Everyone was in a great mood as we ordered fried catfish, pastel lengua (ox tongue), lamb adobo, bicol express and rice. Here are the dishes with photos on the left and our "findings" on the right:
Lamp Adobo...yummy ! Personally, I love this dish. I like the innovative spirit behind it. Lamb not being a traditional Filipino choice-of-meat cooked in the most traditional Filipino style: adobo. The meat was tender and I like the use of unshelled garlic. Chryso, my eldest son who is studying to be a chef says the flavour of the lamb is too overpowering. Well, that's his opinion which I respect but still...I love this dish ! I bet you will too.
Bicol Express...was good. Fresh & not over-cooked vegetables with a delicous creamy coconut sauce. They could have put in more "hotness" spice into it though as Bicol Expess is known for that.
Lengua Pastel....not bad, not bad at all. Our family is used to the creamy-white lengua and find red-sauce a welcome change. We loved that they put in a lot of olives in the dish. The lengua (ox tail) melts in the mouth, just the way we like it.
Deep-fried catfish...the winner of the night ! Absolutely love it's yumminess that we ordered another plate immediately after first-bite. haha. Fish was cooked just right, crispy on the outside while the flesh inside was very soft. The catfish sure was fresh. Real good with plain rice.
The catfish was served with buro (fermented rice) and lettuce leaves on the side. Buro is a kapangpangan specialty and the one served at Abe's sure is special. It has the right balance of sourness and saltiness. I put some on the lettuce, made a roll and mmmm....delicious !
Turon with ube ... was rather ordinary. I like the portioning but presentation of this dessert was too simple. It was below our expectation. The ube inside didn't make any tasty impression that we had to check if there was indeed ube. Maybe this dessert would have been nicer if langka (jackfruit) was used instead of ube. Oh, and some vanilla ice-cream on top would have been lovely.
Abe has a restroom inside, separate for male and female. Thing is, the restroom ceiling is too low for my sons' comforts. Dale, our youngest, is already 5'9 and had to bow his head down to fit in. Quite a cute sight though. So for those with tall western guests, you may want to take note of this and look for another restroom to use.
The bill came out to about P 1,900.oo. That was a pleasant surprise. A good value-for-money restaurant in Serendra with great interiors and good Filipino food. I was expecting it to be around P 2,500.oo or so since there were 5 of us and we even had 2 orders of the Fried Catfish. Rice was refillable, by the way which is always good when you have hungry boys with you.
All told, we did enjoy ourselves at Abe's and if we do have some balikbayan visitors, we will surely invite them there.
Abe's number is (632) 856.0526
