Cycle 5 – Item 11

16 (Thu) January 2014

Lonestar Grilled Pork Chop

2.0

at Holy Cow!

(Robinsons Place)

-Ermita, Manila, Metro Manila, Philippines-

solo

Try Every Restaurant in Robinsons Place (3) (see also TERRP)

Holy Cow! is an American-style restaurant.   The signage leaves no doubt as to what’s for dinner: “Steak Ranch & American Grill” and “A Wholly Fun MEATing Place.”  Indeed, the selection is mostly about land animals.  Cowboy kitsch all around, from the names of the dishes to the gimcrack adorning the walls to the boots on the servers.

The food was okay, if Filipinized.  For starters, the garlic rice – what self-respecting red-blooded American cowboy would eat rice with his meat, especially yellow rice topped with garlic?  The vegetables were unremarkable per se, but they’d been blanched in concentrated saline solution, I must assume, so salty down to the core.  Maybe because I’ve been looking into salt reduction as part of my research here, but I’m beginning to notice that food preparation in Manila tends to go heavy on the Na.  Like the porkchops, which came well-seasoned as is, with a nice charred flavored, but they were so dry that I was forced to pour on the gravy, which rendered them too salty.  Overall, not so American, but close enough.  I doubt that I’ll be back.

(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)

(See also RESTAURANTS IN PHILIPPINES)