Crisostomo

Even if our flight was delayed because we had to hunt for a missing passenger. Our flight back to Manila still arrived on time. It was still early afternoon so we decided to have lunch first before we all go our separate ways. We all decided to go to the nearby Resorts World Manila for lunch since they have quite a few establishments there. Resorts World Manila is an integrated resort where you can do shopping, gambling and those stuff. There are actually a number of these integrated resorts in the area and it has helped improve the place quite a bit.

I thought this was great if only to get away from the usual SM and Ayala Malls what have dotted the country. Like any self respecting integrated resort, Resorts World has a shopping component here named Newport Mall. As far as shopping malls go, it seems that this one is pretty small. I can see that a lot of the shops in the mall are quite high end, which makes sense since a lot of the clientele of these integrated resorts are wealthy individuals.

There are also several restaurants here and we ended up picking this rather classy looking Filipino restaurant called Crisostomo. I have seen this restaurant elsewhere and I never really paid too much attention to it. I always felt that Filipino food can be easily get from other places and I don’t think I needed to pay that much for a fancier version of the same food. Then again, part of the fun of eating is that you can sometimes have company. I am still with friends and I am sure the food will be much better if you have friends with you.

We ordered several dishes since we had several mouths to feed. The thing with Filipino food is that I always think that it is always the same dishes I would see in menus. The menu is indeed filled with familiar looking food but they give them historically inspired names. In particular, they use references to the novels of Jose Rizal in the names of their dishes. In fact, the very name of the restaurant is a reference to the main character in the novels. I thought it was fun for try to figure out what the reference is in the names of the dishes. Some of them would be totally clueless, but the important thing is the actual food.

The food actually took a bit of time to come, which surprised me since the restaurant wasn’t busy at all. The food was typical Filipino fare and I must say they did them well. Though I know one of the guys in our groups can make better versions of these but that is another story. While the dishes tasted good, the portions were rather small. This is a shame since the taste was rather good. I don’t know if it is inflation that is causing this but I don’t think they would lose money if they increased the portion sizes a little. Overall, Crisostomo turned out to be a fine choice if you like Filipino food. There wasn’t much unique in the menu which can distinguish it from the thousands of other Filipino restaurants. While I didn’t pay too much attention to the restaurants here, this is probably the best Filipino restaurant in Newport Mall.

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