Mongkok in Glorietta and Dencio's at Capitol Golf

After a week of working, my friend, Kat and decided to meet for dinner and drinks. We initially wanted to meet at 7 but at around 5:30, I found out that my father, whom I call Pa or Fatherlily, is in Makati. 

I'm using Fatherlily's car so I offered to bring him home. I met him in Landmark at around 6. Since he hasn't eaten and we correctly expected a long ride home due to the traffic, I decided to treat him out for dinner. Since Fatherlily doesn't eat anything but Chinese of Filipino food and we were really hungry, we ate in Mongkok.

Since we were hungry, we got dumplings from the cart. The hakaw, or the shrimp dumplings were ordinary, but the sharks' fin dumplings were really good! We also ordered their yang chow fried rice, salt and pepper spareribs, mixed vegetables and shrimp with hot salad. For our drinks, Pa got pineapple juice. I ordered Mongkok lemonade.

The yang chow fried rice was good - it had egg, green peas,  some porkbits and my favorite chinese sausage. It was also a bit wet, which is how I like my rice. They served the fried rice before they served the other dishes, but since it was so tasty, Fatherylily ate a few spoonsfull even if there were no other viands yet.

The mixed vegetables were okay but typical - the greens were crisp and the carrots were cut in cute floral shapes. The dish wasn't too salty. Their use of aji no moto wasn't too obvious. The salt and pepper spareribs were a bit tough but were delicious. It was hot enough to leave a small bite on the tongue. I didn't like their hot salad, though. It was a bit too sour for me.

The Mongkok lemonade is ok. There were some dayap slices floating in it but it is quite obvious from the taste that the lemonade wasn't fresh.

After the meal, we had green tea. It was a disappointment since their tea came in a tea bag.  It's a good thing that service was excellent and they don't have service charge. For a fast food resto, Mongkok was ok.

After bringing Fatherlily home, I met with Kat. We wanted to watch a show but our choices were Diether Ocampo, Beverly Salviejo and the Rage Band - none of whom appealed to us. We just decided to go to Dencio's in Capitol Golf for the ambiance. The resto was around 5 minuts from Rey's house so we invited him to join us. He did.

Dencio's is at the 3rd floor of the old clubhouse of Capitol Golf & Country Club. It has a nice view of Antipolo and Libis. Eating at their balcony has a calming effect on me. (I need some calming after huffing and puffing through  4 half-flights of stairs. They don't have an escalator or an elevator.)

We ordered ensaladang mangga, chicharong bulaklak and crispy pata (hey, we initially ordered panga ng tuna but they don't have it.) The ensaladang mangga was perfectly sour (because of the green mangoes) and salty (i love their bagoong!). The chicharong bulaklak pieces were too huge that they were actually intimidating. They were not as crisp as I wanted.  But the crispy pata was unapologetically crispy, juicy, flavorful and fattening. Of course, we had to order rice.

The service was not as good as it used to but their beers are perfectly cold. That was good enough for us. Unfortunately, they close at 1 am. So, even if we wanted to drink some more we had to say goodbye to our beautiful view and our consistently cold beer.