Review: Sci-Fi Cafe + Mexicali Promo

Warning! Picture heavy

A new place in Robinsons Galleria, Sci-Fi Cafe Is a place for geeks and hipsters to hang out in.

 You can see a lot of collectibles outside, which is what drew us to the place.

Sci-Fi Cafe Menu

The menu boasts food with interesting names. Since it was a bit out of budget, my friends and I decided to try their drinks only. While waiting, these caught my eye:

Johnny Depp

The Golden Trio

Aliens vs Predators

Among other things. They have an extensive Star Wars collection, including these on the ceiling: 

Sci-Fi Cafe Ceiling

Too bad the lights are too bright to see the spacecraft, a Millenium Falcon and TIE Fighter, among other things.

Soup

There was some complimentary soup, which was nice. I have no idea what it was, but it's the first time I've received a soup for ordering a drink.

Cashier

Featuring a shield of the White Tree of Gondor, a hoverboard, Leggy's bow and Sulley! They were playing music from Pride and Prejudice, Romeo and Juliet and Titanic.

Bar

When you walk in, you see some wands, lightsabers and the Madhatter's hat. The cake looked delicious, but I'm saving up for Wildflour.

Sci-Fi Cafe Wall

Autograph wall, OMG.

MOAR STUFF

Numbered stuff from Pirates of the Carribean, Disney sets... and if you look closely, there's a Twilight Set. 

Now I realize that a lot of the stuff I've shown is more of fantasy than science fiction, but OMG! A place to admire all the stuff!

They also started showing Avengers on one TV screen and LotR in another.... I almost stayed forever....

Milk Blend: White Chocolate

Sulley wants my drink.

Now, while the food was excellent, the location great, and the service good, there is one thing I disliked: Since my friends and I KKB'd it, we all placed money when the bill came. I placed an extra P20 and was too lazy to count change. Our money was taken, but the P20 was gone. Now, I was going to leave it as a tip, but management should NOT assume that. They should have left the money inside... clearly, honesty isn't a policy.

I'll forgive it because of the uniqueness of the place, but I'll think twice about putting more money then I ought to, and count change very carefully!


Yays

• Service: we were given water and it was refilled without asking
• Free soup
• Ambience: one of a kind
• Yummy drink

Nays

• Not very honest

Okays

• Make sure you bring enough money

Go again?
Yes! With all my geeky friends.

The Sci-Fi Cafe is located in the top floor of Robinsons Galleria, Quezon City, Philippines.

Mexicali
After going around the mall, we got hungry and bought nachos at Mexicali. They have a promo: P100 for certain items with a free 12oz Coke (they gave us sarsi, but we didn't complain).

Mexicali Nachos

BurgerBar

Well, it's my summer vacation right now. That means a lot of bumming time, even if I did promise myself to be more productive... I'd really not rather know how much weight I've gained, or how many pimples I've gotten from sleeping early mornings.

To get a feel of how much weight I've gained....

The Rising Shroom

The best burger I've ever tasted. It costs P280 ($7) not including either VAT or service charge, but it's quite worth the price. As its name shows, it's contains mushrooms, better seen in the next pic and truffle cream cheese. This burger has made spot.ph's top gourmet burger list, with good reason. It's from the BurgerBar at Greenbelt 2.

The Rising Shroom 2

The bit below the top bun are battered oyster mushrooms. Though these were my least favorite part of the burger, it did provide a different texture, as compared to most burgers I've eaten. The best part for me was definitely the sauce... it's a burger your mouth doesn't get tired of.

Parmesan Truffle Fries

On the other hand, the fries -I'm not sure if this was the genuine name- at P145 ($3) were just blah. I'd prefer some NYFD fries to this for the price. Truffle fries really aren't my thing, but I did like the crunch of these. The serving size is big enough for two, so it really isn't that expensive if you think about it. Wish I tried the cookie batter milkshake instead.


This meal was eaten in the company of D. Thank you, D, for a wonderful time!

Noriter

Noriter

Address: 2F Estrada St.

Near Taft Avenue, close to DLSU 

Apparently, this cafe has been in business for a while, but it's the first time I was able to go. Fortunately, I was able to catch the place before either the morning/afternoon/evening rush hours, if ever there was. It's a really cute korean place that you reach by climbing up a flight of stairs direct from the ground floor - very different from the usual mall-located coffee spots.

Noriter Counter

 As you can see, there's only one man manning the place, not including the guard. A blackboard at the top contains the menu done in white, pink and blue. There are two sizes available with prices comparable to Starbucks. They also sell pastries. You get your own serving utensils and water glasses are reusable.

Noriter table and cups

 You can see a paper cup construction, and some alternative tables to use: they are elevated from the floor and require kneeling. If you look closely at the wood, you can see that people have written messages on them.

Noriter table and wall

 Some glass topped tables have pictures on them. There are a lot of cup decorations around the place and you can see the mish mash of chairs. And fire extinguishers! Good to know that they have them somewhere easily accessible ^^

Norriter tree and table

There is a tree, don't know if it's real or not, but it's a nice touch to an indor place. You can see that the tables also come in many varieties. If you like privacy, there is a 2 storey semi-enclosed "treehouse"? located in the back.

Noriter view

I decided to take one of the small kneeling table things. You can see cars below.

I forgot to take a picture of my drink! Finished it before I remembered. Anyway, I'd like to go back to this place again, though it's a bit out of my way. I understand that it's a hang out spot for DLSU students.

Unit16sweets Peppermint Chocolate Bar

I love chocolate and peppermint. I especially love both of them together, hence my love affair with Starbucks' Peppermint Mocha every Christmas. However, now that Christmas season is over, I find myself craving mint chocolate. Luckily, I discovered this:

Peppermint Chocolate Bar

A Peppermint Chocolate Bar (Dark Chocolate with Mint) that doesn't break the bank! This little baby is from unit16sweets (you won't see this at their site) and costs P50 for 12 squares (3x4) of chocolate-y goodness. I found this little baby at a weekend food bazaar in podium. They also have other specialty flavors: chili, sea salt and ginger. While I am interested in trying those out, my diet constrains me...

Anyway, this is not the best chocolate I've ever tasted, but it's pretty sweet for its price! I liked the fact that it had an expiration date (around a year), but who are we kidding? Chocolate can last 1 week, tops, in my world.

What I didn't like about this? The wrapper! While it looked nice and neat, it felt disgusting on my fingers. Fortunately, the silver foil inside allowed me to unwrap it as soon as possible.

Buy Again?
Of course!

Shi Lin

Just some more food porn for this weekend. Shi Lin is a taiwanese restaurant that has several branches, this one in Podium, Mandaluyong.  We had 3 different types of noodles:

 

The triangular bowls were actually the most interesting thing about the dishes. However, the beef tasted the best of the three. 

And a serving of pork siomai and xiao long bao. 

The siomai was actually better than the xiao long bao...

How was your weekend?

I love strawberries

Hungry? Have a quick snack of strawberries and cream :)

A Quick Tip #3

Happy Holidays!

(Greetings to whatever type of celebration you guys are having)

It's a time for eating! I love eating, and I always end up gaining weight at this time. While there are some tips to lose weight out there, the tip I'm giving now is for bloating - how to avoid that excess water weight. Whenever you eat salty foods, drink water and coffee (or something high in caffeine) afterwards. Salty foods make you thirsty, which is why you drink water and therefore bloat. If you don't drink water, you'll end up taking it from places you shouldn't be getting it from. But adding coffee afterwards prevents your kidney from reabsorbing salt! It's also a diuretic  which means you end up excreting the water with the salt.

Hope this helps :)

Food Porn!

I've just had a lovely sem break and I'd just like to share some of the places I've discovered up north.

• Olives Restaurant
• Matutina's Seafood Restaurant
• Sea and Sky Restaurant
• Kubong Sawali
• Cafe Isabela

Olives Restaurant is part of the Thunderbirds Resort in Poro Point, La Union. It is really pretty over there! While the hotel is really expensive, you can always content yourself with merienda in their inhouse restaurant and taking pictures while waiting for your meal (like I did). I was able to take a picture of two of the cakes we ordered below. Each cake came with iced tea (I think it costed around P200 on a promo thing).

Blueberry Cheesecake (Olives Restaurant)

Tiramisu Cake (Olives Restaurant)

 The cakes were  yummy and nicely decorated, but the iced tea was the one to seal the deal (my picture is too ugly to be posted so I won't). According to our server, it was a mix of powdered and brewed tea, orange juice, cinnamon and vanilla. The pizza we ordered was also delicious, and was pounced on before I was able to take my camera out, but it was nothing to really write about.

The servers were really attentive and it was a nice hot day, so we sat indoors. The only snag to the entire meal for me was that there were no desert forks for the dessert; dinner forks are fine for me normally but given the location and the fact that their forks were on the heavy side, I'd have appreciated one nonetheless.

On the less expensive end of the spectrum, Matutina's Seafood Restaurant serves good food at great prices. While I was able to take a picture of their sizzling chicken, it's their Crispy Pata that was the real treat (picture unavailable due to hungry people). It was easily big enough for 4 people and costed less than P400, I think. You get a lot more pata then you'd ever get back in Manila. Also, while we didn't order their sinigang, we had some free soup and it was excellent (they also won some sort of best sinigang award). If only we weren't full, we would have ordered some. Matutina has several branches, but we ate at the Tarlac branch. The only con of the meal, the looooonnggg waiting time due to the large number of customers.

Sizzling Chicken (Matutina's)

If however, you want somewhere more intimate, try the Sea and Sky Restaurant in La Union. It's also a hotel restaurant, but not a fancy one! Rooms in the hotel are cheap for those who are budget conscious. But then I'd go to a resort if I went all the way here. The Crispy Pata costed around P200, good for two people and is delicious on the right side of crispy. Like Olives Restaurant, you're actually paying for a great view; while Olives is all landscaped beauty, you can actually hear the waves lapping at you from your table from Sea and Sky.

Crispy Pata (Sea and Sky Restaurant)

 Also in La Union, with a few more branches elsewhere including Baguio is Kubong Sawali. It has excellent sea food, especially with this Tahong Soup Thing (IDK it's real name). The two were bought as a platter for aroung P600 and feeds 4-5 people. Except for the soup, which should feed 2 hungry sillysloths. For smaller parties, you can get 2 starters for P185 which could feed 2-3 people.

Seafood Platter Thing (Kubong Sawali)

Tahong Soup Thing (Kubong Sawali)

Finally, Cafe Isabela in the Bencab Museum is another must see. Mostly for the museum itself! The cafe has a nice view of the surrounding grounds and mountains in Baguio, and rewarding yourself by chilling with a treat after touring the place. The pancake costed P160 with the ice cream at P150. The food is decent, but their vegetables are what make this place appealing (not pictured but eaten - if food comes while I'm eating, it's probably not going to get pictured). My only regret is  that I couldn't try any of their drinks.

Cinnamon Pancake with Banana (Cafe Isabela)

Volcano Ice Cream with Strawberries (Cafe Isabela)

One of the best things about the provinces: good food at good prices.

How was your break?