6.014

19 (Mon) January 2015

Kare Kareng Buntot Baka

1.5

at Bistro Remedios

-Malate, Manila-

with SCREAM

TEIBR. (Try Every Item at Bistro Remedios).

A highly regarded landmark restaurant that serves excellent mainstream Filipino fare, I’m attempting to eat my way through it.  Everything on the menu (except desserts, unless someone else orders it).  75 items in all.  While spending the vast majority of last year in the Philippines, I didn’t take substantial advantage of the opportunity to get fully immersed into the cuisine, much to my retrospective regret.  TEIBR should lead me down the right path—a higher purpose.

6th visit to the restaurant (see previously 6.012 Liempo). 6 new items tonight, 22 items down total, averaging 3.67 items per visit.  53 remaining, on pace to complete the project at TEIBR 21.

TEIBR is the 6th in the masochistically gluttonous “Try Every” series.  (i) TERRP (Try Every Restaurant in Robinsons Place) (see generally 5.247 Original Recipe Fried Chicken…).  (ii) TEITY (Try Every Item at Tao Yuan) (in process) (see most recently 6.009 Awful).  (iii) TERDHPP (Try Every Restaurant in the Diamond / Hyatt / Pan-Pacific hotels) (in process) (see most recently 5.348 American Lobster Aburi Gunkan).  (iv) TERSK (Try Every Restaurant in St Kilda) (see 5.339 Roasted Squid). (v) TEKREM (Try Every Korean Restaurant in Ermita/Malate) (in process) (see most recently 6.010 Jeonju Bibimbap).  That’s a stupid amount of food.

A last-minute farewell party for KR.  While JR has gone ahead to Phnom Penh, where he’ll be working out the country office, KR is still here tying up loose ends, scheduled to leave for Cambodia later in the week.

As JR and KR were core members of SCREAM (Supper Club, Residents of Ermita And Malate) and their apartment was the group’s de facto headquarters (see most recently 5.329 Tortang Talong), this might be the end of it.

Kare kare is a Filipino beef stew.  The main thing is the creamy peanut-based sauce.  The term is thought to have derived from “curry curry.”  Traditionally, the sauce comes with ox tail (buntot baka), plus ox tripe and other offal, but other meats and meats parts may be used, as well as vegetables, such as okra, eggplant, tomato.  Along with adobo and sinigang, kare kare is one of the the culture’s most adored dishes.

Not a fan, neither of ox tail nor ox tripe nor peanut sauce.

Here, the ox tail was beautifully tender–that’s as far as I’m willing to go.

Still, I’m glad that TEIBR presented a chance to describe it.