celebrating the 35th...

bin and i always make it a point to treat each other out every 23rd. it is some sort of celebrating each and every month that we spent together... i.o.w. monthsary :P. however, the irony of it comes from the fact that 24th is our payday, which means several days before that, we are at most scrimping every penny. but, whatever is left of our budget, we see to it that we stretch that for this "celebration"... so we could say that we are in constant lookout for nice, definitely not expensive(!) places where we could dine and talk.

last night was no different... off we went to a pizza place just near where we stay, the "old duck" [a spinoff of its real name, i am not taking chances on libel suit hehehe]. i didnt expect much from this place. although i knew that it's another western style dining [at least with the food], i couldnt remember any particular dish i raved when i first dined here almost a year ago ['twas my teammates "welcome" party for me]. since it is only about 7-min walk from our place, and it was getting late, bin and i decided to try it this time.

from the outside, the place may seem like a red-painted house. but with dimmed lights, one could say that it is really conducive for, how should i say this,ummm... dating :). but because the location is not so-strategic, in a sense...since it is situated at higashi rinkan's corner, we didnt have to wait to be seated and we even got to choose where... :)

prices are quite steep though, we both agreed on that the minute the waitress handed us the menu. since it was almost 9 and we're both really hungry, we just ordered what we thought are "safe food" right away... and those were vegetable soup, caesar salad, seafood paella, mixed pizza and two glasses of apple juice. from my calculation that's about the same as it would cost us had we decided to go to outback and order a serving each of ribs-on-the-barbie[with unlimited supply of super-sarap-mainit-init-pa-bread] and tasty buffalo wings, 2 orders of buttered rice and 2 pineapple juice. with few more yen we could have had sumptuous "chocolate thunder from down under" ... see, this is the reason behind my at least 2 additional lbs every month :D but because we already spent our three consecutive 23rds there, we just decided to strike our favorite outback off our dining choices last night.

so back to the old duck... we were first served soup and the salad. soup was a dejavu to bin. he just couldn't seem to stop talking about likening that soup to what they usually have for soup back home, that the "taste difference" [if ever there is such a thing] is just a measly one unit. so understandably, the soup was history in a minute. :D as for the salad, well it was a different story, a 1:10 in comparison to what we had in a chuorinkan okonomiyaki house, another resto we tried for this 23rd tradition [with chuo's being the 10 ha!], chuo's chicken salad is simply yummylicious! the best we've tasted! on the otherhand, old duck's was just tossed lettuce and walnuts in caesar dressing. anybody could prepare that in a sec, no sweat. nonetheless, again, blame it on our hunger pangs, we devoured it right away.

this pizza house placed second in the world's pizza making contest [or something], that is at least to my understanding... sorry, i could only make "second place" and "world" out of a series of kanjis proudly printed on their walls. since i love thin-crust pizzas, i enjoyed what was served to us at once, although i cant say it is really a "world class" pizza, it tasted greenwich to me [which i also love by the way]. toppings include bell pepper, cheese, tomato sauce and italian sausage, i didnt even know why it is called mixed pizza. maybe we should have tried the "less-safe" kind of pizza.

the biggest disappointment that night was the seafood paella. costing 1280 a plate, we thought it would at least worth the price. for one, the serving is not enough to at least appease any of our appetite. the rice was cooked [or baked] to the point of "tutong" and it was just too bland for my taste. to me it's only worth 500 yen, at most, no kidding.

as for the dessert, their vanilla ice cream is just that, plain vanilla ice cream, period.

although, last night wasn't the usual gluttony nights we had before, that's to our definition of "busog" and "sulit", i'm so happy that we had one of the most intimate, heart-warming, interesting conversations ever. i could safely say that last night, we've gotten to know each other a lot better... so interesting was our conversation that we lost track of time and the next thing we knew we just had to leave because the place was about to be closed... of course i will not divulge any specific of that conversation, my mouth is sealed on that, i just hope his too hehehe...

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to bin, my beybi and bestfriend, here's to years of celebrating 23rds... cheers!