Alab

Celebrating Tito Mark's birthday in the Alab restaurant of Chef Tatung was a pleasant experience despite the heavy rains.  Alab is a Tagalog term describing a passionate flame, and whether the restaurant's name was a pun for the kitchen flames or an allusion to the passion for good food, we couldn't really tell; no problem however, the food was good and the company was even better!  We arrived early at 11 am, and were able to get a good parking space right in front of the restaurant.  As we sat, Kong Kong asked for some kinilaw and Gwammy had a fresh lumpia for starters.

Tito Mark started off the fiesta with some our all-time favorite molo soup and ginataang mongo soup, which was coconut-creamed just right, not too thick to be difficult to swallow nor too thin to have little flavor.

Next came the array of fiesta food--crispy pata, bagoong rice, honey-cured liempo, house special fried rice and Tausog chicken (this had coconut cream and was very tasty).  

The eggplant dish called Poqui-Poqui, was topped with a thick layer of mozzarella cheese and was delicious, akin to moussaka but slightly different (yes, it might sound racy, but I assure you, that is the name of the dish).  Their version of kare-kare had a good peanut foundation, although I had wanted to taste more ox tail and tripe.  Pancit canton was quite delicious, and I liked the crispy liempo toppings; the crunchiness was in sharp contrast with the gooey noodles.  The sisig was served sizzling hot, and the egg-drop was cooked in just a few seconds.

We had fun with desserts.  Bibingka cheesecake was soft and tasty, the choco lava cake had a lovely ground peanut core, while the suman was freshly made.  The talk of the town, however, was the ice cream.  Made in house, the flavors were pretty unique--calamansi, quezo de bola, kamote and you read it right, laing!  Calamansi was not sherbet, it was ice cream--tart but still refreshing.  Little lady Andie finished a whole cup all by herself!  The kamote flavor had a slight powdery feel, but I assumed that was the effect of the ground kamote in the dairy mixture.  The laing ice cream tasted exactly like gabi laing, except that it was in ice cream form.  Difficult to describe, I guess you just have to sample it to understand!

We were there on a Sunday lunch, and the place was quite full.  They have a second floor for functions, and a balcony dining area for the smokers.  You better be there early, as Scout Rallos is almost always jam-packed with parked cars on weekends.  I'd say the average check would be around P800 per person, but that would be a fiesta like what we had.