Food Trip: UVA

Internet helps me to find some of my friends online. I found my long-lost bestfriend from the net. She lives in Los Angeles, California. She is 3 years my senior but we became very closed to each other when we were in high school. For me, she is the older sister I never had. She came to visit us last February. The last time I saw her (prior to the visit) was more than 25 years ago. I really missed her a lot and I was very very happy to see her again.

We met at Galleria, Makati. I hugged her so tightly when I finally saw her. I could say that she still looked young. We laughed a lot reminiscing our old days together; talking about our teenage experiences, our crushes, etc. Some of our conversations about our present life situation were already discussed from a hundred and one phone calls (uber) from her before her visit.

One of the restaurants she wanted to visit here is UVA. She has a TFC channel in the US, and one time she saw UVA being featured in one of the channel's lifestyle show. What stucked in her mind is the "chocnut ice cream" of UVA. So we went to UVA to have lunch, that's in Greenbelt 3 (restaurant strip of Greenbelt).

UVA's interior has a Filipino touch. They used tables made of wood. Upon entering the resto, you will see a table in the center full of different wines. The place is not brightly-lit, some drop-lights adorned the ceiling.

This bowl of different fried foods is being served before our main course arrived. It is composed of garlic bread, fried thinly-sliced camote and banana.


We ordered this UVA salad. It has lettuce, white cheese, seedless grapes, and walnuts. I would say that this is the best vegetable salad I've ever tasted. I really love the slight saltiness of the white cheese (kesong puti), the sweetness of the grapes, and the sourness of the dressing. Plus the fact that the lettuce were very crispy and the walnuts so crunchy. The right combination of flavor satisfied my palate. I think they used lemon juice and some olive oil for dressing.



My friend ordered this "pesang lapu-lapu" which was wrapped in a banana leaf. The aroma of the fish permeates once she opened the wrapper. The food was really delicious.

I ordered callos. It was served with yellow rice and ensalada made up of onion, tomatoes, coriander, and some sigarillas (I don't know the English term, sorry). I actually didn't enjoy the taste of the callos. I think they should add more tomato/tomato paste. UVA's callos was bland.

We also ordered bagnet. It is served with tofu, mung beans soup, and white rice. The bagnet was delicious and crispy also but still incomparable with the genuine Ilocos bagnet.

We didn't forget to order the famous "chocnut dirty ice cream" of UVA, unfortunately, I forgot to take the picture of it. It tastes like the real chocnut, only creamy and cold.