eat all you can: Bagoong Club Resto

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Bagoong Club Resto

I recently lost my phone which I use to take pictures of my eating adventures. Sadly I have not saved all the pictures I took. Whatever I have saved I will share with you this week. The notes about them however are also on that phone so I would describe them based solely on what I can remember.

Do you like bagoong? I do.

Last February my good friend and I saw this restaurant called Bagoong Club while cruising along Scout Dr. Lazcano in Quezon City. I asked her if she's been to that place and she said yes. She said she likes the food there. Unfortunately we couldn't try the place out that night because we were going someplace else. Then last March we passed by that area again and I told her I want to eat there that night. We didn't have any specific place to go to so she readily agreed.

While looking at their interesting menu (I'll talk about this later) the waiter served singkamas with bagoong. There were actually two kinds of bagoong. If my memory serves me right, one was their Bagoong Club Special and the other one is Bagoong Buhay. They have various flavors for their bagoong -- which is expected because their place is called Bagoong Club afterall.The Bagoong Club Special is spicy. The menu says it's not for the weak of heart. Bagoong Buhay, the menu says, has coconut milk.

Singkamas with Bagoong Club Special and Bagoong Buhay

While feasting on the bagoong (yes, I ate more bagoong than singkamas) we decided to order Kare Kare and Inihaw na hito.


Kare Kare

Inihaw na Hito

The Kare Kare has thick sauce. They used 'real' ingredients and not 'instant' mixes. I love the rich ground peanut flavor. There also used lots of vegetables. The eggplant and the pechay were cooked just right. I can't say anything about the string beans because I didn't eat any. I do not eat beans. The meat is also tender. Unlike kare-kare in other restaurants, the meat doesn't feel rubbery or 'bubblegum-my' when eaten. However, they didn't put in a lot of mean. There were probably just 4 small slices. The vegetables and the sauce could probably be shared by three people but for me the meat is only just for two. It was served with regular bagoong which also tasted good. By the way I also ordered a serving of Bagoong Pag-ibig. It's their sweetened bagoong.

The Inihaw na Hito is just your usual grilled hito but it was served with fish bagoong. I didn't expect that they would serve the hito with bagoong so I was pleasantly surprised. I also like fish bagoong.

Overall, even if we only ordered two dishes, I was fully satisfied. I mean I felt literally full.

The service was also good. The waiter who assisted us was friendly. Both orders were served fast. They even gave us an extra serving of the singkamas.

The place was clean. It looks like a big, old house converted to a restaurant so it actually has that home-y feel. It gives a feeling that you're eating 'moms signature dishes'.

I said above that I'll talk about their 'interesting' menu. They gave cool names for their dishes that's why I said the menu's interesting. To give you an example, they called their beef dishes BAKA SAKALI (baka is the Tagalog term for cow or beef). They called their salads ENSALADAKADABRA. If you want to know the other names just look at the pictures below.