Located at 51 Sct. Rallos St. in Quezon City, Eighteen Bistro is one small place near famous restaurants like Kanin Club and Uncle Moes. Altough, the area (near Tomas Morato) is popular for foodies, Eighteen Bistro strikes as a different place altogether.
The menu is definitely comfort food with a hint of sophistication, although it has limitations because of a one page short food menu ; it would be enough to make you comeback once in every month. Why? Luckily, and unplanned, we visited the restaurant on the 18th of July; Eighteen Bistro offers 18-Peso house cocktails to guests, the catch is you just have to order one main dish on their menu and the house cocktails are already available in a very low price!
Photo courtesy of Clea Cheng
We started our meal with cocktails (very bad idea for lunch), we ordered three cocktails the first being the Rocketeer which is a mixed of rootbeer, cayenne and whisky; Sangria – red wine, brandy and oranges, and Freshman – mango, vodka, lime and sugar. Rocketeer is pretty much similar to your Jack -Coke mix, a great drink after a tiring day of work; while Sangria is your personal favourite for wine drinkers. Freshman is sweet and fruity typically sipped on a warm, sunny day. Every 18th of the month, five cocktails are served; all with different tastes and would suit different types of people. If you are quite the adventurer with alcoholic drinks, 18Php is a cheap way to get wasted, this is available throughout the day.
For food, we ordered the Spicy Portobello and Cream Cheese, Chicken Parmigiana, and Beef Bourguinon. We finished off the meal with a Warm Chocolate Cake for desert.
The Spicy Portabello and Cream Cheese is one of their best on their Pasta choices. It is listed on their small plates, but this should feed a group of two to three person. The dish is made of spaghetti topped with Portobello mushrooms, cayenne pepper and cream cheese. Surprisingly, I did not expect that the spaghetti is cooked al dente, it is quite difficult to find this perfectly cooked spaghetti around the Metro. Most pasta dishes served are sometimes already too squishy for enjoyment. With a slight spicy flavor mixed to it; the taste is pretty much perfect as the mushrooms on topped gave texture and earthy taste to it. I highly recommend getting a plate of this one as this is one of the best pasta dishes I’ve tasted in my life!
Spicy Portabello and Cream Cheese – Spaghetti
The Chicken Parmigiana is another great tasting dish. Normally in a place like this, rice is served very conservatively especially when served as a side dish. However, the mushroom rice pilaf served together with the chicken is generously enough for two people. On the other hand, topping the rice is a baked chicken fillet with tomato stew and mozzarella chees. The chicken is a bit salty and the sourness and cheese-taste of the sauce balances it all out giving it a very light yet tasty flavor. Even with the sauce slewed on top of the chicken, the baked white meat still retains its crunchiness giving additional texture to the dish.
Beef Bourguinon and Chicken Parmigiana
The Beef Bourguinon is a different take, while the chicken and pasta dishes has a light and a bit of refreshing taste to it, the Beef Bourguinon will give you a whole different experience. Large cutlets of braised beef in a pool of red wine sauce and served with potato terrine; the braised beef cuts out as a great compliment to whatever is left on with your mushroom rice pilaf. It is really soft with the strips of beef not going between your teeth and small amount of fat just dissolves in your mouth. Just be aware that the richness and flavor of the sauce might be too salty for your taste buds.
The moist, chocolate cake with bittersweet ganache, dulce de leche and feuilletine crunch was served as our dessert. We wanted to go for the Salted Caramel Popcorn Fudge, but disappointment visited us as it was unavailable during our time of visit.
Warm Chocolate Cake
The warm chocolate cake, however was really good; I’ve tasted quite a few of these bad boys and so far Eighteen Bistro’s rendition is one of may favorites. The good thing about their version was the chocolate inside was not boiling hot compared to the other molten choco cake. The dulce de leche and ganache made three more versions of the sweetness you taste, the chocolate cake being the sweet taste chocolatey flavor you always crave for, the ganache added a more dark chocolate-bitter taste, while the dulce de leche gave it more of a Filipino sweetness similar to dipping a suman in latik. The feuilletine crunch added a bit of texture, but it was all it did except for making the plate more presentable.
A small, quaint place in Sct. Rallos near Tomas Morato, Eighteen Bistro is a good place to dine and chill with your closest friends. The place could accommodate around 20 to 25 guests max so be prepared to experience some minor discomfort when going on peak hours and days; especially when looking for a place to park. The food was delicious and did gave generous servings. If you want to go here for drinks, they have a longer bar list so choices are not as limited as their food. To cap it all off, every 18th of the month, they have this great promo. Just order food for around 250Php and you get 18-peso cocktails. They usually have five choices for their cocktails and based on their facebook page, they randomly select five cocktails from their menu. Sweet! We plan to go next month to fully enjoy these cocktails. And yeah, the next #18OnTheEighteeth will be on August 18, Tuesday so don’t forget to get a reservation if you are coming from work.
You may check out their facebook page here, and their instagram page here.
