Monday, August 16, 2010

Sonya's Garden, Tagaytay


This is my second time at Sonya's. The first time I was there, I didn't think it was a good value because I wasn't so much into salads then.

This time, however, I totally loved Sonya's! We had their set menu at P610/person.

They have a new dining area where it looked like you were eating inside a greenhouse. There were fern trees and vines about. The plates were Noritake and I loved the hand-embroidered table linen, which, according to Sonya's book, Sonya's Secret Garden, were bought from her suki in Vietnam. I found it sad that she had to go all the way to Vietnam just to buy these beautiful table linens because nobody embroiders like this here anymore.

We started with some real dalandan juice. Manila is filled with restaurants that usually serve drinks from powder or concentrate, that being served real juice is a treat. Of course, it was delicious!


Next, we were served our salad. The dressing was delicious. I loved it that they used extra virgin olive oil and it added an extra dimension to the taste, like a gentle, mellow kick, if there's such a thing. It's a "make-your-own-salad" affair, and with the bowl of greens were ramekins of sliced cucumbers, mangoes, pineapple, melon, turnip (singkamas), langka, shredded hard-boiled egg, and broad beans.


We were also given some warm bread and spreads. The pesto was the star! We ate most of the pesto but hardly touched the rest aside from trying them. I was starting to feel bad about the waste.


The waiter offered to clear the salad from our table so we can start on the pasta course, but I felt bad about wasting the salad so told the waiter not to just yet. I got myself some more salad but we barely ate even half of what was served to us, and we were starting to feel full already, so we decided to start on the pasta.

We were served a bowl of fettucine with some fried salmon belly (careful, it still has fish bones). On the side were a sun-dried tomato sauce, a cream chicken sauce, capers, sliced black olives, sliced shiitake mushrooms, and ratatouille. Loved the cream chicken sauce. But alas, the food served was too much and sadly, we weren't able to finish it all. Again, we barely ate half of what was served.


For dessert, we were served a small slice of chocolate cake, some turon and glazed sweet potatoes. The glazed sweet potatoes were delicious! It always amazes me how something so simple can be made so good.. to cap the meal, we were given some tarragon tea, which was also pretty good. I plan to make tarragon tea at home since I have a tarragon plant.


So, the highlights of our meal at Sonya's are the salad (I really love their salad!), the cream chicken pasta sauce, and the glazed sweet potato. I will definitely come back to Sonya's again.

Sonya's sells their famous salad dressing in their country store. Some of the things to buy there are their salad dressing, Spanish bread, and peanut butter (Daniella's brand). Their peanut butter is really good.

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