Fire Lake Grill, Cliffhouse, Tagaytay

For our meal before we were to go back to Manila, we decided to eat at Bawai's. Unfortunately, in my hurry to leave Manila, I was not able to take note of Bawai's location or contact information, and nobody else seemed to know where it was - we asked hotel staff and several other people. We tried driving around hoping we would find it, but we didn't, so we decided to eat somewhere else, and since we were driving around, we passed by Cliffhouse several times, and I remembered reading good reviews about Cliffhouse, so we ended up in Cliffhouse.

Cliffhouse is a compound of restaurants. One area with a main courtyard overlooking Taal lake and several restaurants surrounding it. The restaurants are Cafe Breton, Platito, Fruits in Ice Cream, Fling, Buon Giorno and Fire Lake Grill.

I wanted to try Buon Giornio since there were more people there. It was actually packed. More customers equals good food, right? But my friend did not like crowded places, so we ended up at Fire Lake Grill.

We ordered the Grilled Norwegian Salmon Fillet with butter-glazed vegetables, warm couscous salad and Dalandan butter sauce (photo at the beginning of the post), and the Roast French Duck Breast set on a warm couscous salad with Pedro Ximenez sauce and apricot batons (photo below).

The taste - very good, however, the restaurant had some glaring mistakes that we could not overlook.

The salmon we ordered was overcooked. We love salmon and were disappointed that it wasn't cooked perfectly. The duck breast meat was flavorful and tender like rare steak but some gristle was not removed, which ruined the "melt-in-your-mouth" experience. I expected better from this restaurant. We decided to move to another place for dessert.

While we were eating, one of the chef/cooks came out and asked the waiter where the basil plants were. I suspect he needed some for a dish. The waiter pointed the chef to a plant box nearby. The chef looked and said, "where? which one" in Tagalog. The waiter said, "there, that one". They continued on several exchanges of this until we assume the chef was able to get some basil. We just thought, the chef does not know what basil looks like? How can that be? I felt cheated eating there. Did not the real chef cook our meal? I expected so much better especially since that day was a Saturday/ weekend! I did not even mind that their airconditioner was busted and just opted to eat at the tables outside.  Also, before my companion could protest, the waiter cleared my companion's plate while I was still eating! I expected more from a restaurant at this level. I feel bad about eating there and don't think I'll return to eat at Fire Lake Grill. I might actually insist on trying Buon Giorno next time.