To You Milk Chocolate

I got this from one our company Directors while I was helping him list down the things to move out from his condo. He gave me this plus a couple of Korean instant rice toppings and a Korean SPAM. I don't want to think about how long this chocolate had been sitting in his fridge; the expiration date tells me it's good until next year anyhow.

Last Sunday, hit by nostalgia on high school days, I decided to sample it while snuggled comfortably with a comic book. The name of the chocolate, as seen on the packaging, is To You. It has an equivalent in Korean character, which you will see on the upper right above the product's name. The package says it's "rich taste milk chocolate" which isn't very promising, so I didn't have very high expectations about this. At first I thought the thing beside the name is some sort of nut, but since the chocolate bar didn't have any nuts when I opened it, I concluded that it must be cocoa.

I can imagine how this product must be doing poorly even in Korea beside its peers. The packaging makes me fall asleep. The colors-- red, black and gold-- are so standard, as well as the typography of the product name that the person managing this product must be an old fart without imagination, who doesn't go out and watches TV all day long on his day off, or a young fart without imagination, who doesn't go out and accompanies his granpa watch TV all day long on his day off. The only thing I can credit this product for is the name, which I think is genius. Imagine all the ads you can make with that.

The chocolate bar is in a gold foil wrapping which, I found unhappily, was lined with plastic. The presence of the plastic provided a bit of struggle when uncovering the chocolate. Chocolate in foil wrapper is equivalent to delicious body clad in easy-tear clothing. It's a seduction ploy. The brief difficulty in tearing off the gold foil in this chocolate turned me off. The only thing that kept me going was the rich smell of milk chocolate that promised "rich taste milk chocolate".

There are about 12 chocolate squares in the entire thing. Each square is stenciled with the manufacturer's name, Orion. The squares don't break off cleanly, which could mean lack of milk butter or too much sugar. I took a square and noticed how quickly it melted in my warm fingers. When I eat chocolate, I do it painfully slow to savor the taste. I like to roll it in my mouth and feel it slide smoothly down my throat, with the bitter taste of cocoa still in my tastebuds. That said, I'd enjoy this quick-melting bar as much as I'd enjoy being left with sticky hands, brown smudges around my mouth and chocolate dribble on my shirt. As for the taste, this product is pretty decent. It's not too creamy although it's very sweet. I was satiated with three squares and stored the rest for later.

I think Orion is a big snack manufacturer in Korea, but in the sense that it rips off all of Lotte's products. I've seen some of its reproductions in the local supermarket, and the difference in quality is pretty obvious from the packaging. I wonder what Lotte's version of this chocolate is named... For You? I'd leave the rest of the bar in the fridge and wait for someone to snap it up, but that's if it looked snappable. As it is, I need to shove it to my kid bro who couldn't distinguish Goya from truffle.

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Tea beverage looking tea beverage

I saw this in my local 7-11 outlet and thought, Hey this must be healthy. I should get this rather than some sugary drink for my morning dose of caffeine. The picture on the packaging indicates that it's some sort of tea beverage. Compared to other tea beverages on the freezer section, the large size of the bottle at P30+ and authentic looking packaging made it seem like a winner.

I like tea. I drink oolong and green tea whenever I have the chance to, and we have a good stock of tea bags at home. But I drink my tea hot and in tiny cups, because I think you end up drinking more that way rather than in mugs. I don't know why I expected this drink to taste good. Probably because I got it in the convenience store, and everybody knows what you get in a convenience store should be something comforting.

When I took a sip, I tasted the tea, all right. Cold tea and nothing more. I wanted to kick myself for expecting it to be sweet, and because I'm the sort who would remedy a disappointing situation however she could, I put brown sugar to make it better.

The good news is, it took me a whole day to finish a bottle. I actually saved money for not having to run a second time to the store. It does taste like real tea and bearable on its own (without additional effort of sugar or cream) when iced cold. I could even convince myself that I'm getting the antioxidants I need. The bad news is, it's made in China and I can't read the ingredients list. Needless to say, I've turned a blind eye to this product and its many variants. Oh heck I just realized I didn't check the expiration date, which is the only thing I would've been able to understand.

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Chelsea's lunchienda

Saturday is perfect for a trip to Serendra. I always associate Serendra and High Street with a sunny Saturday and pet dogs. Maybe later when I enter a parental state of mind, I will associate it with a sunny Saturday and tiny kids.

Saturday in Serendra is made more perfect with lunchienda at Chelsea's Market Cafe. Lunchienda stands for lunch + merienda, or late late lunch. We picked a table by the window in order to people-watch. The nice thing about being in Serendra in between meal times is there aren't many people which makes people-watching easier, and the people tend to be interesting since interesting people don't follow regular meal times. I spotted my film professor on what looked like a brainstorming meeting, and model Isabel Roces that afternoon. Because she was there eating stuff that came from the same menu, and even ordered dessert no less, I felt less bad about finishing my order that turned out to be enormous.

I like restaurants that give bread baskets. For some reason I've come to take it forgranted that I get surprised when a restaurant I'm in doesn't have it, and I have to remember where I am to appease my disappointment. Probably due to hunger, I don't remember what Chelsea's bread basket came with, but I do remember that there's nothing worth mentioning about it.

What's worth mentioning are the steep prices on the menu. After reviewing it, B and I agreed that we should've gone to Mamou instead. Of course, we didn't know how big the servings were at the time, but taste-wise, it's still not justified. I ordered the vegetarian sandwich which was rye bread with roasted eggplant, peppers, mushrooms, onion, lettuce and feta cheese. It came with potato wedges, salad and couscous. B ordered eggs benedict sandwich with turkey ham, which was topped with asparagus, and came with potato wedeges and a salad as well.



Since I like vegetarian sandwiches in general, I enjoyed my meal as I usually enjoy vegetarian sandwiches. I realized, however, that it's time to move on to other types of sandwich as I tend to fall back on the vegetarian everytime. The couscous salad was ok; its lemony flavor providing a nice balance to the rather oily sandwich. The potato wedges were thickly sliced and plenty, and I ate about a third because I wanted to get the most out of my money. The entire thing is about Php 350. B said his eggs benedict were so-so, but there was something about the hollandaise that he didn't like. His order was Php 450+.

We were so full after the meal so we walked around Serendra and along High Street. The place started to get full around 5pm. Chelsea's dishes are most likely loaded with MSG as we got awfully thirsty a few hours later. The next day, B and I discovered that we could've gotten an appetizer or a dessert for free with his Amex card at Chelsea's. Normally, we'd shrug and say, "Oh well, next time." Although I'd look back on our lunchienda fondly (the place does have a relaxing and perfect-for-brunch ambiance), next time wouldn't be anytime soon.

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