七十二：Sharing the J.Co Way

This is a very late post!

J.Co's logo, a peacock.

When we think of donuts and coffee we would think of Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks which are American franchises and surprisingly, J.Co is actually from Indonesia and it has been putting up branches all over the world due to its popularity.

Instructions on how to reheat and serve your J.Co donuts,

I was aware of J.Co before as I went for a vacation in Singapore and Malaysia but I have never tasted one before because the branch that was built that time in Manila was far from my place. When I was touring Singapore, J.Co was almost in every mall and same goes in Malaysia.

I still did not dare taste one doughnut from them because I have this mentality that if we have it in Manila, I won't try it in other countries and so I opted for their rival Big Apple Donuts which I will be reviewing soon.

Back in Manila, J.Co put up a branch in Eastwood City which took months before it opened. 

On its first day my colleagues and I decided to buy a dozen for us to share.

Half dozen donuts.

When I was told of the price my first impression was that it's an expensive donut store just like Krispy Kreme which also has a store in Eastwood but I rarely eat there.

A donut costs around 40Php which can buy me 2 donuts from another donut shop. A dozen costs 350 and they actually have a promo where you need to buy 2 dozens for only 550 pesos so a donut costs about a little more than 20Php.

JCoccino / Coffee

Each donut has a quirky name like Berry Spears and Alcapone. It's a fun gimik but I find it hard to remember the names so I usually just describe the flavor like it's chocolate or it's strawberry.

Heaven Berry

The doughnut itself is similar to the texture and taste of Cello's Doughnuts but J.Co's is softer in my opinion. The frosting is also better but I still find it too sweet but definitely less sweet compared to Krispy Kreme. I think their frosting mostly uses chocolate especially white and milk chocolate.

Avocado di Caprio

Since it is an Asian owned doughnut company, most of it flavors are suited to the Asian taste and so they have unique flavors like avocado and lychee.

I just like the fact that their donuts are really soft like a pillow, almost melts in your mouth but I also find it a bit too soft that it's mostly just air.

Green Tease

I do have quite a couple of doughnuts that I like from them mainly because they aren't too sweet and because I like them, most of those doughnuts that I like, I remembered the names.

The doughnuts' flavors are: Berry Spears, Blueberry More, Cheese Me Up, Oreology, and Avocado Di Caprio.

Choco Loco

The doughnuts that I mentioned actually have a salty taste from the cheese in the filling or the topping because I find that the cheese greatly helps in cutting the sweetness and gives contrast to the taste of the doughnut.

My favorite among the flavors is the Cheese Me Up because it's a savory doughnut almost like a cheese pizza but they rarely make it.

Berry Spears

Unfortunately for these kind of doughnuts, like Cello's doughnuts, they don't stay fresh for long and I mean it literally.

Although the doughnuts are soft once you buy it, if it is left for a few hours or even when refrigerated, it starts to harden.

The soft, fluffy doughnuts can turn into rock hard bread unlike Krispy Kreme doughnuts where the doughnuts stay super soft even when refrigerated.  I guess it's the type of fat and bread flour that they use because Krispy Kreme uses cake flour and a lot of fat.

Flash forward to 2017, I have never eaten a J.Co donut for more than a year now. The last time I ate one was New Year of 2016 because I was waiting for a friend and J.Co was the only coffee shop open that time. And TBH, I don't think I'll buy another doughnut from them anytime soon.

七十：Kitchen of Cakes and Coffee

My 70th post! This is also my first post for 2015!

Moving forward..

I like coffee and I like cakes and so this cafe intrigued me.

It was the week of my birthday and I met a friend at SM North Edsa.

We just had lunch and we were looking for a place to just have dessert and do some catching up.

While walking along the SkyWay (if that's what it's called), we saw this small store full of cakes in their display.

Both of us like sweets and since there was a vacant table left, we got inside and decided to eat there.

We decided to order two different cakes to try and a pot of tea since my friend doesn't drink coffee.

There was so much cakes in the display case that it took some time for us to choose the cake that we were going to order.

They also had a lot of tea to choose from and we were choosing between Peppermint or Vanilla.

I think peppermint was not available so we opted for vanilla.

I ordered the Chocolate Praline cake and my friend chose Mango Walnut Torte so we have one chocolate cake and one fruit flavored cake to balance it.

We also ordered a pot of Vanilla Rooibos.

The cakes arrived and the slices for each cake is quite thick for its price which is Php100 which is good.

The pot of tea also looked really nice with the tea pot placed on top of a tea light to keep it warm.

The vanilla tea smelled really, really good. It was also not bitter and just enough to cleanse our palate from eating the rich, sweet cakes.

It was also enough for about 6 servings so we were able to get 3 cups each during our stay there.

We tasted the Mango Walnut Torte and it was frozen. 

The mangoes were frozen that it was hard to slice the cake. The mangoes were also not that ripe but it had a lot of walnuts and the meringue was crunchy.

As for the Chocolate Praline cake, it's a fudgey chocolate cake with buttercream filling and has some caramelized sugar sprinkled on top for texture.

It was a very rich chocolate cake but not too sweet.

As for the ambiance of the place, I can say that it is very cozy.

You have an option to sit at the comfy couch with pillows though since the place is small, it's hard to get those seats but they still have some seats available outside the store,

We didn't fully enjoy the cakes or maybe we chose the wrong cake flavors but we enjoyed the tea.

We also enjoyed the time we were trying to catch up with each other so the food not being that good didn't really matter. We still liked the place though. ^_^

I think I would still be willing to try their other cakes and maybe their coffee if I get to visit the place again some other time.

六十八：Merienda en Dulcinea

Due to the colonization of Spain in our country, us Filipinos have been accustomed to eating snacks during afternoon or what they call in Spanish, merienda.

The Spaniards also introduced us to tsokolate and desserts made of milk, flour, sugar and those that require baking or frying since our ancestors would have been eating only steamed rice cakes for merienda.

Now we have a lot of choices for our merienda not just rice cakes. Now we have pansit, banana cues, breads, even western snacks such as cakes, pasta, burgers etc.

Clockwise L-R: Sans Rival, Creme Brulee and Brownie.

One day my friend and I decided to eat merienda and we were craving for something sweet so we decided to go for some pastries from Dulcinea.

Dulcinea is a restaurant that serves Filipino-Spanish foods such as paella, tapa, adobo etc. They also serve other western foods like pasta and sandwiches. Besides savory foods, they are also known for their cakes and pastries especially their churros.

I've heard great reviews about their churros and since I haven't tasted it yet, we ordered a set of churros con chocolate.

We also ordered their dessert sampler which has 3 desserts in one plate.

Thick Chocolate

Churros is actually a deep fried dessert made of flour, eggs, milk and sugar and is very similar to a funnel cake.

My first taste of churros was when we were grocery shopping at S&R in Taguig. They sell bavarian cream filled churros for 35Php for a foot long and it was one of the best thing that I tasted. But it wasn't long before it all got wasted because I remember while I was slowly eating and enjoying my churros, someone bumped me and I accidentally dropped my churros on the floor and I was totally shocked and was thinking of the 5 second rule but of course, I know I should let go of my dear churros because it was already swarmed by bacteria the first nanosecond it touched the cement... so much for my first time.

Crispy Churros

Moving forward and back to the present time, an order of Dulcinea's churros con chocolate has 4 churros and 1 dipping chocolate sauce.

The churros are very crunchy and also oily but tastes good. The chocolate is really thick and smooth and matches the churros well.

What I didn't like with their churros is that it is very oily mainly because it is deep fried. It's not as if it's dripping in oil but it's like my taste buds and body can sense that the food is indeed rich in fat.

The rest of the desserts in the dessert platter which were the Sans Rival, Brownie and Creme Brulee were also good. The Creme Brulee is like our leche flan or pannacotta which is smooth, milky, creamy and sweet. The brownie was fudgy and the Sans Rival was full of cashew nuts, rich, crunchy, buttery and not overly sweet.

We enjoyed our merienda well and I would definitely try their other desserts and maybe their dishes next time.

Dulcinea has numerous branches especially in SM Malls such as MOA, Megamall and North Edsa. The one in Sta. Lucia Mall is at Phase 3 Ground floor near the escalator. Budget would be around 200-500 per person.

六十五：Fleur De Lys Patisserie and Cafe

My review is a late post as my friends and I ate at this restaurant last 2013.

When I was a kid, I used to watch Heny Sison's baking show, A Taste of Life which teaches viewers how to bake cakes and other pastries. Heny Sison is one of the famous pastry chefs in our country much like my relative Reggie Aspiras.

Heny Sison had a co host in her show, Jackie Ang Po, a Fil-Chi pastry chef and is the owner of the patisserie in Tomas Morato, Fleur De Lys.

Soda iced tea 48Php.

It was two of my friends' birthday that day and we decided to have dinner at Tomas Morato since one of them works at a hospital near the place. 

Usually, the two would celebrate at Pizza Hut but decided to go different that time so we can try other restaurants plus we were craving for sweets.

There were four of us and decided we order a dish and a cake for each of us and everyone decided to get the soda iced tea (48Php) for our drinks.

Cream Dory with almond Butter

One of us ordered Pan fried breaded cream dory. It came with rice and somewhat butter mixture on the side and slices of lime. The fish looked dry and a bit burnt on the sides but it tastes good and the butter was quite different. I forgot what kind of butter it was but it's not your ordinary butter. I think it's actually almond butter.

Beef Stroganoff

I ordered beef stroganoff (165Php). The sauce was a mixture of red and white pasta sauce with shreds of beef and topped with parmesan cheese. It also came with a bread with some herbs in it. I found the serving to be quite small and the pasta quite dry.

The two other dishes that we ordered were from their breakfast dishes list. I can't remember the names but one is the Tapa (145PhP) and the other one I cannot remember. Both came with garlic rice but the garlic is actually just sprinkled on top of the white rice. I was expecting it to be mixed in the rice and then fried.

In my opinion, the servings were all small and it didn't look appetizing at all. It wasn't bad but the food doesn't taste great also. Food was just okay.

As for the ambiance, the place isn't cozy. Chairs were silver painted and the tables were wood. The place doesn't look that clean either in my opinion. We were also the only customers during that time and it was 6:00PM on a weekday.

Moving on, since our main goal was to actually eat dessert, we went to check the cakes and the cakes and pastries actually look beautiful. They have unique names such as Fountain of Youth and Pocket Garden. Our attention were all taken by the Pavlova Picasso cake because of its colors but none of us ordered it because it was just meringue with cream and fruits and we wanted cake.

You have a lot to choose from. they have Several cheesecakes, chocolate cakes and pies.

Again they have unique names for their cakes and pies such as Nuts About You because its a pie filled with nuts and the Cheesecake by Request because you can choose the topping that you want for the basic cheesecake that you'll be ordering.

We've decided to order Venus, Autumn Leaves, Cheesecake by Request and The Majestic.

I ordered Autumn Leaves and it's a basic chocolate cake and you can choose strawberry or caramel for the sauce. I chose strawberry because caramel might be too sweet. The cake was okay, nothing special and the strawberry sauce was too tart for me. I didn't enjoy it nor did my friends.

Autumn Leaves Strawberry Sauce 98Php

One chose Cheesecake by Request with Blueberries on the side. The cake was dense and creamy and it was okay, not that delicious. Again, nothing special.

Cheesecake by Request Blueberry 108Php

The third was The Majestic which for me tastes good because it wasn't too sweet. It's layers of mousse, cake and fudge covered in chocolate ganache. It's like everything that is chocolate that you'd want in a cake.

The Majestic 108Php

The last one and the savior was Venus. It's a mini cake that tastes somewhat like a Tiramisu. It's sponge cake that is soaked in  coffee with chocolate mousse and cream then there is a thin sheet of dark chocolate around it. 

Venus 108Php

If it weren't for the Venus cake and The Majestic cake, I'd say we didn't enjoy a single food there.

The cakes

I'm not sure if it was just wrong timing but the whole experience eating there wasn't enjoyable but the servers were nice and the cakes were "just" okay. So everything was just an okay experience for me.

The facade.

I also would like to say that the lighting there is also not good especially when taking pictures as you can see on the pictures that I posted. I really had a hard time taking good picture of the food especially the cakes. I think the lights were too yellow or they weren't just placed right that I had to use flash which is what I hate when taking pictures with my camera.

For those interested, I think some people will still enjoy the cakes there. I really cannot recommend the food so just try the cakes and you might enjoy it.

Website: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Fleur-De-Lys/

Address: 305 Tomas Morato Ave., 1103 Quezon City, Philippines