Weekend Love: Sunshine Kitchen

Weekends are sacred to our family. The best weekend for us would be one spent entirely at home doing just about any "lazy" activity there is (movie marathons, trying out simple recipes with the little miss, siestas that would extend through the entire afternoon).

But we also value friendships. So connecting regularly with friends is also important to us. And for that, we also make a conscious effort to allot one of our weekend days at least once or twice in a month to spend outside of the house. 

Last Saturday, we left home early to meet up with my college girl friends and also long time roommates/housemates (Half of the time I lived away from home, I played house with these girls). I picked Sunshine Kitchen at the Fort Strip in Bonifacio Global City as our meeting place because I still had an unused Groupon voucher which was about to expire. I was saving that voucher up for a special occasion and I thought this was just the perfect time for it.

Although I did read a couple of good reviews of this restaurant I preferred to set my expectations at low. After all, I really am just after spending lunch with my favorite people. I called the restaurant 2 days before to reserve a table since we are a party of 5 and I really wouldn't want to wait long when I'm with the little miss. She borders on tantrum attack everytime we're made to wait for a table to free up. 

We arrived in Sunshine Kitchen about 15 minutes before my reserved time and the table was already ready. I guess, when they asked me to confirm our reservation around 11 am that morning they were just about to prepare our table. I say, they already won me over just by doing that (yes, I'm shallow I won't deny it hehe). I rarely get a callback for confirmation every time I make dining reservations.

The room is very airy. I immediately loved the ambiance. I also like their rustic the interiors. Both my husband and I have a common attraction to wooden furniture so yes, we were smitten by the place. We were handed over a menu. It was just a list of what they had. I did wish they had a better one, maybe something that had photos of their best sellers at least so people like my husband (who didn't get to browse their menu online beforehand) would not have a hard time choosing what to order.

sadly i wasn't able to take a photo of the braised beef and the friend chicken

I ordered 3 items for our party of 5 - Four-cheese pizza, Braised Beef and Fried Chicken. We were initially set on ordering their best seller - the 6 hour slow cooked Porchetta - but at 12:30 they were already out of stock. It must be that good, no? I was also planning to order a pasta dish when my college friends arrived but when the food came (we had to wait for about 15-20 minutes for our food to be ready), they were just enough for light eaters like us. My little girl, who is a cheese monster, had 3 slices of pizza. The chicken servings were just big enough, were cooked well and very crisp. The braised beef that we ordered was good enough to share. It was very tender and the sauce complimented the mashed potato that came with it on the side. Each of the items we ordered had a real home-cooked feel. Being somebody who loves to cook at home, that is another plus.

Will our family come back again to dine here? Definitely. The resto is kid-friendly and one of the waiters were even kind enough to ask my little girl if she wanted anything else. That made the kid feel like a real grown up. I also love that despite being at full capacity on lunch hour, my friends and I can hear each other very well. We were able to chat to our heart's content. It was just like were dining at home, only I didn't have to worry about food and all. Oh and my voucher was even good enough to let us try 2 of the desserts on the restaurant's menu - Key Lime Ice Cream and the Salted Caramel Cheesecake. Both were really good. I was transported to dessert heaven. I would come back to this place, even just for the dessert (but I will -- to try the Porchetta). In my opinion, this place is worth spending good food money in. Even without the group buy discount, I would pick this restaurant to eat in.

Good food, Great Company!

I will stop my blabbering here. If you want to find out more about the Sunshine Kitchen, check out their Facebook page. Or Google for more interesting food reviews like this one.

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Sunshine Kitchen

2/F Fort Pointe Bldg 1,

The Fort Strip, Bonifacio Global City

(0928) 821 26 25

Store Hours: Sundays-Wednesdays from 11am-2pm; 6-10:30pm, Th-Sat 11am-2pm; 6pm-2am)

Weekend Snaps #36

I live for the weekends. So does my family. (if you've come across this statement in this blog for what seems like a million times already, i apologize in advance. makulit lang. and i don't think i will ever get tired of it) In fact, it is THE WEEKEND that our household looks forward to when Monday comes knocking on the door. (Sweet, it is Friday already? Mommy, weekend na ba?)

Lately however most of our weekends have been packed. We hardly felt their presence for the longest time now. So this weekend was sort of our breather. Our recharge time of sorts. We had to leave for a birthday party Saturday afternoon but it was just within the 'vicinity' so it didn't take us away from the house the entire day. The daddy of the house opted to stay though because he missed the house that much. And we even had to skip grocery time because he couldn't drag himself out. But palengke time (read: the dirty wet market) was a non-negotiable for me because THAT was to be OUR time during the weekend. He had no choice but to accompany me else he suffers the consequence that is my wrath (hahaha). The rest of the weekend though was REALLY about the little miss. And YES she told me just about a million times (i lost count) how she loves for the weekend to stretch forever. Poor little thing. One day, anak, you'll realize too...nakakaumay din pag buong linggo ang itatagal ng weekend. 

So anyways, here's how our weekend went in photos (snaps posted mostly in instagram):

Saturday was Jollibee birthday party time. Kid was still extremely shy and chose to just stay with me in our table to doodle rather than join the kiddie games. Good thing she still allowed Ate Inday to drag her to join the photo ops with Jollibee so she had something to show her dad when we got home. Pictures/photos are still almost always our best shot at getting her to share to us how her day went.

Sabaw love on Sunday breakfast. I cooked a big pot of my favorite sabaw from my childhood - Pancit Molo. The little miss loved it! They asked me to make some again soon! And I most definitely will!

A neighbor dropped by to play with her and they enjoyed almost 2 hours of uninterrupted kiddie fun. Maia is at this age where playtime trumps everything else. When a neighbor comes by to play with her, she'd dropped whatever it is that she's doing (literally and figuratively) and invite her friend/s out to the garden. Good thing, she can already be left to play on her own. We just check on her from time to time to make sure she's not sunbathing at 10am (because she would hardly notice the stinging hot sun once she's engrossed with play so you have to remind her to transfer to a shadier part or else you risk having her sun-burnt). Sometimes she'd also get a little naughty and try to move her stuff unto the streets where it's unsafe so we watch out for that too. 

the sight of this made me go...Awwwwww!

We made a card for her dear cousin Gogol because she told us she misses him. While waiting for her to finish her drawing (which she insisted to do) I noticed she draws better with a fine point pen. (Insert bubble thought: Hmmm, maybe she's not really the marker kind. Have to get her more pens then). She doesn't confuse her letters anymore and this note was quite a lengthy one. I had to dictate each of the letters one by one but I was surprised her she was patient all throughout. She did quite well, don't you think? (it just had a messy signature because she insisted to write her full name hahaha).

Then after siesta, I took out these olive oil bottles that I have been saving for sometime now for a musical experiment (thinking i can already teach or rather expose her to various musical notes by hitting these bottles). But I forgot to consider that these are rather thick glass bottles and it seems that factors in too when you create musical bottles (what are these called anyways?) like this. So the notes turned out to be rather unpretty to the ears. But my efforts wasn't totally wasted because this became a medium for me to teach the kids about mixing colors. I only used 3 colors (primary colored food coloring) here to create this rainbow bottles. Kid did pay attention up until the green part. Then something else caught her attention and she left me. Well, at least I was partly successful. I will try to make it more interesting next time.

RAINBOW came down one afternoon.

How about you? How did your weekend go?