Sentro sa Serendra

For my farewell dinner in Manila, my buddies took me to Sentro, a restaurant in Serendra, an area of fancy restaurants. They had been raving about the Sinigang Corned Beef, which we dutifully ordered, along with salmon spring rolls, kare-kare, binagoong rice, and even some galunggong. We also had bottomless sago't gulaman, which turned out to be literally bottomless, as in they kept refilling our glasses so we never got to see the bottom. By the end of the meal, I felt like sago and gulaman were pouring out of my nose.






We went to nearby Magnet Cafe for drinks, incidentally passing by a "pH Balance" (=fachina) event, hosted by an old high school classmate. Since the event was open to all, we lurked nearby and got within shouting distance of said classmate, who was chatting it up with some couple, but just as we were about to shriek her name like fangirls, she turned away and went back onstage. So sad.

We trooped on to the Cafe, with a P150 "gate fee" ("Nasan yung gate?" I asked, and they gestured at the little table they'd set up in front of the door) and a voucher for Jim Beam. Ugh, I hate whiskey. Magnet Cafe boasts live bands and "always subzero" beer, which was quite true: JM's second Cerveza Negra was frozen, and the waiter had to shake the icy beer chunks into a tall glass. The same thing happened to T's San Mig Light. We had to leave, though, when the second band came on, as the longhaired, emo lead singer, who actually had a pleasant singing voice, spent way too much time shriekeing into the microphone, and doing his best Steve Tyler-high-out-of-his-mind impression while crooning the song lyrics, which none of us understood anyway.

We spent the rest of the night outside a donut shop, eyeing the various ladies (?) of the night, cracking inappropriate jokes about paper cups (believe me, with green minds, everything is dirty) and generally just shooting the breeze. Then we all ran out into the rain and went our separate ways.

I heart my buddies. *sniff*