terb’s world: my favorite things

To celebrate our 42nd month together, Sid and I decided to go ahead with our plans last month (which I talked about here) to try a new place for dinner at Eastwood City. Since we weren’t very hungry (plus I didn’t have much of an appetite for the past few days because of my Dad’s accident), we decided to try PASTO, an Italian casual dining place.

Since I like cream-based pasta, we had alfredo (“spaghetti with fresh cracked pepper in a creamy parmesan sauce with grilled shrimp”), which cost Php195.00. I thought the price was a bit too steep if you consider that the serving is only for one, and it wasn’t anything out of this world. Like anything creamy, it’s easy to get tired or sick of it before you finish the whole dish (the Filipino term is “umay“), but the grilled shrimps balanced it out very nicely.

We had their proscuitto cotto pizza which had Italian smoked ham (proscuitto), asparagus, caramelized onions and mozzarella, which cost Php225.00. We, uh, actually chose it because proscuitto is ALWAYS mentioned in Everyday Italian, one of our favorite Food Network shows, and we’ve always been curious of how it tastes like. Funny, those Food Network hosts always say that prosciutto tastes like bacon, but I thought it tasted more like the fiesta ham we always have for Noche Buena (Christmas Eve dinner). The texture of some of the asparagus stalks were so stringy that we had to spit it out, but I loved the tomato sauce they used on the 12-inch, thin crust pizza. If they gave the pizza about an extra 3 to 5 minutes in the oven so that the crust would be crunchier and very very slightly burnt, it would have been perfect for me. But on the whole, I really liked it, and will definitely go back to try more of their pizza.

For dessert, we had torta al frutta (“creamy dreamy cheesecake with fruit toppings” – the one we ate had mangoes). It wasn’t as tasty as it looked – I didn’t like the texture of the cheesecake itself. It was flaky and was NOT creamy at all, and I kept wishing we headed to Heaven N’ Eggs for their mango crepe instead.

In case you’re interested, here are the contact details of the branch we visited (which I got from Munch Punch, one of my new favorite websites): Pasto Eastwood, 188 E Rodriguez Jr Avenue, Bagumbayan, Libis, Quezon City, Philippines, telephone number (632) 911-2768.