The good and the bad

The Good
The missionary ladies in Cebu went to a nice little restaurant for lunch. It is in a upscale subdivision called Santa Nino, seems like it is converted from a garage, but it is so cute and well-kept that you will not suspect it at all upon stepping into the restaurant. My first impression of this restaurant is their table setting. While most restaurants in Cebu put a big spoon (serving spoon size) and a fork on the place mat, this restaurant has a salad fork, a dinner fork and a knife on the place mat, complete with a real cloth napkin! The bathroom smells good too, with no water running on the floor. Now, that's impressive!

The menu is interesting, you choose a sandwich out of about 20 different kinds of offers, then a soup from a soup list, a salad from a list of 15, and then a dessert from 4 different kinds of cakes. A four course meal and the cost is: $160 peso, that's $3.20 USD!

We had a wonderful time, and I sure will return to 10 Dove street with my family.

We like that subdivision also, we will do some research and see if we can afford to live there, since by June, when the renter of this house comes back, we will have to move.

The Bad
We again have no food in the house, so we head out to find a restaurant. While we were strolling along an eatery area, the power went out, so we headed back out, while driving, we kept seeing sections of the city losing power. So it forced us to the largest mall in Cebu, the Ayala Mall. We stepped into the Tequila Restaurant, music was not too loud, that's good. The waitress was quick to serve, the menu was shuffled into our hands before we were settled down with Kioni. We asked them to wait a little. Like most restaurants do in Cebu, they gave us two settings instead of three, often they don't see Kioni as a 'person' who needs her own place setting, which is very frustrating. When we were looking at the menu, we realize that there are lots of wrong spellings in the menu, 'Fich and Ships' (Fish and Chip?); Fynger (finger?); and Zappetitzer (Appetitzer?). I already have a bad feeling about this restaurant, if a restaurant cannot manage to put together a menu correctly, what are they going to do with the food. We ordered an appetizer platter for Kioni and I to share, and Dan ordered a burrito.

The drink came, the Diet Coke that Dan ordered was flat, Dan asked for another one, it was still flat. Then the platter came, my jaw dropped when I saw the platter. There was a small pile of broken corn chips, a bowl of not so warm chili, a tiny salad with two cubes of 1/4 inch of avocado and some tomatoes, 4 small pieces of quesadilla, and most shockingly, one single sad looking chicken wing. The chicken wing was so small it must come from a chicken that was about two weeks old. There was supposed to be some "bleucheese and celery" that came with the platter, but it was missing. Dan asked for it, three waiters and waitresses came and found was what was missing. OK, they brough it out for us right a way, the "bleucheese" was in a tiny little plastic cup, with ONE two inch long celery in it. The platter costs $345 peso, that is about $7 UDS! Dan's buritto came, the black beans were tough as little rocks, there was no sauce, so it was pretty dry, it came wrapped up in a piece of foil, looks like it was pre-made somewhere and just get warmed up a bit in the restaurant.

Dan's had enough of everything, when his bottomless coke sat there empty, he told the waiter that he should be watching and do some actual serving, instead having Dan to ask him to fill it up everytime.

In the mean time, Kioni was scratching her leg, she was bitten by a mosquito. Thankfully, I have learned to always carry a bottle of bug spray since I arrive in Cebu.

This was the worse restaurant experience we have ever in the 5 months period that we have been here.