By Dolly Dy-Zulueta / Photos by Rafael R. Zulueta
EVERY now and then, new dining hubs rise in the Metro, and one of the newest lifestyle hubs which offers a wide range of dining options and is slowly but surely attracting a good crowd of diners is Estancia at Capitol Commons, Pasig City.
Envisioned to not just serve as a hot spot for global fashion brands and unique retail concepts but also to be a go-to place for people who are on the lookout for good food, whatever their cravings are, Ortigas & Company’s newest lifestyle hub houses an impressive number of concept restaurants where diners can stumble upon exciting food finds.
Consider these unique urban surprises: Sisig in a sausage, squid ink in a bread roll, peanut butter in noodles, foie gras or chicken liver pâté with strawberries, green tea in a cake. Sounds interesting? They taste even better!
Eight of these fine restaurants and foodie haunts recently came together to present their specialties in a media tasting luncheon, dubbed Urban Flavors. The bridge that connects the two buildings of Estancia on the second floor was set up like an al-fresco café decorated with glass vases filled with fresh flowers, and the day’s menu, curated by noted foodie JJ Yulo (who is behind the Just Jonesing food crawls and founding member of Pinoy Eats World), showcased some of the best food finds that Estancia has to offer.
Black Olive Cerveceria, a freestanding restaurant on the ground level with its own entrance and outdoor dining area, started the luncheon table service with cold tapas and aperitifs, such as Mushroom Bruschetta, Eggplant Feta, Black Olive Involtini Spinach and Artichoke Dip, and Italian Sausage Pizza. Celebrity Chef Carlo Miguel himself mingled with the crowd and elaborated on the food served at Black Olive, which is a pub-style restaurant that serves Mediterranean and Italian comfort food.
The Wholesome Table, a concept restaurant of Bianca Araneta-Elizalde that offers healthy organic food and fresh fruit and vegetable juices to give diners lighter and healthier food alternatives, brought out an exquisite Burrata Cheese Plate. It featured Burrata cheese in a round platter, topped with grape tomatoes and fresh basil, sprinkled with lemon zest, drizzled with balsamic reduction and served with sourdough toasts. The Wholesome Table, which stresses the benefits of juicing, also made its freshly squeezed, bottled fruit and vegetable juices available to diners. At the restaurant, there are so many combinations to choose from, each formulated to address a certain nutrient deficiency or boost a nutritive element in a person’s diet.
Also presented, family-style, on the dining tables were baskets of assorted breads and pastries from Artisan Emporium, the home of handmade breads, pastries and desserts which adhere to the going-back-to-basics type of healthy diet. The market street bakery included Squid Ink Rolls, Soft Rolls, Rosemary & Rock Salt Focaccia, and Mini Burgers, served with Herb & Garlic Butter, Yogurt Butter and Strawberry Chicken Liver Pâté.
Artisan Emporium, likewise, gave everyone a generous taste of its bite-sized desserts—Blueberry and Raspberry Mille Feuille, Apricot Lattice and Raspberry Lattice.
Then the plated courses started coming, beginning with Watermelon and Goat Cheese Salad with Almonds from Florabel, a restaurant that serves a selection of carefully crafted Filipino and Continental dishes and is named after its celebrity chef-owner Florabel Co-Yatco. Florabel, the restaurant, stands in a strategic corner of Estancia that has its own entrance. Florabel also treated everyone to a glass of its signature red Iced Tea with strawberries floating on top.
The cold course was courtesy of PBCo, whose penchant for peanut butter has made the addition of peanut butter into almost all of its savory and sweet offerings work wonders. PBCo calls the food that it serves “Everyday Happy Food,” and its Cold Asian Noodles is one such dish. The noodles, tossed in a peanut butter-based savory sauce, is topped with shredded cucumber, diced tomatoes and chopped parsley.
The first of two hot courses followed, with Spice & Cleaver’s Grilled Sausage Sampler. The platter had three kinds of homemade sausages—Mexican Spice Sausages, Lamb Feta & Olive Sausages, and The Mask (Sisig) Sausages—served with Virgin Mashed Potato, Onion Jus and Sauerkraut. At the helm of Spice & Cleaver’s kitchen are seasoned chefs Quito Jose and Jose Miguel Gianan.
The second hot course came in the form of Kitayama Steak and Eggs Bap, one of the best-selling prepared bibimbap (Korean rice meals) on the menu of Chef Him Uy de Baron’s I Am Kim Korean Stone Bowl Rice. I Am Kim specializes in create-your-own, as well as prepared, bibimbap, which are served in a special stone bowl that keeps the heat of the food for a longer time. It also serves other Korean specialties.
Dessert was big during the Urban Flavors luncheon at Estancia, with PBCo bringing out its Marshmallow Toast Ice Cream, a two-layered frozen dessert with marshmallow cream on top and bread toast processed into an ice cream at the bottom, drizzled with chocolate.
Then came a quartet of delightful desserts from third-wave coffee shop UCC Clockwork, including a trio of cakes—Green Tea Sansrival, Hokkaido Malt Cake and Mango Crème Brûlée—and a generous helping of Mango Crêpe Samurai, capped with coffee and hot matcha (green tea) lattés boasting of not just impeccable taste but unique latte art to feast one’s eyes on, as well. UCC Clockwork is known for its coffee, which is made from an assortment of locally and internationally sourced premium coffee beans blended through its in-house coffee machine.
“Curating the food courses for Urban Flavors was a delight, especially with the tasty treasures offered by Estancia’s dining establishments. A rich mix of dishes and drinks prepared following local and international traditions and techniques, it’s an epicurean adventure that can be enjoyed by guests of Estancia, who are out to discover and try new, exciting and flavorful food available in the different restaurants that it houses,” JJ Yulo says.
From the looks of it, with more restaurants opening, Estancia will be one truly vibrant place to go to for exquisite dining adventures.