Author: Rochelle Sy Chua

Gerry’s Grill is a household name in the Philippines.  I’m just amazed as to how they continue to be better & better inspite of the success of the restaurant.  Would you believe at around 9PM in the evening, Gerry’s Grill at Tomas Morato was still jampacked?  Considering how big the branch is, it was just impressive to see with my own eyes!

Last night, Gerry’s Grill invited several media people to sample their new menu dishes.  I was one of them and I also brought my mom with me (I know she loves Gerry’s Grill so I’m sure she’d enjoy the meal).

We were able to try out numerous dishes, and honestly, it was too much hahaha!  My mom was actually constantly reminding me to stop taking in so much, she wanted me to just have one bite of each dish.  I’m a bit conscious now since I’m already overweight so it’s best that I start tracking my diet.  Who could resist Gerry’s Grill food?  I would say noone especially if you’re fond of Filipino food.

Here are Gerry’s Grill new yummy dishes:

• Fish & Chips (Php 145)

I also included in this photograph the shrimps & chips (Php 295).  Both fish & shrimps were done the same way, battered and then deep fried, not good for the cholesterol count, but definitely still very delicious.  This is somewhat an American menu item that they have incorporated into their menu to give more variety for those who are craving this classic american seafood item.  Gerry’s Grill is really trying to stretch it by having a bit of everything in their menu.

• Several Pla Pla Dishes

Most of their new offerings include a major ingredient which is the fish called Pla Pla.  I had to put them in one image for you to see how the restaurant created 4 completely different dishes with it.  The dishes are Sinigang na Pla pla sa Miso (Php 185), Ginataang Pla pla (Php 225), Pinaputok na Pla pla Fillet (Php 245) & Crispy Pla pla w/ Ensaladang Talong (Php 190).  Innovative, isn’t it?  They tasted good too!

• Sizzling Tilapia Ala Pobre (Php 245)

Most of their new dishes are fish hahaha!  I don’t know if it was God’s will that they didn’t serve much meat since I need to lose weight, but I welcome it!  Gerry’s Grill is famous for their sizzling plates so I’m glad they made this version for the tilapia.  Tilapia is one of those types of fish that is very versatile and lends well to the sizzling plate menu.  Simple way of cooking fish, minced garlic, onion, some veggies, and you really have an appetizing dish.  It honestly is the added taste of the garlic and onions that make this dish stand out.  Not to mention that the fish is nice and moist and seared perfectly on the outside.  Yummy!

• Sizzling Binagoongan Baboy

The binagoongan baboy was a special request of my mom.  She was pointing the picture to me & said she wanted to try it hahaha!  So I asked if we could try it and I was glad they served it to us.  My mom loved it!  She’s actually planning to dine at Gerry’s Grill tonight w/ her friends.  I, however, would have wished they didn’t put the eggplant in there.  It still tasted good, nevertheless.  There are times when you just need a dish to be simple, and I think this dish would be perfect without the eggplant.

Of course, we also had our old-time favorite Gerry’s Grill items:

• Sizzling Sisig (Php 175)

All time-favorite, the night just isn’t complete without Gerry’s Grill’s famous sisig!  Yum!  There’s just something that is classic with Gerry’s Grill sisig.  It incorporates all the great flavor of what sisig should have, including the bits of onion.  The crispiness of the pork and the seasoning of the whole dish has always been just right.  Sometimes, we get sisig that just doesn’t have the right seasoning, or has become too soggy, but the contrast in texture, which is important, makes this dish always stand out!

Laing with a twist!  This was actually my favorite among the dishes we tried out.  It’s a combination of meat and vegetable.  If any of you have ever had stuffed cabbage, then this is definitely the Filipino version of it.  I think this dish is most closely associated with the Bicol region, but I just love how they conceptualized this dish.  The meat was perfectly seasoned and just made out well with the laing and the sauce.  A Genius creation indeed.

• Sizzling Garlic Mushroom Chicken (Php 225)

When my mom tasted this, she whispered to me.  This one is really good.  I tasted it and I definitely agree.  Wow!  The brown gravy that was made with the mushrooms, and the roasted chicken was really out of this world.  but the toasted and perfectly fried minced garlic was just something that put this dish in another league.  I really love how the roasted chicken was just seasoned well to match the seasoning of the gravy.  Veggies became just decoration for presentation purpose though, but still, this is one dish I would definitely recommend.

• Adobo Puso Rice (Php 155)

I love the presentation of their adobo rice.  Generous serving too plus you can really taste the different spices in the fried rice.  Super worth your money.  Again, there’s just something that I love about cooking food in banana leaves.  The aroma and the taste that gets infused into each dish really takes a dish from good to great.  Adobo rice in general is already jampacked with flavor, but the added taste of that banana leaf is something I really would suggest you try.

We ended the night with delicious desserts from the restaurant, wahhh!!  Talk about eating too much good food, it felt like a buffet already! 😛

• Buko Pandan (Php 75)

For those who love buko pandan, I think their version gives you the classic dessert and then some.  With an added taste of the different gelatins, and the generous amount of that cream, it’s a buko pandan lover’s dream come true.

• Halo Halo (Php 95)

Have you ever gone to those places who seem to give you more ice than ingredients in their Halo halo?  Well, at Gerry’s grill, you won’t have that problem since just like their dishes, they truly give you your money’s worth.  And can you see that generous serving of ice cream?!!  My golly, I just loved it!  One of the best halo halo’s i’ve ever had!

Luckily, we were able to talk with head chef Fred Redoblado.  Chef Fred started Year 2000 with Gerry’s Grill and he is the brain of the new dishes that the restaurant is offering.  He said that they continue to improve their menu items and have been doing so every 6 months.  As I said at the start of this post, it’s really admirable that Gerry’s Grill continues to improve and improve even if they are already successful.  This is one great trait of a good company.  I have great respect for Gerry’s Grill after hearing their story and their passion to make it a better restaurant each time.

Gerry’s Grill also came up with their own membership card.  It’s called Circle of Friends Loyalty Card.  We can purchase it for only Php 100 with no minimum purchase required.  The card is valid for one year and can be renewed for the same amount, Php 100.

Main benefits include:

• Get to choose a FREE dish with a minimum single receipt purchase worth Php 750.00
• 3% of the total net purchase will be converted to points of the cardholder.  Cardholders can redeem their rewards once they reach 300 points.  It can be redeemed in the form of Gerry’s Grill gift certificates or can be deducted from the bill.

Now, that was a very long post.  Pardon me, there was just too much to share, it was such a great experience that I don’t wanna miss out any details.  I would like to take this opportunity to thank Gerry’s Grill for the great food, hospitality & most of all, the experience.

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Gerry’s Grill
Tomas Morato cor. Eugenio Lopez Sts., Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines
(02) 415-9514

If there’s one thing that I have gained from being so addicted with Facebook, is that sometimes you can stumble on some great information!  For example, while I was browsing through a friends’ profiles on FB last week, I came across Fish & Co.’s ad on their official FB page.  The ad was just to let everyone know that yes, they actually serve meat in the famous seafood restaurant and they were giving away free dinners!  I joined the contest and luckily, I was chosen and invited to dine in the restaurant last Wednesday.

I asked my colleague Maus if she would like to accompany me to Fish & Co., try out their meat dishes as well as also give a chance to have a little bonding time too! 😀  So we went & I’m just glad we did.  It was great to try out their new offerings, but I still like their fish in a pan dish more.  However, it’s great that they are expanding their menu to serve more customer needs.

We were asked to choose between 3 different meat dishes:

• Grilled Lamb Chop (Php 995)
• Breaded Chicken Piggyback (Php 385)
• Shrimp & Chicken Breast Al Pesto (Php 395)

With the picture of the Lamb Chops in front of us, we just couldn’t resist!  And even though we both had choices of the three dishes, we both ended up getting the lamb chops!  It may have been a better idea to get different dishes so that we could try out more than one dish, but we really just wanted our own share of the lamb chops :p  And plus, we were hungry anyway so there were no regrets!  Hey, the food was yummy plus it was given for free!  There was no room for complaints! 😛

I find it funny that the lamb chops was served with seafood rice, hehe!  They are staying true to their theme, Fish & Co. is still a seafood restaurant.  I personally think that serving it with plain or garlic rice would be better for the juicy lamb chops w/ mango salsa.

I noticed Maus was putting some salt & pepper to her lamb chops, I asked her why and she said the lamb chops was lacking it.  I may be the one who blogs a lot about food but my friend Maus is a great, great food critic!  With just one taste, she can usually tell in an instant how the dish was done & what ingredients were put in the dish.  Truly amazing!  Somehow, I’m glad that I’m not as sensitive when it comes to taste, because I honestly feel that the lamb chops that Fish & Co. served was already good.  I can understand though, because my thinking is that you never want to over season a dish since customer taste varies in restaurants.  And lamb chops, like the ones we were served, I think was well done.  Simple yet executed well.  the salsa really cut through the heaviness of the meat, and sometimes that’s just what you need with lamb chops or even pork chops, etc.

If you’re going to head on to Fish & Co. and order their Grilled Lamb Chops, I would suggest you share it.  It’s good for two persons, unless you really eat a lot then you can eat solo 😛

We thought that the treat ends there but they gave us Creme Brulee (Php 175) for dessert too! 🙂  I saw them give Hot Fudge Chocolate Cake (Php 190) to other guests, I was just glad it was Creme Brulee for us.  I’m not a fan of chocolates.  Fish & Co.’s Creme Brulee is basically egg custard with a little extra vanilla flavor.  Creme brulee is one of those desserts that can sometimes have the tendency to be a little bit sweet since there is granulated sugar that is on top of the dessert itself.  What I liked about this creme brulee is that it was just perfectly sweet.  I enjoyed the dessert a lot!  We had a complete meal!  Whew!  Now there goes my diet..

One thing that really stood out during our visit was their excellent customer service!  Maus & I were so impressed by just how proactive their servers were.  We did wait for awhile for our dish.  We didn’t follow up but they kept updating us as to how long our meal would be arriving & they even kept apologizing for the delay.  I really hope other restaurants can learn and be like them, it just makes our experience much much better if we are given good customer service.

So there you go, our super full meal from Fish & Co (yes, they now serve meat!).

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Fish & Co.
3/F Greenbelt 3, Esperanza St., Ayala Center, Makati City, Metro Manila, Philippines
(02) 729-7431

It’s great that we have a colleague who truly knows how to dine.  He was able to schedule lunch at Terry’s for his & another colleagues’ anniversary celebration.  About 20 of us attended the lunch event.  Since it was my first time there, I had to go with colleagues in going there.  I didn’t realize that it would be far, and we ended up walking hahaha!  It was good exercise so I’m not complaining, and had great conversation along the way too 🙂

As soon as we got in, I immediately knew that the food was not going to be cheap!  The design of the restaurant is sooo cool and very chic.  The great environment was definitely because of just how simple it was.  With the great black and white pictures and with the black frames really complimented the simplicity of it all.  I actually found out that the spaciousness of it all was because it has 3 floors!  The first 2 floors is for dining, and the third floor they actually have their own gourmet shop!!  Wow!

If I recall it right, they have a shop located at Podium in Ortigas too.  I’m just glad that I was able to dine at Terry’s at long last and I can finally feature it here at HeaRty’s Haven.  We definitely ordered a lot, and I was so busy eating the yummy dishes that I totally forgot that just how blog worthy this place is.  So when we were about to be served the main dishes, I started taking pictures.

Here are the dishes that were pre-ordered so there was lil waiting time:

• Manchego Dumplings (Php 360)

Manchego cheese combined with salami wrapped in wonton wrappers then deep fried.  Nice too how they presented the dish with barbeque sticks inserted in each piece.  We don’t need to use our hands or utensils to get them.  Salami with the Manchego cheese tasted perfectly well together too!  Again, I love just how simple yet refined the feel of the place is, and it translates well into this appetizer too!  I often wonder how some restaurants come up with such unique dishes and appetizers.  This one was just perfect with the saltiness of the salami, combined with the smooth texture of the melted and warm cheese, then add on to that the perfectly fried and crisp wrappers.  Simplicity with great flavors!

• Morcilla Piggy Back (Php 144.77)

As much as I enjoyed the manchego dumplings, Morcilla piggy back is definitely the winner from all the appetizers that we were able to sample at Terry’s.  If you noticed in the photo, there was only 1 piece left in the plate 😛

Morcilla is a type of sausage that uses congealed blood as a filler.  In this case, we have pigs blood and seasoning added of course.  But when I heard the word ‘blood’, I was hesitant at first.  However, it smelled so good, so I just had to try it anyway, and was I glad that I did!  Yummy!  Sometimes the best dishes are really those that need to be tried without fear hahaha!  There’s actually different variants of Morcilla, and even since it was the first time that I had ever heard pig’s blood being used as a filler for sausage, apparently it’s common all over the world.  In our case, I believe they have it in a more Spanish style of preparation and perfect for the Filipino palette since it incorporated that sweet salty taste, a little spice too.

• Chistorado (Php 690)

Chistorra de Pamplona and rice are cooked in a sauce of red capsicum, Piquillo peppers and melted cheese.   If there’s always a rule of thumb in cooking, is that often, you really can’t go wrong when you have creamy and delicious cheese in a dish.  With Chistorra, you have the great taste of sausage bits, the taste of red capsicum which gives it a little of that sharpness and cuts through the richness of the dish.  The balance is there, and often times with each bite you almost get the feeling that you’re eating pizza only that it’s in a rice dish!  Oh so yummy!!  You will need to wait 30 minutes if you want to order this dish, but it is definitely worth it!

• Super Paella Parelada (Php 690)

This dish also takes 30 minutes to prepare.  A combination of squid, shrimp, chicken, pork loin, paella sausage, green peas, mushrooms, chorizo, and roasted red pepper that truly make this so delicious.  They are truly proud that this dish is originally of Barcelona.  Well, I couldn’t distinguish, I just know that I cannot get enough of it hehehe!  And just like many other paella’s, what makes them so good is the variety of seafoods that can be found all in one dish.  For any seafood lover, paella is always going to be a great choice.  This, of course, differs from most paella’s that we see in that it doesn’t have that strong tomato base that most other paella’s have.  But, again, with cooking that has been given a twist and made unique, it’s important that the balance of flavors is still there, and the seasoning of each ingredient is perfect.  Terry’s did a great job, conceptualizing this dish because it really is just so delicious!

• Gnocchi al Gorgonzola conPorcini (Php 380)

The traditional potato pasta shells in a creamy Gorgonzola and wild mushroom sauce, garnished with prosciutto crisps.  Gnocchi is basically dumplings, and the best gnocchi is always light enough that it absorbs the sauce.  So, the sauce in this dish was critical for it’s success.  The earthiness of the mushrooms blended well with the gorgonzola.  The buttery flavor of the gorgonzolla which taste almost like your normal blue cheese also went well with the white sauce.  The added saltiness and strong taste of the prosciutto crisps really made this dish rich.  I couldn’t get enough of the gnocchi with its soft texture, contrasted with the smoothness of the sauce, and the bite of that crips prosciutto.  This is definitely a traditionally simple dish that Terry’s restaurant has perfected!  Bravo to the chef!

• Lengua a la Sevillana (Php 490

Ox tongue in itself is one of those dishes that you really have to try for those who truly love to dine.  It’s not your normal steak, or other cuts of meat.  But when it’s cooked to tenderness, the taste and the texture is unbeatable.  Terry’s did a great job with this brown sauce, a superior gravy that incorporated the sweetness of the sherry wine too.   this is usually the way gourmet brown gravy or sauce is cooked, and this is why the deep flavors of the mushroom and the onions as it’s cooked with the sherry really blends in a truly delicious gravy, and is perfect for a great meat like lengua.  The surprise in this dish, which puts it over the top is the olives that were added to give it that slight tartness to the overall rich dish of this lengua.  Again, conceptually, it’s a great and simple dish that is executed to perfection, and that one last touch with the olives, even though it may not be noticeable really makes this dish stand out.

• Tarta Imperial Russa (Php 160)

This dessert was just my favorite!  It was moist, full of flavor, words just cannot describe how good this was, maybe ‘perfect’ is the word!  Truly yummy!  It says in the menu that this was adapted from Sansrival.  It can’t compare, this dessert by Terry’s was just too good.  This is gourmet desert at its best.  With attention to detail, and quality ingredients that you can taste in every bite.  The presentation was simple, yet appetizing, but the taste is what makes or breaks a desert, and trust me when I say that you won’t be disappointed!  It had that moistness to it, which means that it was prepared in advance, the nuttiness that you would expect from sans rival, and the layering which gave it some crunch and a contrast in texture too.  The sauce, which was a bit caramel in nature, combines all the layers perfectly.  You have to try this dish when you dine at Terry’s!

• Tocino del Cielo (Php 110)

When I tasted this, all I can say that it’s just the same as leche flan.  This dish though was named beautifully 😛  Just a bit sweeter than our Filipino version.  This dish wasn’t as much a standout as the previous dessert, but if you love leche flan, and you have a sweet tooth, this may be the desert for you :p

This post is somewhat special to me too.  As the last picture that I took was the entrance of Terry’s.  Right that minute, my camera lens’ broke :'(  To have it repaired, I need to shell out such big amount that it’s better for me to buy a new camera.  So there, the pictures that you see above were the last shots from my beloved Canon G10.

Lucky enough that I was able to take all the pictures so I can share with you my experience with Terry’s.  Wonderful dishes, with a great European and Mediterranean combination of dishes.  The strong Spanish influence in the concepts of the dishes is also evident, but what’s most important is that they gave many of the dishes their own unique touch, and I think also incorporated the Filipino taste into much of their dishes too!  With a wonderful atmosphere, great presentation in dishes, and the unique but traditional, European style of dishes, I really think Terry’s is a must try for those looking for great and delicious gourmet dishes right in our own backyard! 🙂

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Terry’s (from Terry Selection)
G/F Lafayette Square, Salcedo Village, Makati City, Metro Manila, Philippines
(02) 889-3198