the offbeat burger: a review

**I apologize for not posting much. I was busy surfing and getting sick. 🙂 Enihoodles, i feel like posting something today, which bodes well for today’s article.

My friend Iya has been going to the Offbeat Cafe more times last month (and this month) than I’ve seen her, which tells you 1) she must like the food, 2) i’ve been sick and 3) we’ve been busy.

She blogged that the Offbeat cafe features a Krispy Kreme Cheeseburger they call the Offbeat Burger. And anything with Krispy Kreme is a go for me! I’ve been on a one KK donut/month quota for the last 5 months.. so not having had my KK for this month… I wanted to go try the burger.

What is an OffBeat Burger? To quote from their fb page…

“The now famous OFFBEAT BURGER…juicy all-beef patty sandwiched between Krispy Kreme Donuts, topped with bacon, egg and melted cheese. Not for the faint of heart!”

the offbeat burger and the bread pudding

In my head it makes sense, the sweet KK donut balancing out the salty components.

So I tried half a double-off beat burger yesterday (I shared with my friend kwe lo as I was on a diet.. ladi ladi da…)which consisted of half a KK donut, one egg, one patty, bacon and cheese. The sides were supposed to be tofu chips. I didn’t get tofu chips, but I really didn’t care as I was there for the KK goodness and the whole salty-sweet combo action that I’m expecting to happen.

So I took a bite and we fast forward to I finished the whole thing.

Verdict:

I like the concept. If you’re a fan of salty and sweet foods, you’ll prolly like this one off the bat, the contrast of the Krispy Kreme donut and the burger was pleasing to me.

I liked the taste of the patty, it was juicy and nicely prepared. The cheese was good and nicely melted.

As far as the other ingredients go, the egg and the bacon, I really didn’t think made a difference to the experience, although I did taste the additional saltiness of the bacon in some points, but then… the patty was already a nice salty component already. I don’t know what the egg was there for. It was nicely cooked though, if it makes a difference. Maybe it was supposed to add texture? but I really don’t think it did. Maybe taste? But I didn’t think it gave enough of an eggy taste to make it interesting enough to have a reason for it to be there. But let’s get this straight, the egg and the bacon didn’t hurt it either,I just wonder what they were there for.

But the main criticism I would have was that the burger really was asking for some acidity. I kept thinking either lettuce and a tomato would be welcome as it would give it a different texture, and introduce some acidity. At one point, I debated whether to ask for some mustard but I decided to eat the burger on its own. (and i was hungry) . I did voice out these thoughts to my friends and they agreed with the tomato/lettuce addition. Iya didn’t think that the mustard would be a welcome addition, in my head it makes sense, but that’s just me. I even tossed in the idea of a white onion to add a spicy bite to the burger. I agree, some people would balk on a raw onion, haha! She gave the suggestion of maybe putting tomatoes, onions and lettuce as a additional optional side for people who would want it. That would prolly work.

So price wise, 220 bucks for a DOUBLE OFFBEAT BURGER (2 patties, 2 eggs, 2 bacon slices) is pretty cheap especially as you would know that a KK donut is almost 50 bucks already. So costwise, they’re giving us a good deal. And the patty is THICK.

If you ask me at the end of the day, I did enjoy the offbeat burger and I look forward to coming back, maybe asking for mustard or ketchup, and ordering one whole order of an Offbeat Burger for myself. I now think to myself that maybe I would understand the bacon and the egg more if I had the whole KK donut, not just half… hmm… or maybe that’s just an excuse to eat KK again.

Oh, i’d have to add that my friend Iya had issues about getting a soggy bottom bun at her first try. The bottom bun/donut did become soggy, but what can you expect? the stuff sitting on top of it were heavy and dripping juices. The soggy thing didn’t really faze me as I just thought of it like bread mopping up juices. I would suggest that you come to the cafe with an open mind and don’t think of it as a burger per se, but as a salty-sweet meal, and you’d be much happier.

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Other things in offbeat:

After the meal though, I had the bread pudding, which I liked. I don’t really expect much from bread pudding so I was pretty happy with what I got. I tasted cinnamon, it wasn’t too sweet, the chocolate sauce and the ice cream were nice. Texture wise, I liked it too. I’m not a fan of bread pudding that reeks of too much egg, it tasted like soft cinnamon flavored bread with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. For 75 pesos, it was better than some bread puddings that i’ve sadly tasted some of which cost me almost 200 bucks in Makati, and so I liked it! But unlike Iya, no it didn’t remind me of Cafe Juanita’s Sticky Toffee Pudding.

Oh, and as an after dessert treat (don’t judge us) we had the chilli fries (french fries with a cheese dip on top and chilli) which Iya and I liked and finished pretty fast too.

Iya also had the chicken parmigiana. She finished the whole thing. I didn’t want to taste the chicken, but I tasted the pasta. I wished they had a dish that I could only order the pasta without the chicken, as I wanted some pasta!

The menu is limited, but as apparent above contains pasta, appetizers, other sandwich options and dessert!
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In a nutshell:

The main issue one would have about the Offbeat cafe is that it’s kinda out of the way, so unless you live in Vito Cruz Ext, you’d really have to make it a point to go there. But the novelty of the burger is enough draw to make it a point to eat there at least once, or in Iya’s case, more times than she has seen me last month.

Offbeat Cafe
G/F Mervin Biz Suites,
1406 Vito Cruz Ex. Corner Balagtas
Makati, Lesotho

**photo from the Iya’s blog

the truth about chic-boy’s

I seldom go to non-froogie related food events. My friend iya was invited to this by Spanky Enriquez, and I actually just tagged along.

All they told me was that chic-boy meant chicken and baboy. Okay, first of all, there I was in my semi-faker vegetarian mode in a food event dealing with liempo and chicken and thinking to myself—Hooha! Oh the hypocrisy of it all, but that’s not the point.

Having never been to this kind of thing in a long time(if not ever), I was initially really uneasy about the whole thing. I was with a group of people passionate about blogging. And my lazy ass was just totally feeling really, really, really, really irrelevant. haha! I don’t even think Spanky knew that I had a food blog, haha! But I got a kick getting introduced as the person who made toffees. haha! 🙂 Also, hello impetus to get back into writing!

So back to chic-boy. Chic-boy is this chicken-baboy place think the likes of yoohoo and mang inasal thrown in, but bigger, cleaner, better service and may I say, the food’s better.

Cost wise, i think it’s at par with Mang Inasal or Yoohoo. This ain’t fine dining, we’re talking the place you can sit your ass and try to out-eat that hangover that you know is coming after a night in the town. Yep, we’re talking about a 24 hour place in Jupiter, Makati ready to serve you good hot food at really, really, really, affordable prices.

When I arrived, they were taking pictures of Chic-boy’s chicken and liempo. I didn’t bring a camera, so I sat there and was really pretty apprehensive about taking pics using the camera phone when everyone had their dslrs and semi-pros out, but what hey! I got my friend iya to take pictures! haha! 🙂 If there’s a will, there’s a friend. haha!

Back to the food! First up–liempo! At the first bite I really did think it was salty. So being a consummate checker, I took a bite again, it was still salty to me. So I was actually apprehensive about this, i wanted to tell people I found it salty, but really, that could have gotten me thrown out (haha!), so i just shut up.

And then I realized… this stuff’s supposed to be eaten with rice!

SALTY LIEMPO + RICE + CONDIMENT = happyness!

or this equation would work too…

SALTY LIEMPO + BEER = happy lasing!

Actually come to think of it, it maybe because I purposely got parts of the liempo with the skin on them, maybe that was the salty part. hmm.. maybe I shall come back and try that again.

The liempo was cooked Cebu-style, meaning it was cooked in between layers of tanglad and other spices. Personally, i’ve always equated cebu-style lechon with tanglad and tamarind. I didn’t taste any tamarind with the liempo, but it sure was tasty! The pieces were crunchy, and the whole liempo order was purty big!

The chicken was yummy as well! It had the same salty finish as the liempo. I particularly enjoyed it with their lechon sauce.

That lechon sauce was good! If you’ve eaten in yoo-hoo bbq, i hate/abhor what they call a lechon sauce that they give you to eat with their chicken. Chic-boy’s was good though! It has a refreshing after mouthfeel to it, that just went really well with the chicken. You could still taste the liver, spices, and whatever thing that they add to it to make it refreshing.

If you’re asking for my opinion, I would basically eat the liempo and the chicken with vinegar and drizzle the lechon sauce on my rice. The former because I can eat anything with vinegar (including ice cream) and the latter, because I am barbaro that way.

After the specialty tasting, we were given the delightful words “order anything you want!”

Eureka!

Iya ordered sinigang na salmon belly and kangkong. I ordered lechon sisig and the talong. Iya looked pretty happy with what she ordered and I had a piece of salmon belly and some sinigang soup, and I agree for the price, it’s pretty good.

As for the lechon sisig, seriously only an idiot can mess up something with the words SISIG and LECHON, the good news is that chic-boy totally nailed this one.

If I wasn’t in my semi-faker but still dieting mode and/or if I was depressed, I would have not ordered the value meal, I’d have ordered the whole sizzling plate with two cups of rice! But alas! We are dieting so I ate all the lechon sisig and just… 1/2 of my rice! (Hehehe!)

And if I knew that chicken oil and garlic bits were available if you ask for it for free, i would have kissed my semi-faker-no eating rice mode goodbye! (But God is good and I only found out about it after I finished my meal! hehe!)

To end the meal, the choices were: leche flan and turon de leche.

I wasn’t really that excited about the leche flan. When I tasted their leche flan, it was good, but was more flan than leche, if you know what I mean (?), don’t get me wrong, it disappeared fast, it was good! Come to think of it, for that price, I think I’m lucky that I ate decent leche flan.

But I have to tell you, I got excited with the turon de leche. The selling point was that it was regular turon but dipped in condensed milk and then fried. I’ve never done that. Upon tasting though, initial impression was it was decent turon, but I didn’t really see any difference with the dipping it in condensed milk part. So thoughts: 1) being once involved in a lumpia cooking book, I loved how even and nicely wrapped the turon was (sue me, I find it difficult to wrap lumpia), 2) the condensed/leche part dipping sauce was the best part of the whole thing! and 3) I think they should serve the turon, and the sauce with ice cream.

All in all Chic-boy’s really a great place to eat in. I can see myself crawling (!) my way towards there at the wee hours of the morning to get my rice-lechon fix with all my drunken friends (haha!)! If I was a regular employee, i would eat there, if i was a callcenter agent, i would eat there, if I was a driver, i wouldn’t, i’d be scared because of all the cars in front (yes, there’s a pretty sizeable carpark in front), but really I should eat there too!

The truth is most chic-boys would really just break your heart.
Kumain na lang tayo sa chic-boy’s, heart will be intact, not to mention it won’t break our wallet.

*pictures all from iya (http://psychosomaticaddictinsane.wordpress.com)

Chic-boy is located in Jupiter, Makati, besides BBQ. http://www.chic-boy.com.ph