Birthday Blowout by Uncle Cheffy

My mom and I wanted to go to the Megamall branch because it was the branch closest to us. However, this particular branch wasn’t listed on my gift certificates so I had to call Mr. Larry Cortez, Managing Partner at Uncle Cheffy, to ask if we can use the GCs in Megamall. Not only did he say yes, he even said he will call the Megamall branch himself and make the reservation for us. Not only that but he even promised that he would throw in a panizza and beef ribs for free! I tried to be polite by saying “No, no! You don’t have to!” (although the truth is, I was secretly rejoicing and doing a fist pump at the other end of the line). But the very kind and generous Mr. Cortez insisted, “No, it’s your birthday!” Wow! Talk about going the extra mile! 

Mike (my boyfriend) and I arrived first at the restaurant and had to wait for a long time for my mom and Alexa because they got lost. They got confused because the spot where Uncle Cheffy is now is where the restaurant Chef’s Quarter was located before. Chef’s Quarter and Uncle Cheffy actually belong to the same group of restaurants. I’m not sure if the Chef’s Quarter menu is still available in other branches, but it is in the Megamall branch.My mom, sister, and I are crazy about smoked salmon so we ordered the Salmon Carpaccio from the Chef’s Quarter menu.

The menu had only a small photo of this dish, but that small photo was enough to make me and my mom drool and say, “Wow! I want this!” And yes, it was just as good as it looked in the photo. The thin salmon strips were fresh and juicy, and were delicious enough on their own, but the piquant vinaigrette and traces of raw red onions zipped up this dish and made it different from all the other salmon dishes that I have tasted so far. I am definitely coming back for this! I might even get the family size even if I’ll just be eating by myself. I can never have enough of good salmon.

Even if the panizza wasn’t on the house, we would have ordered it anyway because Uncle Cheffy is known for their brick-oven panizzas, which are thin-crust pizza strips that are rolled by hand. Each panizza dish comes with small platters of alfalfa sprouts, fresh lettuce leaves, and tomato and onion salsa. The right way to eat a panizza is to garnish it with these vegetables and the salsa and then roll them up the way you would roll sushi, just like this:

Of course you can eat panizza any way you like but I’m saying this is the best way because this ensures that all the flavors are combined and you can bite into them all at the same time.

I have had two kinds of Uncle Cheffy panizza before — the Uncle Cheffy Favorites and Larry’s Craving — and was quite satisfied with both. This one, the East Meets West variant, did not disappoint. This panizza had a really interesting mix of ingredients: the smoky taste of parma ham went surprisingly well with the milky kesong puti (white cheese made from carabao’s milk), the sapid salted eggs, and the sweet sun-dried tomatoes and mangoes. Mike doesn’t eat food that have both savory and sweet ingredients in it. I once made him kani sandwich before, which is made of crabsticks, mayonnaise with mangoes, and he grimaced and said it was weird. He feasted on the East Meets West panizza, though, which was a mix of savory and spicy, so that meant that he actually liked it! My mom and Alexa did, too. I was talking to someone on Viber for a few minutes, and when I went back to resume eating, there were only two slices of panizza left!!! What just happened?! It was like there was a hurricane that swept everything off the table in just a matter of minutes!

Meat-lovers will go mad for Uncle Cheffy’s Memphis BBQ U.S. Beef Ribs. All four of us were hungry to begin with but just looking at the huge sizzling slabs of meat made us even more ravenous. Mike and I believe that good ribs must have this one important requirement: the meat must be so tender that it slides off the bone, with a little help from a knife and fork, of course! (I mean, it would be disastrous if it just randomly fell off on its own, wouldn’t it?) Uncle Cheffy’s Beef Ribs were tender enough for us to effortlessly cut off the beef, which, by the way, had just the right amount of fat. The sauce was pretty full-bodied too and added more flavor to the ribs. Alexa has to watch what she eats because she appears on TV (and we all know how you gain an additional 10 pounds on TV) but the Beef Ribs made her feel quite carnivorous that night because it was really good. Give the kid a break, it’s her birthday! Besides, I don’t blame her. The ribs were hard to resist. And for that price, this dish really gives you value for your money.

A surprise birthday cake for me and Alexa! How sweet (literally and figuratively)! The waiters of Uncle Cheffy came out and approached our table and brought us this plate of cake while singing the Happy Birthday song for us. Our birthday dinner just became a lot more special. Free dessert! With our names written with chocolate! What can be more special than that?

My mom got to try the cake first and as she had a bite, she exclaimed, “Ang sarap!” (It’s yummy!). She told me emphatically, “You’re going to like this cake.” She was right! It was nice and fluffy, and the fresh mangoes and the mango sauce were delicious. Mike and I just came from our Hong Kong trip and we promised that when we get back, it’s time to start our diet so we’ll have beach-ready bodies in time for summer. The cake made us quickly forget our promise. But you know what they say… “there is a season for everything.” It was birthday season, anyway. (Sure it is!) Summer can wait. So for my birthday dinner, we let ourselves have cake and eat it, too.

At the end of our dinner, my mom said, “We should come back and eat here again soon!” Mike and Alexa agreed, and said they were really happy with the food. Well, since I was born on a leap day (February 29), technically, I don’t really have an actual birthday this year. That means I can celebrate any day I want, right? In that case, I have an excuse to have another “birthday” dinner at Uncle Cheffy. Time to make another reservation!

We would like to thank everyone at Uncle Cheffy for letting us have this unforgettable and satisfying dinner. They certainly made our birthday a very happy one!

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Twitter: @IAmUncleCheffy

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