Vibe Gourmet

If you're looking to experiment but aren't willing to blow your budget in a fancy restaurant, then Vibe Gourmet is definitely the place to go. They serve gourmet food, minus the gourmet hole in your pocket. However, don't expect the ambiance to match the whole gourmet experience but sit tight for a culinary adventure that you will surely enjoy.

Vibe Gourmet was made by a friend's recommendation, maybe some 3 years ago or so but only recently did we get around to eating there again and the food there was something we surely missed! It is located across the old Cebu Doctor's University gym. Situated in a little nook which is concealed by the Cebu Doctor's hospital, it's not somewhere that you'd go to to look for something to eat lest you already have knowledge of this restaurant's existence. Honestly, the exterior doesn't look extraordinary either so I wouldn't expect a passerby to be drawn to eat there on a whim.

Most of the diners I suppose, are employees of the nearby hospital and/or boarders living in the area. The restaurant has more of a feel of a cafeteria than an actual restaurant. It's not something that bothers me, really. As long as the dining area is clean and the service is good. But again if ambiance is what you're looking for, then this is not it. For sure it's not first date material. It's the "years-in-the-running-we-need-to-stop-impressing-each-other-and-get-practical" kind of place to eat with your partner, if you know what I mean :D

Everything in the menu is under P100!

Very spacious dining area

Remember in my previous post when my boyfriend and I ordered a meal good for four people? Well, we did it again. We have a knack for ordering an extra dish whenever we dine at a restaurant with plated meals. I particularly like having variety in my food hence plated meals almost always never work with me and I'm left with having to consume the extra rice that comes along with it :(

So without further ado let me present to you the three dishes that we ordered.

Lemon pepper chicken - P85
Garlic rice add on - Sorry I didn't get to take note of this

Vibe Gourmet is best known for their chicken. Most of the time I tend to stay away from dishes with strong flavors (e.g. lemon as a main ingredient) because I find them too overpowering and more often than not, I find the other flavors lost with the pungency of the main ingredient. But I was pleasantly surprised when I tried their lemon pepper chicken that there was a pretty good balance in the ratio of the spices put into the dish. There was enough sour, salt, and a little spicy kick in the chicken to give it a discreet tangy taste.

Herbs & spicy chicken - P85
Garlic rice add on - Sorry I didn't get to take note of this

This dish sure looks like boring old fried chicken to anybody but once you take a bite into it, you will surely say that it isn't like any fried chicken you've tasted before. It has a distinct flavor to it brought about by the herbs and spices (duh, I can't come up with a better description aside from the name of the dish) mixed in the batter. It reminds me a lot of the Malaysian rendition of chicken rice. I'm sorry if I cant put into detail exactly what it tastes like because I am not familiar with what the main ingredients of Malaysian cuisine are but on a side note, I will use this moment to show off the very spicy and delicious meal we had in a local cafeteria at Malaysia last month.

(NOT AVAILABLE AT VIBE GOURMET)
Rice topped with some insanelyspicy sauce whose ingredients are unbeknownst to me and vegetables and with an equally spicy chicken to match. Plus crab. Didn't I tell you plated meals are just aren't our thing?! Please excuse my hand in the frame as I'm ecstatically delivering food to my mouth

If those pictures weren't enough to make you drool, then I don't know what would. What I know wouldn't however, is this unexciting and plain pork belly from Vibe Gourmet. Considering how they manage to put unconventional twists into how they prepare their chicken, you will be very disappointed at how awfully dry and awry this dish tastes.

Pork belly - P60
Biryani rice add on - Sorry I didn't get to take note of this

In honesty, the pork belly isn't half bad at all. It just failed, relative to the other dishes that we ordered. If we had only this dish maybe we would've said that it was alright. I wasn't too crazy about the biryani either as it tasted more like instant curry from a packet than actual biryani.

We ended up paying P300+ for everything for our beyond average gluttonous appetites. On average, if you have an average appetite like the average person, P100 should be enough to cover a meal. I think that's a very good deal considering their servings are pretty generous already and the taste of the food in general, really goes beyond expectation.

The cons of Vibe Gourmet for me I think, would be its location and parking. It's not that accessible because its not right by a main road nor is it situated in a commercial area. You have to go in an alley to get there. That being said, it also follows that parking is not always that easy. With eager towing trucks going around the city, we sometimes find ourselves craning our necks through our meal to see if the car hasn't been dragged away by the city government yet. It's either that or we pay for expensive parking at the nearby Coco Mall.

Overall, dining at Vibe Gourmet has been very satisfactory for us. Their service is fast, and the food is also affordable. I have yet to try their fish as I always opt for something chicken whenever I eat there. Maybe I'll do that for another review sometime!


Eternally famished,
Pearl

Han Guk Kwan Korean Restaurant

In my 23 years of existence only recently did I come to know the joy that is, Korean food. It never occurred to me to experiment with it until a good friend introduced the cuisine to us. From then on, I was hooked! There was a distinct flavor in their food that was so new and refreshing to me, although I really cant quite put my finger on what it is. My palate was just so excited with being introduced to a new taste.

The first resto where we ever tried Korean food was at Han Guk Kwan. We've been to other Korean places around the city as well. But to date, we still couldn't find a Korean resto to match this one. Han Guk Kwan is located at La Guardia Lahug. It's right beside C24 by the Archbishop Reyes-Lahug intersection, you can't miss it.

Tried to take a picture of their panaflex but the glare from the fluorsecent lamps was too strong that it drowns out the text. Sorry for the bad image quality, just took this from my phone :(

The location is very accessible and parking is ample. The inside of the restaurant is very spacious as well and you rarely see people eating alone since their servings usually call for sharing.

For those who haven't tried Korean cuisine, you get a myriad of appetizers even before your main course arrives. And the best part is, its free and refillable! We ordered the budae jigae, sam gyup sal, and galbisal. Below is a diagram of our meal, sans the budae jigae which deserves a solo pic on its own later. Keep in mind that there is no specific set menu for the appetizers, they will serve you whatever they have available.

1- galbisal (beef ribs), 2- samgyupsal (pork belly, literally meaning three layered meat in Korean), 3- sesame oil + rock salt, 4- ssamjang (another form of sauce, whose taste I can only liken to bagoong but oddly enough, this sauce doesnt contain any traces of shrimp), 5- Korean salad (with the best vinaigrette dressing EVER), 6- tofu (sorry dont know how it was prepared), 7- beansprouts, 8- radish (I dont like this appetizer at all, sorry), 9- steamed egg, 10- garlic

In the background of the picture is also some lettuce which you eat with your samgyupsal and galbisal. Basically, how they eat their meat is different from how we eat ours. We pair it with rice but they like to wrap their meat around in lettuce. For reasons that I cannot fathom, it goes without saying in any Korean restaurant that these meat must be ordered in at least 2 servings. Don't ask me why.

Grilled meat (minimum or 2 servings)
Samgyupsal - P200 per serving
Galbisal - P400 per serving

Barbecue your own meat to your liking on their stone grill. When satisfied, roll your meat around the sesame oil with rock salt, lay it on your leaf and top it off with the ssamjang and roll. Voila! Thats how you eat your samgyupsal. You can opt to put kimchi, garlic or any of your other appetizers on top of your meat before rolling. Be creative and do whatever you want with your meat!

Finally here comes the budae jigae. This dish was concocted during the war. Its a high-calorie stew with crazy ingredients that I can imagine only a very hungry soldier can surely think of putting in. There's kimchi, spam, hotdogs, tofu, and some meat along with noodles. Talk about a heavy meal!

Budae jigae - P400
If you think this is heavy enough, wait till you get your two bowls of rice along with this dish!

The service in this restaurant is also good. They're very well-employed. So you almost always have a server at your attention. And being regulars of this restaurants, they already know more or less what we want so that's definitely a big plus.

All in all we spent P1,200 for this hefty meal . Normally it can feed around 4 people or so but my boyfriend and I have beyond normal appetites so we're an exception :p However this meal surely left us full to the brim! When we eat out with friends in this restaurant we usually shell out approximately P300-P500 per person and we always leave very much sated.




That wraps up my first official review. I hope I pursued you to try Korean food, for those who havent. I don't know if there's even somebody reading this blog but I hope in the future someone will hehehe :)

JOED'S LUTONG HAPON. WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE

So we went to Joed's out of curiosity since this place has garnered very good reviews from friends. Passed by lunctime yesterday only to be told that it was closed because they "ran out of stock". We went back in the evening. Although the place was jam packed due to the dinner time rush, we were quite excited to eat and patiently awaited to be seated despite our grumbling stomachs.

When we got around to ordering, almost everything we wanted on the menu was sold out. No beef, no ramen etc. Still, we took it upon ourselves to put this mishap aside since they really were accommodating to a lot of people. So we ordered 7 bowls of katsudon, 2 bowls of karidon, 3 tempuras, 2 califonia makis, a sushi set and 2 1.5 litre bottles of Coke. I can still remember that a mass was going on midway in the nearby chapel when we got to the carenderia. We got seated shortly after the mass ended and TV Patrol was on (I knew this because we were seated quite closely to the televistion set). The news ended, Mutya went on. Still no food.

Finally, a small serving of thickly breaded shrimps came into sight and we breathed a small sigh of relief to see at least one part of our order arrive. But much to our dismay when it was served to a nearby table, who came later than us by the way. Feeling very hungry and annoyed by now, we complained to why they were served first when we arrived earlier than them. Apparently, it was a mix up because the waiter had failed to inform the cook/manager that we had switched our table (There were maybe 6 burly men in our group who had to crunch their knees to fit into that corner table, so we opted for a more spacious one). Within earshot of us, the waiter and the cook argued over the incident to which the cook nonchalantly replied, "BAHALA KA". Whether she was pertaining to the waiter or to us the diners, is beyond me but its definitely not a nice conversation to overhear especially when youre waiting forever for your food to arrive. I guess its not a good idea to have only a crew of 3 (waiter, assistant cook, chief cook/manager) serve a hungry crowd. It was waste of time, ergo a waste of money. Not to mention, the customers are left very very very irritated and hungry.

When most of our orders finally arrived, after maybe a good 45 minutes of waiting (midway along Mara Clara mind you), only then did the waiter tell us, "Ay sold out na diay ang california maki og coke". Talk about a dining nightmare!!!

The food was alright for its price point. Personally I found the katsudon a bit flat and bland. I dont know if it was because the cook was in a rush to make it or if it just really tastes that way. My friends said the karidon was good. I'm sure they have other better dishes that we could have tried but a harrowing experience like what we had is more than enough to traumatize us to NEVER COMING BACK to this place again. At least until they have better management.