Part 2: Kabisera, Power Plant Rockwell / 25 November

Rating: 0 stars

Awful. Exactly the kind of mass-produced, way too orange kare-kare you’d expect in food courts.

Part 3: Bagoong Club, Julia Vargas St, Ortigas / 3 December

Traditional kare-kare, P390
Rating: *1/2

Bagoong Club was awarded one of the top 10 restaurants with the best kare-kare. There must be some mistake.

I called BC to make sure they serve the same menu as their original QC branch. Guy on the phone said, yes sir pati kusinero pareho. So T and I, along with soon-to-be-married D and E, trooped across the river to Pasig.

Good: I liked the texture, the sauce was really thickened by fat and what I hope is actual toasted rice.
Bad: No taste at all. They really skimped on the oxtail and tripe. Bagoong was way too pungent, and when mixed with the kare-kare, you can only taste the bagoong. A supreme let-down since I expected one of the city’s best kare-kare.

Meanwhile, the binagoongang pork dishes were sublime.

Part 4: Elvin’s House, BF Homes / 11 December

The quest is for the best restaurant kare-kare, but this homemade one was too incredible to ignore. It’s my best friend’s son / my godson’s birthday, and when I saw the pot of kare-kare, I made a beeline. This was cooked by Beth, Tita Baby’s cook.

Looks like crap, but trust me, it's good.

Rating: ****

The Good: Fucking fantastic. Loads of tripe and oxtail, heaps of vegetables that weren’t added at the very last minute. The whole stew was infused with that amazing peanut taste. The bagoong, perfect. I think it’s Barrio Fiesta bagoong.
The Not So Good: tasted the Lily’s, and I wanted it soupier, but that is a personal preference. But these are minor gripes. I will hire Beth even if I have to kidnap her.

Part 5: Cafe Romulo, Jupiter St, Makati / 16 December 

Rating: **1/2
The Good: Nicely soupy, tastes more peanutty than buttery.
The Not So Good: Enough of this squares of skin pretending to be oxtail. What’s with these restaurants? Major scrimpage on the meat.

While youtube-ing around for live performances of this song, I stumbled on this cover by Canadian band Walk Off the Earth– all of them playing on one guitar. Amazing. Almost as good as the original.

How is this band still unsigned?!

1. Tree of Life (Terence Malick) – I couldn’t fathom how a mind could go cosmic one scene, and small and intimate the next. This movie was a true experience, profoundly moving. I was alternately affected, frustrated, sleepy, excited, and in tears. Good stuff.

"You can hit me if you want. I'm sorry. I'm your brother."

2. Bridesmaids (Paul Feig) - Much has been said about this being a post-feminist blah blah, but for me it’s just fucking hilarious. I’m a huge fan of Kristen Wiig ever since SNL, and I hope she makes it big. “It’s civil rights. This is the 90′s.” and that Maid of Honor speech-off. Fell out of my chair, really.

3. Contagion (Steven Soderbergh) – I love Soderbergh’s language so much that this piece had me enthralled, even if clearly, pinaa lang nya to.

4. Amok (Lawrence Fajardo) – Bold and ambitious and went there. This makes it stand out among the other independent films that are more interested in being seen and gilded and important. Flawed, for sure, but it makes it all the more exciting.

5. Super 8 (JJ Abrams) – This is nostalgia speaking. Brought me back to the days when I’d watch, hypnotized, by movies– in a dark theater or in our small Sony set in our bedroom.

1. Parks and Recreation. I’ve never seen a sitcom since Arrested Development that has made me laugh so hard. And it has equal dollops of awww moments too. The cast is universally loveable. And everytime they have scenes of them being drunk, it’s TV gold.

2. Southland. Underrated, for sure. Gritty, exciting, and manages to inject some humor despite its milieu. Shawn Hatosy was a surprise– excellent performance this season.

3. Boss. Kelsey Grammer as the mayor of Chicago is the ultimate in TV badassery, and so is his wife, Connie Nielsen, playing a Lady MacBeth-type of character. The Gus Van Sant-directed pilot is worth the price of admission.

4. Homeland. I had a long-standing crush on Claire Danes until she took a shit on my country. All is forgiven with her unbelievable turn as a psychologically imbalanced CIA agent in this gripping espionage show. Damian Lewis and Mandy Patinkin too– amazing. And how ’bout that finale eh? Holy shit.

5. Game of Thrones. Why didn’t they bring those damn dragons out earlier?!

Almost: Community – brilliant when it’s good, so dull when it’s not. Hope it sticks around. Downton Abbey – devolved into soap this season but is still fun to watch.

5. “Bottled in Cork” – Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. With a marijuana-induced video to match.

4. “Heart Attack” – Raphael Saadiq. Who knew that 1/3 of Tony!Toni!Tone! could produce this fantastic, Wilson Pickett-style pop song?

3. “Bloodbuzz Ohio” – The National. I have no idea what Matt Beringer is singing about, there’s something about bees and Ohio, but it’s haunting and brings you to a dark, syncopated place. My friends spent a fortune just to watch them in Singapore, and to this day I regret not going.

2. “Terrible Love” – The National. Indescribably sad and haunting and brings me into Transatlanticism territory, a song that makes me so sad I can’t even finish it. It takes an ocean not to break / It takes an ocean not to break.

1. “Poison and Wine” – The Civil Wars. Uncomfortably honest and exquisitely sung.  It’s about what it means to love, and what that costs, and that you’d pay it anyway, gladly, because it’s fucking worth it.

Counting down:

10. “Seasun” – Delorean. Most likely on this list because I cool down with this song after running. Echoes of Chicane and the wee hours after a night of seveneightorange. Here’s the CD version and a live version.

9. “Dancing on My Own” – Robyn. Irresistible and widely acclaimed song, even penetrating indie music mag Pitchfork’s year-end list. Can’t help but sing to it too, 80s dance hit vibe and all. Electronic woodblock percussion FTW! Here she is on Letterman.

8. “Schoolin’ Life” – Beyonce. Produced by TheDream, hence the way too fun 80s groove. What is with me and the 80s lately? Must be the age. Here’s the track from the CD.

7. “Sydney (I’ll Come Running)” – Brett Dennen. Best declaration of love to a suspected criminal. “If you ever need me, call me / I’ll come running straight to you / straight from the airport / cut through the customs line / bust down the courthouse doors / Sydney I will testify”. Listen here.

6. “Under Cover of Darkness” – The Strokes. Has a crunchy guitar solo and almost anthemic hook. The Strokes definitely deserve to be heard more. Here’s the song Live on SNL.

To be continued.

The first trip of my quest for the best kare-kare in town. The original Kapitolyo branch of Cafe Juanita was too far for us, so T and I trekked to BGC. Cafe Juanita is in the middle of soulless and tacky Burgos Circle, which looks like the Main Street of an amusement park. Didn’t really care for the decor inside as well, but anyway, we’re here for the food.

The kare-kare was ready in five minutes because it’s their specialty.

Before

*** (3 out of 4 stars)
Good: Delicious, nutty, may pagmamahal. Soupy, a great plus; generous with the oxtail, which was tender and nicely mushy. Excellent bagoong.
Not so Good: Pricey (550 bucks), which would be okay except you can really taste the peanut butter– you’d think they’d do it from scratch given the price. There were chunks of chewy beef which ruined it. I can taste the water the vegetables were boiled in.

After

So far the best kare-kare I’ve had is always home-made. I’m on a mission to find the best restaurant kare-kare in town.

My kare-kare biases:
-it must be soupy
-it must have puso ng saging
-it must have the perfect bagoong. Kare-kare-bagoong pairing is as precise an art as food and wine pairing.

I googled a list of the Top 10 Restaurants with the best kare-kare (seven of them are in town); I’m adding to this list a bunch of other friends’ recommendations and for the next weeks I’ll be trying them out.

(Kare-kare is a stew of oxtail and tripe in peanut sauce. Image from recipe.foohta.com)

An activist poet, she resurrects the souls of her ancestors in the room and proceeded to celebrate them, as well as the people in her life.

Nikky thanked her teacher by telling this story. Nikky was “19, and sitting on a Talladega college wall,” dreaming about living the life of a poet.

“Miss Finney,” her teacher said, “Do you really have time to sit there? Have you finished reading every book in the library?”

Also I got tired of the noise from that other blog.

Hope I stick with this one.