brains, innards or....fish balls???

Limapuluh was easy to find surprisingly; it was situated inside a commercial square called La Place which somehow reminded us of Greenbelt. It was raining last Sunday hence it was just as good that we've reserved for a table at the dining room and not at the terrace. I like the ambiance at the bar area though (^^) but we were there for lunch so we've no choice but be in the dining area. As we weren't able to book for a table at a Michelin-starred resto, Kitty and I decided not to dress up. Hence we looked like maids (and our guy friends, like driver/boy helper hahaha) next to Zoey and Maj who were dressed fit to dine at L'auberge.

Having been frustrated with the Michelin-starred resto, we ordered the most expensive lunch set they had - which was still waaay cheaper (1/3?) than L'auberge or Quintessence or even Merveille. Among us, only Kitty and Zoey can read Japanese and hence we all didn't bother to look at the appetizers and entrees since it's a lunch set and the choices we have can only be either fish or meat for the main dish. Besides, the menu we found on the website were pretty safe (I don't eat liver/heart and the like) so order the set, we did.

As it turned out, you can't have a choice of your fish or meat. I mean, there's only a limited number of beef dishes and if they ran out of it already (as what happened to our guy friends' orders), you have no choice but to take the deer entree. Us girls chose fish but it was somewhat frustrating to learn that we could not have the certain dish we want; they can only give us 3 of this certain fish entree and the other one will have to make do with the other fish entree. Having no choice, we just said okay.

Water was readily served in a bottle on our table - it's free so there's no great-tasting water this time, like what we had in Vinoteca and Cicada. The Champagne we had was also just left to sit on our table - not cradled on a bowl like in Vinoteca and Cicada. We also miss the olive oil & wine dip in Vinoteca and the different olive oil choices in Cicada (you can choose among Californian, Spanish, Italian, Greek and French olive oils!).

My spirit was getting gloomier by the minute as it was really becoming evident that the restaurant we chose was not really that special. I mean the place was good actually and the bar was impressive but then the choice we had wasn't as special as location for our December fine dining.

My spirits somewhat rose though when they served our appetizers in front of us. The presentation was nicely done that I thought that it was living up to it's "French restaurant" claim.




Ate the vegetables first. Nice. Took a forkful of the thingy on the middle our plates whilst asking each other "what's this?". The crunchy part was nice. And then I saw an intestine-like shape on my food and said "is this brain?". But we rationalized that it's unlikely to be brain since it's too big a serving and hence should be more expensive. I was still poking my food and just ate the crunchy parts and all the while saying "masarap naman dba??" until Maj commented that it seems I was not really convincing them of the taste but that I was saying it as like a mantra..to help me get through eating it; which I still didn't finish by the way. When finally the main dish was served, we asked the waiter what was the appetizer. Said it was "Shirako" and gestured to say that it was part of a fish's entrails; making me relieved I didn't eat the entire thing. I had two glasses of champagne, had my main dish, had a strong coffee with uber chocolatey chocolate cake and yet the taste still lingered. Even when we were already having karaoke 3 hours later, the taste still lingered.

Later that evening, Kitty sent us this link for us to learn what Shirako is.
http://nymag.com/restaurants/features/25585/

Blech!
Who would have thought that a "rare treat" such as sperm er, cod milt would be served us that lunch??! We asked for something memorable for our dine out and we sure did get it hahahaha..