the fort

On Sunday afternoon (March 16), we went to The Fort (aka Bonifacio Global City), a relatively new urban development area in Taguig City, just outside of Manila (about 10 kms from where I am staying). It used to be Fort Bonifacio, the headquarters of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Now, it is home to high-end condominiums and establishments.


The Fort occupies a huge area, and we asked the cabdriver to drop us off at the Market! Market! section. When we alit from the cab, we immediately saw the open market section, where there were a few fruit stands and such; we went through those first. Then, on the way to the mall entrance, I saw that there were these uniform stands that were labelled with the names of provinces. I assumed that those stands sold products from those areas, so I wanted to look at all of them (and find out what those provinces are known. After going through a few, though, I realized that many of them sold the same things, and they were not necessarily products from those specific places. This stand, I am glad to say that the stand for Cebu, which is where I'm from, actually did feature products from Cebu.


We proceeded to the mall. Like all malls here, you have to go through security to enter the mall. There was a long line, so we bypassed that by entering through McDonald’s and exited inside the mall. The first thing we saw was a display on Himig Pilipinas (Philippine Music), showing album jackets and music pieces. Put on by the Filipinas Heritage Library (FHL), I was excited to see this at a mall. I really should visit FHL while I’m here. We then went around the mall, or at least part of it. We were getting hungry, so we decided to look for the restaurants.

Many restaurants are located in the piazza of the Serendra section of The Fort. Though we were already hungry, we decided to look at the menus of the various restaurants before deciding were to eat. There are a variety of cuisines from which to choose—Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, French, Italian, Spanish, American, etc. We chose to eat at Brazil!, a churrascaria. The churrasco part of their buffet dinner included the following grilled items: chicken thighs, 3 kinds of pork, 3 kinds of beef, cuttlefish, two kinds of sausage, leg of lamb, banana, corn, and pineapple. [pictures] With the green and red yoyo they give you at your table, you can signal if you want the meats to keep coming (green) or if you’ve had enough (red). It cost P750 (about $18)/person.

We were stuffed by the time we were done eating. While we had been looking at the other restaurants, we had thought about going to a couple of other places for hot chocolate and dessert. But we were too stuffed to think about food anymore. So, we shall have to go back to try the other places, especially Tea & Therapy (for high tea during the weekend), Xocolat (for hot chocolate), Conti and other pastry shops (for dessert).