My Mac crashed. What can I say. In my world impossibilities come true, even bad ones. I tried the control-apple-option-on combination as suggested by a MAC geek ... nada. My Apple (sob) is dead.

Moving from the rotten Apple back to the RELIABLE PC, let me tell you about this past week ...

Saturday, 7 July: Martini's

I am currently working on a piece on trends in cocktails. (Please feel free to holler any observations!) So, along with a doctor friend (best to have a doctor by you when you're not sure how many drinks you'll be having for the night) who claims to "not have the same drink twice" at any bar on any night out, I went bar hopping FOR RESEARCH.

Confident that I had lined my stomach with enough rice for the week to cushion the alcohol, I began with a Strawberry Martini while my friend The Doctor had a Long Island Iced Tea (boring). For the next round, I gave in to my curiousity and tried the Wasabi Martini (disgusting) while The Doctor got a regular mudslide. After enough "ewws", The Doctor offered to switch drinks and I happily finished off his kahlua-tasting cocktail while he searched the menu for some sashimi to go with his drink.

Martini's is a lovely bar. It's for the more mature crowd, I would say, from the choice of music (lots of jazz and classics), the apparent age group of the people at the bar, the choices of drinks (the men have scotch), the cigar on the fingers of many a man trying to show his worldliness, and, of course, the over the roof prices of the drinks (range is around P250 to P650 for a drink). They make up for the prices by offering a stellar ambiance with beautiful interiors, comfortable couches, gorgeous martini glasses, and waitresses donning Scarlett Johannson / Lost in Translation wigs (definitely easy to spot in a crowd). The drink list, however, does not specify what standard vodka/gin they use for their martinis so if you are particular, you must notify the waiter (there's a gorgeous tisoy host, girls) or you end up with whatever they use at the bar. I hear the chocolate martini is quite fab though I have yet to go back and try it myself. By all means avoid the wasabi martini. Why they came up with it is beyond me. Why I suckered myself into ordering it ... I still ask myself that very question. Curiosity killed my amats.

We moved to Cuisine to see what the club crowd appreciates. The Doctor's other role for the evening, aside from being a precautionary measure by his sheer existence and aside from being my disgusting-drink-dump a.k.a. my hero, was as city club tour guide. You see I don't frequent the club scene. It makes me feel old and fat so I avoid it altogether. But of course, I was DOING RESEARCH. At Cuisine I asked the waiter at the bar to give me whatever all the girls order at this bar. I was given a lychee martini. And became very disappointed although I had actually expected it. After Sex and the City popularized the Cosmopolitan and the Apple Martini, Manila seemed to follow suit with the lychee martini in 2003/2004. It was the new Mule (remember 1999?). The guys order their Lights and the girls get their Lychees. I will tell you though that any chick who gets tipsy after one glass of this at Cuisine is definitely faking it. Their glass is a third of the size of the glasses at Martinis and half of it is sugar. If there's any alcohol in that glass it's worth 1%.

We tried to move next to Fiamma but it was closed. On a Saturday night. Poor thing.

Then we hit Alchemy. The first thought in my head was "Oh my god I look like these kids' teacher." But after some convincing from The Doctor, I agreed that I looked all of 22 (hyeahhhriiighhht) and braved the kiddie den. It must not be such a kiddie den after all as the first person I saw at the bar was a fellow thirtysomethinger and I bumped into a few more friends my age a few minutes later. Fellow Thirtysomething Man offered to buy the lady a drink and I found myself, after telling him to get me anything he thinks a lady should have, with an Apple Roska. It tasted like bubblegum to me, a little too sweet for my taste but faaar better than the lychee martini at Cuisine. I followed this up with a real drink which I bought for myself this time: a Glen Levitt for the lady please. Funny enough, the first bartender scratched his head. Fortunately, the bartender beside him recognized the malt, dug for their unopened bottle and gave me a generous pour, though I only asked for a single on the rocks.

We greeted the morning with breakfast at Zigurrat and bottled water.

I love research.

Sunday,8 July: Ponzo's

After the 9 p.m. mass at the Magallanes Church, I had dinner at the church restaurant Ponzo's.

Just a quick update on this church. If you would recall the church burned down in 2004. The community has been trying to raise funds to rebuild the church since. Father Benny Tuazon and the leaders of the church introduced what they call the 10-10-25 program to raise P25M for the rebuilding of the church. One week before the deadline they were P7M short. Father Benny talked to the community and said that he believed a miracle would happen. Guess what. They raised 7M in 7 days. The 7th day was July 7, 2007 (7-7-7). Nice touch with the numbers. Like my Mac, an impossibility became possible. This time in a good way!

Anyway, RJ Ungco is the chef at Ponzo's. He trained at Le Roches. He makes these lovely thin crust pizzas for less than P200! Have the spinach or the margherita. I enjoy mine by putting one on top of the other, sandwiching the cheese.

Monday, 9 July: Cafe Juanita

Having saturated Makati for stories, I am exploring more QC joints. Determined to feature north-based restaurants in the coming issues of SIM, I have been doing the rounds of QC restaurants with The Rockstar. Unfortunately, my first restaurant choice was closed. We moved to another. Closed as well. My Makati-girl conclusion is that people in Quezon City don't eat on Mondays. Hmpf.

So we moved to Pasig where I remembered Lady Bangus took Chef Daddy when he was here, to "this nice restaurant that serves great Filipino food" called Cafe Juanita.

One step inside Juanita and I was thrilled. It was so full of character. But I'm not sharing, you'll have to wait til this story sees print.

Tuesday, 10 July: Cafe Juanita again.

Have I mentioned that I don't review a restaurant unless I've eaten there at least twice?

(to be continued ...)