January Food Adventures Part 5: Romulo Café

In all the restaurants I've gone to last January, Romulo Café in Tomas Morato, by far, left the biggest impression: from the elegant contemporary interior, the unpretentious no-over-the-top-superlatives menu, to the unique presentation and unforgettable flavors of the food (at least the ones we sampled).

In a word: Love!

I have actually never heard of the place before my boyfriend took me there for dinner some weeks ago. He already had a table for two reserved so it wasn't difficult for us to get seated. The table, however, was too small for what we planned to order, but the staff was gracious enough and allowed us to transfer to a bigger one. I guess we were lucky they weren't packed that night.

They served mostly traditional Filipino food but with a modern twist. The dishes we tried that night were very much interesting.

We had Bagnet Pakbet, which I expected to be Ilocano (given that Pakbet is an Ilocano dish and Bagnet also popularly hails from the Ilocos region). Being an Ilocano myself, however, I was a bit disappointed when I found that it tasted more Tagalog. Their version made use of alamang (fermented shrimp paste) instead of bagoong (fish).

My boyfriend ordered a sort of pansit (and I totally forgot what it was called). It was vermicelli flavored with oil and topped with slices of chicken and egg. It looked fairly simple but the flavors were explosive.

The monggo soup was done well. I enjoyed it mainly because of the generous sprinkling of chicharon bits, but it was too liquid for me. I usually prefer monggo cooked with a thick broth.

My favorite, however, was Lola Virginia's Chicken Relleno - roasted and stuffed with ground pork, raisins, chorizo and peas. I believe it's the most expensive chicken dish in the menu, but - really - it's worth it!

Each dish was good for 3 to 4 people and even with my appetite, I found it quite difficult to chow down everything we ordered for just the two of us. It was food coma. Halfway through, we were already so full, we didn't even get to sample the desserts.