A house built on soup.  That, in a nutshell, is Pat Pat's Kansi, a growing chain of Ilonggo restaurants whose core offering is a hearty beef soup called Kansi.  Cat and I got to visit the BF Homes branch and met owner Enri Rodriguez, who told us Pat Pat's story.

Pat Pat, it turns out, is an Iloilo lass who as a child kept asking for a particular beef soup from Bacolod.  It got to the point that her
mom, rather than taking the ferry to Bacolod just to buy the stuff, reverse-engineered the recipe and added her own touches to make the Kansi that would later take Makati by storm.  What's Kansi?  It's the Ilonggo version of Bulalo, beef marrow soup, but cooked with a sour fruit called batuan plus the secret herbs and spices added by Pat Pat's mom. It's so flavorful, says Enri, that there's no need to add soy sauce or patis to the soup as most Tagalog diners usually do with their bulalo.  Years later, the family put up a small restaurant along Kamagong in Makati.  It's now devilishly difficult to find parking along Kamagong at lunchtime, with so many of Makati's office workers heading for Pat Pat's Kansi.

Cat and I sampled the signature Kansi, the indispensable Iloilo/Bacolod favorite Chicken Inasal, Pork Barbecue and the Sizzling
Sisig.  First stop, the Kansi: we opted for the Kansi Laman (meat), an all-meat version, rather than the Bulalo (bone marrow) - I've been taking in too much cholesterol lately!  On my first spoonful of soup I could already tell this beef had been lovingly boiled into submission over a slow fire, the flavor was so rich.  Because we'd been shooting the other dishes the soup had gone cold, but Enri gave us fresh broth to bring our bowl of kansi back to steaming the way it should be enjoyed. The beef was very tender, and Cat, who usually takes her boiled beef with some kind of sauce, found she needed to add nothing at all as Enri smilingly advertised.  Me, I'm the guy who always likes fire on the palate so I used the provided calamansi, fresh chilies and soy sauce to make a hot dip.  Either way it went down great (had to try Cat's version too!).

The Inasal tasted just like those we had in Bacolod, smoky and tangy, while the Pork Barbecue was garlicky-sweet like the barbecue I grew up with.  Both went down very well, though I found a bit more gristle than I liked on one stick of the barbecue.  The Sizzling Sisig was a wow - really spicy the way I liked it, spiked with chopped chilies and fried to a crisp on a hotplate.  

You'd expect a place that serves sisig like this to be a beer drinker's haven as well, but here we found another unique aspect of Pat Pat's Kansi: in line with its original concept as a down-home, family-friendly place, alcohol simply isn't on the menu.  And because the owners want to keep the focus squarely on their strongest suits, the menu is restricted to only ten dishes, which if the four items we sampled are any indication they do really well indeed.

Speaking of menus, the place has been discovered by a new market--our Korean visitors.  A Korean traveler stopped by last year and found the food to be very much in line with the Korean taste.  So determined and enthusiastic was he to recommend Pat Pat's Kansi to his compatriots that he insisted to draw up a testimonial right there and then, which the Rodriguezes printed on a banner, and they now also have a menu with entries in Korean script.

Pat Pat's Kansi BF Homes branch is located at the lower level of Greenworld Plaza along President's Avenue.  The place has ample parking, a requirement which Enri says the franchisors wisely made a prime requirement.  The restaurant is Enri's first venture into the food business, and it's one he made based on his good relationships with the franchisors and his belief in the product.  As he narrates, he took his wife Lea to sample the Kansi, and she was sold on the idea immediately.  I have to say, after the first try we're sold on Pat Pat's Kansi too.

We've just discovered a new Japanese street food place along President's Avenue.  It's called Kushiten, which in my fractured understanding of Japanese boils down to 'heaven for everything on a stick.'  If you've a hankering for yakitori, this is the place to find it -- about a dozen varieties of it, and all of them made with an authentic, light Japanese touch.

Kushiten's secret weapon is owner/chef Kath Kaneko and her culinary blue blood - her father is a Japanese chef and their family used to own the Keiyu Japanese restaurant in Phase 3.  Kushiten's menu is a reflection of what Kath herself loves most in Japan, its variety of skewered street foods.  The menu was inspired by a street stall that she always visits when she goes to Tokyo.  Banking on the Filipino's love for grilled and fried dishes, Kath designed Kushiten to showcase the streets of Tokyo's best in a casual, relaxing atmosphere that welcomes Japanese expats and Filipino barkadas and families alike.

When I order yakitori, I usually know what to expect: tender bits of sweet-salty chicken on sticks.  That's it.  In Kushiten, though, there's a lot more to it than that.  Cathy and I sampled Momo (chicken dark meat), Tebasaki (chicken wings), Tsukune (balls of ground chicken), Negima (chicken with leeks), and Buta Aspara (thin strips of pork rolled around fresh asparagus tips).  I have to say Kath has a very light hand with her marinades, so you can savor every nuance of the ingredients' flavor without them being overwhelmed in sweetness or the saltiness of soy sauce.  I can see why the Japanese expats eat here.
The yakitoris went very well with a bowl of Chahan, Japanese fried rice.

After the yakitoris we tried a variety of kushiages, namely the Gyu (beef), Ika (squid), Sakana (fish), Ebi (shrimp,) and a surprise, the Uzura Tamago (quail eggs).  By default these are served with a sweet kushiage sauce, but Kath also urged us to try them with tartare sauce and her own Kushiten sauce.  One of the draws here, she explained, is that you can order kushiage with the sauce of your choice, including chili mayo and wasabi mayo if you want a hot kick.  Cat and I found that each kushiage tends to go best with a different sauce -- the tartar was great with the fish and squid; I found the Kushiten sauce was fantastic with the quail eggsl and the sweet kushiage sauce went very well with the beef.   If you're going to bring kids here, the kushiages are guaranteed to be a hit with them! Trust me - I'm very in
touch with my inner kid.

We also had a plate of fried Gyoza, an all-meat dumpling, again with Kath's own gyoza sauce.  Cathy's a gyoza connoisseur, almost never failing to order it when we eat Japanese; so when she says she likes a gyoza, I know we're going there again.  As for me, I liked that the gyoza sauce here has more ginger and is less sweet than usual; I find that it brings out the taste of the gyoza filling better.  We then had our vegetables in the form of an Okonomiyaki, a sort of savory pancake made with shredded cabbage and topped with a light, sweet sauce, Japanese mayo, seaweed flakes and dried bonito flakes.  This dish is surprisingly hefty, and can make a filling snack on its own or be a good side dish to go with the light yakitoris and kushiages.

As there's inevitably one big eater in every group, Kushiten is coming out with a line of donburis, or rice topping bowls, by next week.  We got a sneak preview of the Katsudon, a breaded pork cutlet on rice.  Kushiten's katsudon comes in a rather large serving, and is drenched in a special sauce that adds juiciness to the fried pork and makes the rice really savory.  I guess this is the Japanese version of comfort food, so comforting I didn't want to get up from my chair anymore after I finished it!  This friendly place with its delicious, authentic and surprisingly budget-friendly Japanese food is going to be among my top recommendations from now on.

I developed a taste for yogurt way way back, when during one of my dad's foreign assignments, my mom learned to make yogurt.  One of my favorite ways to have it was as dessert, with slices of fresh mango or banana, or made into a sort of shake called lassi.  The one thing I never thought of, though, was to have it as ice cream.

Fast forward a few decades (no you do not get to ask how many!), and what do I find? Frozen yogurt shops mushrooming all over Metro Manila!  One of the friendliest I've found is right here in BF Homes, right by the PCJ Church.  This is Yogie Island, a homegrown venture - that is, developed right here in BF Homes - of entrepreneur Gladys Escueta.  Their frozen yogurt is not only delicious, you also get to have it just the way you like and served in a in a very welcoming atmosphere as well.

There's no way you can miss this store; it's the most colorful one on the block.  With its interior laid out in a combination of mint greens, blue and white, it projects its holiday-island theme like a seductive calypso, irresistibly drawing you to come in and chill out for a while.  Gladys says this was the foundation of her business idea - "I wanted it to be fun and have the colors of the beach, white sand and blue sky and green trees, relaxing colors that also make you think of having something cold at the same time."  That fun atmosphere is further heightened by Escueta's furnishing various board and party games for free.  Any customer is welcome to play the games and stay as long as they like.

Why yogurt then? Here's another secret: this shop serves good stuff because it's what the proprietress herself loves.  "Frozen yogurt is a favorite of mine, but when I was looking for one here in BF I couldn't find any.  So I studied the business and came up with my own for BF Homes," Gladys says.  Yogie Island was the first froyo shop to open here.  The shop offers 30 different toppings, from various chocolate chips and candies to fresh fruits, and also offers a line of Berazzled yogurts, frozen yogurt infused with deluxe flavored syrups from Italy.  Among the bestselling toppings, Gladys says, are the mochi and crushed graham, almonds and chocolate syrup, and the blueberry cheesecake.

I've always loved yogurt, but Cat usually finds it too tart for her taste.  Yogie Island was a delightful surprise to my wife, as the yogurt here is a nice balance of tart and sweet, with extra milk added, to make a rich, mild-tasting refreshment that can easily win traditional ice cream lovers over.  Kids love it, Gladys says, which gives health-conscious parents an opening to get their kids used to this lower-fat option.  Which is giving me an idea right now:  this kid is hankering for a froyo with kiwifruit and peaches. 

Yo ho ho, to Yogie Island we will go!