birthday dinner at the establishment

i guess my last trip back home was timely because some of my favorite people celebrated their birthdays during that time. it never fails that i get to try a new place with b whenever i come home. i was thinking of sala but the birthday girl wanted something else so we eventually thought of the establishment.

me thinks the reviews we read were pretty outdated. nothing really popped out the menu so we took a jab at their omakase - a degustation without an actual list of dishes and you are basically at the chef's mercy...hoping he/she will not screw it up. we got the 6 course menu at only 900PHP.

a lil bit of fun is a watermelon and lychee based mocktail, was apprehensive about this when we saw mustard on the menu and then the waiter said there's really no mustard. so how funny is that?

first appetizer is a seared tuna with sauce and ebikko on top. the sauce was nice, but i wonder why the tuna was stringy. i've never had seared tuna before but when you see it on tv it doesn't look stringy. the edges are cooked a bit with the center still pink/reddish this one ain't like that. i wonder whether this is low grade tuna...good thing it doesn't have a fishy taste.

second appetizer is salmon sashimi, this one doesn't have that seared/slighly cooked effect. plain raw salmon with wasabi ebikko and another sauce with some relish of some sort. so so, sashimi ain't that mouth watering that it has this melt in your mouth texture just like the ones i get here in kl.

tomato soup, nothing extraordinary. deem that it's all canned tomatoes and topped with some basil which gave it that "fresh" factor. and you know what's weird? our friend came late so she was behind us and her tomato soup was served with cream on top. how inconsistent is that?

salad with grilled goat cheese on top - ok this one we liked. it wasn't extraordinary but there were really no complaints on this one. straight forward salad of mesclun greens with a balsamic dressing and goat cheese on top.

our entree - pasta! yup we were looking at each when we saw this served. like totally in disbelief that for entree they will serve pasta. and the worst thing is there's nothing in it. a sliver of cheese and roasted almonds on top and that was it. i tasted a hint of orange like some orange peel but that was it. not even a huge prawn on top or other ingredients. like what the hell? couldn't it be atleast a small piece of chicken?

for dessert, a small sliver of moist chocolate cake with cream. now that i'm writing this, it reminds me of the no bake brownies i used to make.

do i really have to cap it all up? well ok i understand it was just 900php for 6 courses so what do we expect? but, it's the establishment! at the fort where people who can pay dine and eat at. we were really disappointed. the sad thing is, the chef approached us after our dinner and we didn't say a word. i am not used to this kind of encounter and i cannot be brutally honest when it comes to this. if the dishes are under seasoned or maybe if there was a bug in my dish then i would complain. but how can one explicitly point out the misses in this meal? and can you see the inconsistency in this meal? two jap dishes, italian soup and salad, unknown pasta dish and a generic dessert. well if the chef gets to read this, i apologize for not being honest but i will not apologize for this not so good review because it was simply the truth.

btw - the best thing we had was a platter of blue corn chips we ordered. it was the only thing we enjoyed =).

the establishment

bonifacio global city

taguig, metro manila