Lei succhia December 20, 2009

Let’s take a break from all the wedding preps, and talk about everyone’s favorite pastime, especially during the holidays — eating.

So, Beej and I were at MoA yesterday, doing our Christmas shopping, and at sometime before 7pm, we decided to have dinner.  It so happened that we were around the IMAX area so we decided to dine at Don Henrico’s.  When we got to the ristorante, there was a waiting list for indoor tables, so I asked for us to be listed, and we were at no. 5.  The receptionist didn’t even bother to sit us somewhere, so we looked, found and sat on one of the outdoor tables.  We also had to go get a menu ourselves so we could start picking what to order while we waited.

Anyway, eventually we were able to get in, we sat down, but nobody came to us to take our orders, or to even give us a menu.  I got hold of one of the managers walking by and gave him our orders – shrimp pasta with olive oil, and beef calzone (I had them memorized), he acted like he didn’t want to talk to us, and passed us over to one of the actual waitresses.  She said our orders would arrive in 15-20 minutes.  I look at my watch, it was 7:10pm.

Beej and I talk a bit, and go over our Christmas list, and by 7:30pm our orders hadn’t arrived.  The couple beside us (who ordered around 5 minutes after us) already got their food by this time.  As I was about to call a waiter, here comes our pasta.  Beej and I both exclaim: “Eto na yun?“.  The presentation of our food was awful.  I know olive oil is just olive oil, but our noodles looked like they came straight from the strainer or something.  Plus, the tiny shrimps looked undercooked.  But heck, this is Manila, and we were hungry, so we started digging in.  The shrimps were awful!  They were too soft, parang napirat, and we had to put (a lot of) pepper on the pasta just so it could have flavor.  We were almost done with the pasta, it was already 7:40pm, and I asked Beej to followup on our other order.  “Baka kung ano pa ang masabi ko pag ako ang nagtanong.”  Beej called one of the managers, followed up on our order, the manager left, and when he got back, he said the calzone would be done in 6 minutes.  WTF.  Back to the pasta I guess.

Here’s the first dealbreaker.  As we were about to finish our pasta, Beej said, “Bakit ganun, parang may pakpak yung isang pepper.“  She saw one of those small fruitflies swimming in the olive oil of our pasta.  We called for the manager again, and showed the fly.  “Dumapo po ba habang kumakain kayo?“  Aba, nagmamalinis agad.  I said, “Hindi, kanina pa yan andyan.“  The manager asked if we would like to have it replaced, I said no, just take it off our bill.  So he got it off our table, and came back with our calzone.

At this point, my appetite had gone away, so Beej went ahead to get a slice of the calzone.  I noticed she was having a hard time cutting it.  When she opened it up, the dough was undercooked!  I asked her to talk to the manager again, and that I didn’t want to say anything, for fear of making a scene.  I said, “Ayoko ng ganito, tayo pa ang kontrabida. “  When the manager arrived, he was even defending the cook.  “It looks cooked just right, ma’am sir”.  Hindi na ako nakapagpigil.  I opened the calzone wide open, and said “Mukha bang luto yan?“  The inside of the calzone was still soft, like it had barely seen the inside of an oven.

We asked for the bill, paid for just our orange juice, no tips of course, and left.

10 minutes later, we were happily eating our cheese pizza and spaghetti with meatballs at Sbarro.

Don Henrico’s, you suck.