Karinderyang sosyal
Petra and Pilar is on the ground floor of JAKA Center, Export Avenue corner Pasong Tamo, Makati, telephones 887.5168 and 893.5531 loc. 480, 481.
We’d been planning to visit Petra & Pilar for ages but never got around to it, you know how it is—you resolve to try new restaurants and end up eating at the same place over and over again. Then for two weeks we kept running into Jake their publicist and he kept inviting us to dinner and we finally went. Good timing too, because the chef was introducing a new menu.
Chef Tristan Bayani has created a new menu of Spanish-Filipino dishes “with a twist”.
Petra & Pilar serves modern versions of traditional Spanish-Filipino dishes, carinderia-style. (It is not to be confused with the much-missed Pepe & Pilar in Malate, where we could have champorado and tuyo at 1 in the morning.) Petra and Pilar were the grandmothers of restaurant owner Katrina Ponce-Enrile; the restaurant’s dishes are based on their family recipes. So there are Ilocano classics such as Pinapaitan (tripe stewed in goat bile) and Spanish dishes like Callos (stewed ox tripe and veal shanks).
Gambas with aligue (crab fat) sauce. Cardiologists would have seizures.
Dinner started with Gambas covered in Aligue. Spicy prawns smothered in crab fat—just saying the words causes your hips to expand. And because the sauce is so. . .saucy, you have to eat rice with your starter. So there.
Fortunately we do not have the food-induced guilt that ruins the dining experience for so many people. It’ll take more than a cholesterol and calorie count to make us feel remorse. Bring on the food!
Kare-kare with cashew sauce instead of the traditional peanut.
One of the chef’s “twists”: Using kasuy instead of peanuts for the kare-kare sauce. The result is sweeter than we prefer, so we end up putting more bagoong. Ah well, life is short.
Two of your favorite things: pork binagoongan + sisig = Pork Binagoongan Sisig.
The sisig was crunchy and spicy but it had an extra, familiar flavor: bagoong! Yes. Evil. Delicious.
There was also Chicken Casserole, Callos, and something with fish in it that looked vaguely healthy, but we concentrated on the Gambas and Sisig.
If you do worry about calories, triglycerides, etc, Petra & Pilar serves salads and vegetable dishes. They’re open for breakfast at 7am.
You can get a full, hearty breakfast at Petra & Pilar for less than the price of a drive-through fast-food breakfast that you wolf in rush hour traffic while trying not to get second-degree burns from the coffee in the paper cup.
As for lunch and dinner, Chef Tristan points out that a two-course meal at Petra & Pilar costs P150 – 200. Not bad at all.
Dessert is the most important part of my meals. This one did not disappoint.
This is the reason we are going to become regulars at Petra & Pilar.
San Marco: alternating layers of chiffon cake and cream, with a creme brulee-like something on top that requires a blowtorch. (Sorry, I don’t speak food critic.)
You’re getting hungry. You’re getting very hungry. Guess we’ll see you there.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
February 18th, 2011 at 02:43
Just got really hungry, wanna try the Kare-kare with a “twist”
February 18th, 2011 at 06:04
It sounds absolutely cholesterrific. I have to eat there sometime (and possibly bring an entire cardiology wing’s worth of doctors in tow).
February 18th, 2011 at 10:07
One of my last trips home (sometime in 2009) I managed to stumble onto Petra and Pilar, called my friends to join me for a lateish dinner and we ate well. I recall the grilled tuna, the salads, the pinakbet, and something porky. Plus they had free wifi!
I would definitely go around for that binagoongang sisig, yowsa.
February 18th, 2011 at 11:50
That dessert looks suspiciously like inipit.
February 18th, 2011 at 15:52
San Marco: alternating layers of chiffon cake and cream, with a creme brulee-like something on top that requires a blowtorch. – i remember baking classes in high school..those look like a caramelized sugar to me..parang yung sa cassava cake but more glazed..
February 18th, 2011 at 15:55
ah sorry, parang egg, sugar, milk combination..and yes, mukhang masarap kumain dito..nice place..
February 18th, 2011 at 22:13
Thanks for the feedback of Petra and Pilar :) Everything looks yummeh!
February 18th, 2011 at 23:42
Fenring: Inipit na sosyal na hindi inipit!
February 19th, 2011 at 11:10
Good thing they dropped their prices. Last year, we went there for breakfast, and it cost us 400 bucks PER HEAD. We only had sinigang, omelette, lumpiang shanghai, and some kind of adobo and 1 rice each. One of us announced he was treating and ended up having to borrow some money because he didn’t expect the prices to be that high – karinderya concept kasi. So your title was right on the money (pun intended) – karinderyang sosyal. (They didn’t have those combo meals in one of your pictures, ranging from 75 to 95 bucks – when we were there then.)
February 21st, 2011 at 01:01
That dessert is mouth-watering. I’d give in to it anytime if it’s as good as you say it is. Hrrr.