Cake and Sushi Friday: Oki Oki and the Cake Club

It was a Friday night hell. In Manila, anyways, while on the road. I was on my way on the other side of Makati, just making my way from the north side down south to get my ass to Edsa. It took me an hour from San Antonio Village to Makati Avenue which normally takes ten, fifteen minutes, and about thirty, at worst. Well, it was the usual Friday night traffic, but I didn't expect it would be that bad.

Since I started taking pity on the car I decided to park somewhere, and I was thankful that the A.Venue Mall was a good temporary shelter. And I thought, well, I could have my dinner here.

Two consecutive nights of pizza already strikes out anything Italian, hence I was left with burgers, the local fare, and... Japanese. As much as I was trying to stay away from rice, I kinda disregard that maki in fact has tons of rice as well. Hmmm. The heck. Japanese it is!

I want my sushi, any day.
Image from Wikipedia. Author: Laitr Keiows. 

Oki Oki at the A. Venue mall has been around, I think, since the mall opened, considering how many restaurants have come and gone in this particular space. The menu is expected; they have the usual sushi bar, bento sets, noodles, and the like. It was just a matter of choosing which to gobble that night.

I decided to order the salmon sashimi and maki rolls; I can't remember if I told the waitress I wanted the all-vegetable roll, but I might have said I wanted the shake too or I pointed at the crazy rolls. Anyway. I chatted with a friend over the phone as I waited for the food. The restaurant wasn't full but there was a good sampling of customers: foreigners, a yuppie group, a couple, a small group of male seniors, and three tables occupied by a woman. Wow. How come it's a rarity to see a guy eating out alone?

When the sashimi arrived I told my friend I would have to order another serving as I thought the raw salmon wouldn't be enough. And then the rolls finally made it to my table. OH MY GOODNESS.

They're huge and topped with heaps of strings of crab meat. It was probably six pieces. And it was good. It was more than enough.

I paired the food with a bottle of San Miguel Pale Pilsen (none of that light beer for me!). The stuffing had some crunchy fish inside it topped with a thin layer of mayonaise; the sliver of fresh cucumber made the heaviness breathe. Dang, those crazy rolls. The salmon was fresh, the soy sauce was light. I wish I could have more but I was full.

Price-wise the food is above average; but for all the stuff I ordered my bill was somewhere along
P 550.00; it wasn't bad, considering, but it's a not the usual daily budget for a meal.

When the roads finally cleared at 9PM I went to the Fort to meet a friend. Instead of hanging out in a coffee shop I dragged his happy ass to go out walking. We walked from Burgos Circle to Serendra, thinking we would have a bottle of red. We were disappointed to see one of our favorites, Cuillere, has closed. Ah, memories in that French restaurant. We went straight to another favorite, Chelsea Market, but alas, a waiter told us they would close by 11PM. OH REALLY --- on a Friday night.


I told my friend we should have cake instead but we passed by Slice earlier and it was full. He said there's another place beside Aria, and of course, and finally, we settled our craving asses at The Cake Club by Diamond Hotel.

The dessert selection at The Cake Club was heaven: cakes, pastries, ice cream, some wine selection, the usual coffee. I was deciding between Le Reve, a parfait, and Le Royale, which is pretty much a chocolate cake. The description goes like this:


Le Reve
This dreamy parfait is guaranteed to make you happy. Made with dark chocolate mousse, orange, hazelnut crispy topped with our Supermoist Chocolate Ice Cream.

Le Royale
Chef Pang Kok Keongis' signature cake is made of Valrhona dark chocolate mousse, almond meringue, and hazelnut crispy.

Hmm. They're pretty much the same, no, except one is a parfait, the other is a slice of cake? But Le Reve wasn't available as it was "Weekend Treat" at which point my friend had to say, quite haughtily at the cute waiter, "But isn't it weekend yet?"

So I settled with Le Royale while he ordered the Baked Cheesecake. Price: P 250.00 each. The price of a glass of wine (minus taxes, basically).

The great thing about these cakes is that they are not too sweet and they are just enough to last about an hour of conversation. This is the kind of cake one savors because one small bite is enough to give you the all-much needed sweet from the usual sour. The consistency of the cheese cake is firm enough but not cakey, and there is that slight tang and sweetness that can stand on its own without the supplement of the topping. Like a nicely-made New York cheesecake.

My cake was heaven. The hazelnut crispy and the meringue was a nice surprise to the bite, and these two nutty flavors take their turns in your palette... which is to say, when you bite there is that dark chocolate flavor, and before that there is the almond, taking turns with the hazelnut, and then the back finish is the symphony wrapped in dark chocolate love. The solid mousse was like a fresh ice cream in terms of consistency without the melting point.

I guess after this stint I became more inspired, especially in combining my two favorite cuisine: Japanese and chocolate. Yes, I just said that chocolate is a cuisine. The same way you can probably describe a filmmaker as a genre, you know, like when you say, "It's a Woody Allen movie" and you already know what that is.

Murakami and Repetition: Pinball, 1973

It was an accidental reading.

Saturday night, it was so boring. The day had been. The day before that --- or maybe it was Thursday or the day prior --- I hung out with a friend and he told me he saw an Ian McEwan copy of Sweet Tooth somewhere. Since he works at The Fort and we were at The Fort, we made our way to Fully Booked, thinking that that was the place where we could likely find the new Ian McEwan publication. When we got there, we looked for it and, of course, at the back of my head I was looking for Murakami's latest work, 1Q84 although I knew I wouldn't be reading that, well, immediately.

I just thought it would be nice to have something new by these two authors as I had recently finished The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. This trio --- Haruki Murakami, Ian McEwan and Jeffrey Eugenides --- have got to be my favorite authors. I was delighted when I found out that these three were coming out with something new between 2011 and 2012. The Marriage Plot... well, it was well-written but it wasn't a eureka moment. I love Eugenides still.

Fully Booked on High Street ran out of stocks on the new McEwan and Murakami books. How sad. Just who the heck are buying them now? (haha!)

I never really thought I would somehow end up reading Pinball, 1973 last Saturday. I didn't really think that this book would be in my immediate future. I've been aware that it's hard to find a copy, it was originally planned to be released in Japan only, and well --- it's an old book. Murakami's second novel, I believe, the second of the Rat Trilogy, the third of which, A Wild Sheep Chase, is the first Murakami book I ever purchased which would eventually suck me into this world home to a man in sheep costume, people suddenly missing, detached sex, name dropping of jazz greats, drinking in bars, and well, lots of coffee and cigarettes. And doing copywriting and translation works. It's a great introduction to, say, surreal masterpieces with Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World as one of the best ever.

But then, maybe I identify myself too much with his world.

Pinball, 1973 is a short novel. I finished it in one sitting... alright, maybe three. I found it, by accident, on my sister's iPad. After my nephew finally got tired of playing Angry Birds' Bad Piggies, I finally got my hands on it and started browsing as Nights on Rodanthe was the only remotely interesting thing on TV that night and I already knew that someone's gonna die. Gee, Nick Sparks, we always know. I guess this is the only Nicholas Sparks adaptation that I can stomach mainly because of Richard Gere and Diane Lane.

So I started reading Pinball, 1973 and, lo and behold, it was again another familiar exploration.

To describe Pinball, 1973 to those who are no stranger to Murakami's works, the novel is like being mid-way in grave-digging, with A Wild Sheep Chase finally hurling one to the bottom, which further gives way, and the next thing you know you're battling the freefall, similar to that image of Gandalf the Grey battling the Balrog en route to the nether-nether land. It's a great introduction to the conclusion of the trilogy. However, I already knew what would happen to the Rat, I knew where J's bar would end up... now, is the narrator the same guy in A Wild Sheep Chase? Possibly.

To those who are not too familiar with Murakami, I must say that Pinball, 1973 --- should you accidentally find yourself having a (digital) copy --- is that kind of novel that floats. It doesn't really have a solid plot and it's a very easy read. It's a novel of being suspended with a few surprises. Heck, to start with, the main character narrates casually an encounter with "someone from Venus", like this Venusian entity is just some co-ed in a sweatshirt, describing the good ol' countryside. And of course, the women. The women! Oh, Murakami's women! You are the quintessential ghost.

There is this moment in the novel that pretty much got to me. It's about repetition and how this relates to the pinball. I am not familiar with pinball machines and I do not really care. But I guess the core of the novel is a commentary on routine, on repetition. In addition to the obsession with the pinball, there are the twins. And of course, the guy who wants to get out of the redundancy. Life can be just made up of habits, of plotted action, of the expected.

I do think that this work is a good introduction to the world of Murakami, especially to those who are curious. The story is pretty bare, but there is substantial Murakami to go around. It's like appreciating and analyzing soup: something so simple but if you would dare there are surprising depths and complexities that are worth finding.

Love, as a symbol: The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

I was quite stunned when it ended. Frankly, I had to wrap my head around it and ended up thinking that this is good literary work... but this is something I already knew. For some reason, I was reminded of this book I picked up at National Bookstore because it was on sale, although the title can be a bit a ha-ha moment for someone like me: The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld.

Expectations were inevitable; I LOVE Jeffrey Eugenides' works. His works haunted me. I dreamt of the Lisbon sisters during those days I was reading The Virgin Suicides. I guess I found myself liking the movie (which, truly, has fantastic imagery and incredible music/scoring) because that book was outstanding. I reread parts of Middlesex while I was still reading it. I raved and raved and decided that Jeffrey Eugenides is up there, with my Haruki Murakamis and Ian McEwans.

It took several years before Eugenides got to produce a third novel which I had to address at some point: I purchased a collection of short stories edited by him, My Mistress' Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro.

In this compilation of shorts, Eugenides wrote and probably pre-empted the novel he was working on:

"When it comes to love, there are a million theories to explain it. But when it comes to love stories, things are simpler. A love story can never be about full possession. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name".

In a way, I do not really want to think that The Marriage Plot definitely gives love a bad name though I have to agree that the spoil of love stories is that they are pretty much standard-issue. As I pointed out to my friend a few chapters before I would finish the book, "The Virgin Suicides opened with the suicide of a young girl, while incest anchors the story of Middlesex as early as the first, second chapter. Where is the hook, that moment?"

I initially found that "hook" in the early part although I was hoping it would catapult the narrative that way. See --- this is not exactly a spoiler, I hope --- the novel establishes "the marriage plot" which is basically and notably a foundation of many Victorian novels, ie Austen, Eliott, Thackeray (in Vanity Fair, obviously), etc. The marriage plot is, yes, about the quest of these heroines to find their respective Mr Darcy's and then get married. Simple. I read Vanity Fair years ago, and this thick book of satire is about Becky Sharpe's (mis)adventures in easing her way into the English society which will be secured by means of a "good" marriage. Pride and Prejudice begins with the unforgettable line, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife" and that the marriage plot is initially being plotted by Mrs Bennett, the mother of the heroine.

When you think about it, growing up our life is geared towards the marriage plot: the sequence of school-career-marriage. We want to go to good schools so we can grow up in a "good" crowd, that can lead us to a "good" career, which pretty much puts us in a certain status whether we are "marriageable" or not. Seriously. It all narrows to finding that partner whom we will marry, have kids with, and live with in "little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tack" as that Malvina Reynolds song goes.

Basically, The Marriage Plot establishes this as the mindset of its heroine, Madeleine Hanna. Although on the outside she seems like the perfect girl in the 1980s with Victorian sensibilities, the conflict is that she is really desperate. Finally finding her "guy" in the character of Leonard Bankhead, she is the epitome of "I want this relationship to work!". On one side, there is Mitchell Grammaticus, the guy who is truly in-love with her. He distracts his, uh, heart from romantic disappointments hence he searches for some light through some frantic religious quest.

I have to agree with this, though: occupation is the best distraction.

But of course, things are not perfect with Madeleine and Leonard. Leonard's dysfunction is a given which I guess symbolizes that not all men (or say, partners) are perfect: they come in some twisted form of impairment that is either inherent or almost uncompromising. Hence, Madeleine and Leonard's love story is about the entire dance of "make it work", some pushing and shoving, until finally someone makes that one big final push.

When you think about it, the marriage plot is but an image of a love story because --- it is universally acknowledged --- love is deemed "real" through the validation of an institution, the population. Getting and being married, frankly, can be a status symbol. It's like having your relationship status being "Facebook official", you know?

The inclusion of semiotics and criticism and many references to Nietzsche, etc. may be due to the college setting, that period when people liked to quote the published and the revered, to take the side of the criticized. But the plot, in itself, is a representation of everything. The book is an approach to the semiotics of the marriage plot, anyone's love story. No matter how you complicate the plots and the demons of the characters, I did come to conclude that, oh well, we all have the same love story --- whether it ends one way or another. The subplots just make the difference, the intentions are one and the same.

The Marriage Plot is not really about love gone wrong; it's about what love is in its many forms, set against the intellectual background of the university, against the Victorian novels, against multiple perceptions. Eugenides opens the book, and somehow gives a peek at how things will go, through an excerpt from the The Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime":

And you may tell yourself

This is not my beautiful house

And you may tell yourself

This is not my beautiful wife

In the end, of course, in the name of love, the two boys --- Leonard and Mitchell --- decide what is good for Madeleine. And this good thing for Madeleine is something I told a friend years before she got married, those years she was, er, confused: "The problem is, you were never truly single".

So that, of course, is the solution to every marriage plot that is failing: it fails because the people in it never went through the process of being alone, of being just themselves. And naturally, the most enlightened ones are the ones who make the great move of drifting away, those who are insane enough to explore the world, to explore the madness in themselves, those who are willing to live by leaving.

"More determined, more inspired than ever"

(Screen)captured: This will make you believe in love.

Maybe it's (post)colonial, but to be honest the USA is the country I can most identify with (even though I liked Europe more than LA, haha). We Filipinos grew up watching American TV and movies, sang to many American tunes, and we mostly visit American-manufactured hyper-realities and the other versions of the virtual. Franchises thrive here because of the "American" guarantee, and --- even in this day and age, despite the economic woes and self-identity guilt --- many Filipinos still want to move to the great ole' United States of America and pursue the American dream.

I was interested in US politics because I find it, well, intriguing. I hear a lot about American politicians as opposed to their European counterparts. Heck, I know who Sarah Palin is and I have no idea who the Dutch PM is (I remember Balkenende? from years ago). American politics is almost as good as Hollywood, which all of us can get easily infected with. Didn't President Obama appear in Saturday Night Live or some late talk show?

This care and even concern for the outcome of American politics is not just due to the fact that it has always been the "most powerful country in the world" but also, because, in its current state in which American still hangs on by the thread with that sought-after, say, responsibility of being "most powerful", what happens in America does not stay in America. When 9/11 happened the world somehow rifted apart, recalling this infamous statement by GWBush, aka "either you're with us or against us". It affected our troops as some members of our thin armed forces were shipped to the Middle East. The terrorist networks in many countries somehow got activated. Many of us died, in addition to those who died in their soil, in their war.

And yes, economy-wise, the Philippines has benefitted from the outsourcing which many Americans complain about. We have one of the strongest --- if not the best --- BPO industries in the world. BPO companies here are constantly head-hunting. They want jobs? They're right here. You can stand in a corner and a recruiter from a BPO will approach you. No kidding, I have witnessed interviews in a Tapa King outlet on a narrow street in Makati. Do we want to ship them back? Well, how about these American companies knowing which ones to outsource and which ones to keep home? You can't be competitive if you keep all your eggs in one basket, right? Globalization is a derivative of natural forces, I believe.

Obviously I find myself more aligned with the Democratic agenda. I read The Huffingtost Post, the New Yorker, the New York Times. Even The Economist endorsed Obama for both candidacies. I recently admitted that I am crushing on Nate Silver now, though I read somewhere that he is an "openly gay Democrat" (which I have no problems with and will probably make me love him more). But I believe in corporations as well because capitalism is here. Social capitalism --- is there such thing? Do we really live and believe in -isms? How about doing something about the reality based on a set of basic principles: fair, right, just, equal. Love should be all around and not just for the 1%, right? That's the thing with trickle-down economics --- it only trickles. Trick... trick........ trrrriiiiiicccckkkk.

I did follow the 2008 elections and obviously Obama was a sure winner. This year, it was pretty nail-biting. There were the annoyed, the swayed, the undecided. Whose point would the tip lean towards?

The campaigns were the stuff I found fascination with. Pre-election was insane, it reminded me of "search and destroy". Nobody was supposed to be left alive. The attacks were almost personal. I didn't know which were true, which ones were the lies, which ones were the stuff fairytale villains were made of.

But I know, that the image up there, is real.