Annabel Lee

It was a holiday in the Philippines. Because of the new law signed by GMA, all holidays are celebrated on the Monday closest to the holiday to give the filipinos, a long weekend to be with their families and explore the countryside. The holiday we celebrated today is Ninoy Aquino Day, which generally falls every August 21st, but was commerated instead today, August 20th (as it is a Monday before the actual holiday). There are exceptions to this shifting to Mondays law on holidays.

One bad about working with the World Bank is that the employees in the Manila Office are limited to 11 holidays per year (to follow the same number that the US HQ has) and the Ninoy Aquino day is not one of the holidays that World Bank Manila Office honors. That's unpatriotic, huh!

So,even though it is a holiday, my wife has to go to work. I decided to see and hang-out with Allan instead. We planned out to sell my extra phones in Greenhills, before these units become worthless and obsolete.

I sold my P910i, a Sony-Ericsson unit, that's both a phone and a PDA hybrid. I also had an earlier model of the Nokia 6600, a camera phone. You really can't bargain much in Greenhills as the shops there would take your camera at really low,low prices. Anyways, better to convert it at a loss than not recover at all.

Me and Allan decided to eat at Annabel Lee restaurant in the Prominade at Greenhills. The restaurant is known for gourmet and the finest cheesecakes in town. This is my first time at Annabels and I have no inkling what their food would be like. I ordered the Scallop and Pomelo Salad for starters. We had pasta for our main course, mine was the beef stroganoff with shitaki mushroom while Allan ordered the seafood pasta in crab fat. As dessert, we ordered the best selling cheesecake of the shop, the baked double dutch pecan cheesecake. I also had my Coke light fix for this lunch.

The salad was great. I never thought, scallops would be great additions to romaine lettuce and pomelo. Scallops were sauteed in oyster sauce and quite tasted good and tender. Scallops are harder to come by, as they tend to be rubbery and chewy if it's cooked too long. I would rate this salad four spoons out of five.

The seafood pasta was served next. It was spicy and colored orange because of the crab fat. I thought I did not like it much, althought the prawns were extraordinarily large and quite tasty. I think, I was not expecting an orange colored-pasta, hence, my apprehension. But the more I get some servings, the taste kinda grown on me and was liking it at the end of the meal. The stroganoff came at a much later time. The beef was mild and tender but I thought, it tasted bland. I asked for more parmesan cheese and it lifted the flavor a little. It didn't fit well the pasta, I thought it was more viand material, than a pasta dish. I would have ordered a cup of rice to go with the beef instead of the pasta. Allan though, preferred the stroganoff over the crab fat pasta. He isn't a fan of spicy dishes, I guess, that was the tipping point.

We were so expectant of the cheesecake. You see, Allan does some baking as a hobby and just like me, he can opinionated about his desserts. The double dutch pecan cheesecake was a choco cheesecake. Hefty chocolate shavings can be found as toppings. Crushed pecans were peppered on the sides of the cheesecake. It tasted heavenly and almost light. The choco flavor wasn't as strong, I thought, I can finish another slice in an instant. As a baked one, it didn't have the something like soury taste thingy when eaten, which is a good thing. I loved this cheesecake, and I think, I will come back to Annabels' without hesitation.

As a gourmet restaurant, Annabels' menu include steaks which are price mid-high and am not willing to spend at this time, hence, I opted for their pasta dishes. I paid Php1,043.00 (US$23.18) for this meal or close to US$12 per person. This is a bit steep.