My List Of Overrated Restaurants In Manila

SOM'S NOODLE HOUSE

As far as I can remember, Thai food does not taste this sweet. A lot of people probably like this one, not because of its authenticity but more maybe because it serves affordable Thai food.

It has been quite awhile since I ate there.  I remember their bagoong rice to be sweet, their tom yum soup to also be sweet.

This place is famous with yuppies partly because you have this carinderia-style Thai resto at the heart of Makati.  To some, they find the al fresco dining, accidentally having part of its dining area right beside a road, to be a bit charming and hip.

Well, the name alone, doesn't even sound Thai.

CHICKEN BON CHON

I can't understand the taste.  It's like an unfinished dish.  Part sweet, part crunchy, not enough salt and not too spicy.  I'm as confused as the taste.

Either that, or I just don't like sweet dishes.

With so many branches opening everywhere, not just here but around the world, who am I to argue its success?

CHELSEA

They claim, it's their take on comfort food.  Before anyone can do a take on anything, they have to be able to do the real one quite good.

With Chelsea, as they are busy trying to be creative with their spin on the comfort dishes, they totally miss out on the qualities that make these dishes comforting in the first place.

Their pizza is too herby, too cluttered and too messy to eat.  Their carbonara too dairy tasting.  Their burger is just too much.  Too many things going on at the same time.  It feels like a prostitute faking an orgasm, too eager to please.  Too much style over substance.

Even their coffee, as simple as that, isn't even good enough.  I like coffee.  Only coffee.  Chelsea's coffee has cinnamon.  Again, trying too hard to be creative forgetting that sometimes, the simplest of flavors is what makes it good.

What makes comfort food for me, even with all its twists, fusions and deconstructions, is on how it brings back the exact feeling of how you've come to love that dish.  Sadly, with Chelsea, it does not bring me an inch closer.

The only saving grace:  The Toblerone Torte!

JOHN AND YOKO

Doing Japanese cuisine for a restaurant is not easy.  It's pretty much like Italian food.  The key to their dishes rests mostly on the freshness of the ingredients and not the complex flavors you build on the dish.

John And Yoko, as if Japanese food is not hard enough, mixed the Japanese with American twists.  Like Pearl Harbor or, more aptly, like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it's a disaster in nuclear proportion.

This is another resto where being creative means over-the-top.  Too many gimmicky sushis and makis.  Even before you see the food, the dining TV already screams "Pretentious!", with their black and white screenings of old Japanese movie classics.

WARNING:  When you have fancy names of dishes in the menu of a restaurant, beware.  Because it might be the only creative thing that it has to offer.

MAMOU

Ok.  I'm not so sure here.  A lot of my friends have been telling me about how good this restaurant is.  I've eaten here several times probably trying hard to give this restaurant a fair chance(because to be honest, I like the place).  I may have ordered the wrong stuff because after several tries, I have not really tasted anything mind blowingly good.  It's O-K.

They say the steak is trying to do it the way Peter Luger of New York would.  But a steak is a steak.  If you can't cook a good steak, there is no reason why you're in the restaurant business.  The gauge of a good restaurant is not it's steak (because we all know, good steaks are not about the cooking but about the meat), but the other dishes they serve.

With Mamou, I can't find any dish I would like to come back for.  And besides, if their flagship dish, the simple steak, is even a mimic of another restaurant, then what's left for them to brag about?

NOTE:  This entry is solely based on the taste of the writer and in no way trying to discredit the opinion of others who support the restaurants listed here.