life in other planets" a.k.a. "aliens", but that's what Harrison Ford logically narrated in the film. Brrrr, scary thought. I whispered to Miguel then that if he wanted to find more information about planets he could just to and check out the "Sky on Google Earth" since it's got hoards of information fro NASA integrated into eat. A planetarium right on your desktop!

The friendly gallery attendant gave us a short tour of the 8 galleries they had installed in the center. They have an area where you can test your "Grossology IQ", a Sniff Sniff area (my nose was disgustingly accurate in guessing the icky-dicky smell) and the Burp thingy which Miguel enjoyed. There was also the "Urine Game" which worked like a video arcade game but an educational one.

I felt proud when I saw the replica of the "Sinag" solar-powered car. I'm proud that it's a Filipino invention plus the fact that my alma mater, De La Salle University, was deeply involved in the project. I wonder when this will become a commercial car. I think this should something that our government should really push for since we do get a lot of sun in our country. Nearby the car was the flight simulator where Miguel disappeared to while I was scrutinizing the Sinag.

At the second floor of the center we saw replicas of the world's tallest buildings. We also tried out the earthquake simulator which we found quite funny. And then we checked-out the robots gallery where Miguel enjoyed the bump-car-like game.

Overall, it was an "okay" experience. I wasn't really ready to roam around the center since it wasn't a scheduled one, but I think the place would be more appealing to young children. I had hoped though that there would be a feature on Filipino inventions and scientists.