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eat like the dons and the donas do

After the educational tour of Intramuros, we decided that it would be a good time as any to educate our palates. Our next stop was La Cocina de Tita Moning, a restaurant in Manila's San Miguel District. It's set inside a beautiful American-era ancestral home. 

To get to the restaurant, we went through a narrow driveway all the way to the parking lot at the back. We instantly knew that this restaurant values the traditional Filipino home-y feel because we were welcomed with refreshing drinks and hors d' oeuvres in the patio, just as a host serves drinks and pica-pica to guests in his/her home. 

Before getting into the dining area (this is a house, after all), we were given the tour by the hospitable waiting staff, akin to a home owner (again) showing his house to first time visitors. The house I'm referring to here was the home of Don Alejandro Legarda and wife Ramona (nee Hernandez). It contains a lot of memorabilia from the family's art collection, library, and travels. Paintings by Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo were displayed in the living room.

Finally, we were led to the private dining room where the table was already set for five. We were all in for a new experience here. None of us, I think, have eaten dinner the way the Legardas were accustomed to. For one, we could get as much red rice and as much of the delicious ubod side dish as we wanted from a tray carried by the waiting staff. The plates, glassware, and cutlery we used all came from Dona Ramona's antique collection. The table's centerpiece at my home is normally the food itself, but not on Tia Moning's dining table; a pink Tiffany glass sculpture of what looks like a sarimanok sat on the antique dining table assigned to us.

These were all sideshows to the real star of the show: the FOOD. At the patio, we were given iced lemongrass tea and those yummy queso de bola fingers. Dinner began with fresh arugula salad and then worked our way through the osso buco, the roast pork, and the whole baked lapu-lapu. Everything was so delicious I couldn't decide which one I liked the most. 

It definitely is one of my best dinners yet.
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