Spices: Simple Lang

A few months back, together with Chris Urbano of Maputing Cooking decided to do some catching up, this time around we landed in Simple Lang, a Filipino restaurant that's supposed to have a a modern twist on familiar local dishes. We again each brought our own bottles of wine, luckily for us the manager of the resto was kind enough to waive off the corkage fee.

Simple Lang

It was a cold rainy evening and the complimentary hot tinola based soup was pretty comforting. When dining here, you can have as much soup and rice as you want. To start, we had the Crispy "Broken" Ukoy. I enjoyed the crunchiness of the ukoy but was disappointed with how it tasted. It didn't have much shrimp in it thus the lack of flavor.

Crispy 'Broken' Ukoy - Php75

The Crispy Black Pepper Squid tasted pretty good. It was crunchy, had hints of black pepper and the squid was tender and juicy. The squid paired well with the fruity St. Hallet's Poacher's Blend. Since the restaurant didn't serve any wine, it was kind of funny that we were using halo-halo glasses to drink wine.

Crispy Black Pepper Squid - Php220

Drinking wine from Halo-Halo Glasses while Munching on Fried Squid

The Longaniza Tortang Talong "Pancake" tasted how its supposed to be. I would have wanted more longanisa bits on the pancake but overall I enjoyed the flavor combination of the meat, eggplant, onion, tomatoes and salted egg.

Longaniza Tortang Talong "Pancake" - Php150

The dish I was looking forward to is the Crispy Palabok. I got excited when the server place a plate of fried puffed noodles with bagnet, shrimps, tinapa bits and hard boiled egg. The server proceeded to put ladle fulls of achuete sauce on top, this got me starting to salivate, it reminded me of the crispy pancit canton in Chinese restaurants.

Putting the Sauce On

Crispy Palabok - Php265

But then the server got a spoon and started to squish everything. By doing this, the noodles lost its crispiness and it looked really bad, the dish was massacred. Flavor wise it was good though. In the future, I hope they just leave it as is and let the noodles soak in the achuete sauce.

After all the anticipation, it looked like this...what a let down!

The Seafood was Kare-kare was cooked really well. The peanut sauce was savory and thick while the fish, prawns, squid and shellfish was nice and tender. The house made bagoong that came with the kare-kare was slightly sweet just the way I like it.

Seafood Kare-Kare - Php375

The Inihaw na Liempo was a big let down. Though the grilled pork was tender, it was cut into small pieces, too small to enjoy. Flavor wise, it was too sweet and it was missing the smokey flavor that I want.

Inihaw na Liempo - Php175

Chris brought one of his wine he sells on his website, a bottle of Piccini 2012 Sangiovese from King Valley Australia. From all the dishes we ate the Crispy 'Chop Chop' Pork Bell Dinakdanakan paired pretty well with the wine. I liked how the pork's skin had a nice crunch and the pork was marinated well. It had the right amount of sweet and saltiness and the mayonnaise added the creamy texture and sour flavor.

Crispy 'Chop Chop' Pork Bell Dinakdanakan - Php195

For dessert, we had two cakes, The Choc Nut Cake and The Ube Cake. Nothing much to rave about, something I think you can skip.

Choc Nut Cake 

Ube Cake

After eating all the Filipino dishes, I was surprised to see that they serve Illly, one of my favorite brands of coffee.

Illy Coffe - Php99

From the dishes we tried, I didn't see or taste much of the modern twist on classic Filipino dishes. The whole meal wasn't bad, it was ok but if you're expecting something new and different, don't. The name of the resto basically epitomize the food that they serve, Simple Lang.

Simple Lang
Address: Ayala Triangle Gardens, Ayala Avenue, Makati City
Tel No: 621- 6162