Mambobola

Miss Zsa-Zsa might be "sawang-sawa na" of pambobola, but I just can't seem to get enough!

When I was still working in Makati (miss the neighborhood, not the everyday traffic!), our default lunch place was Margarita Fores's Cafe Bola in Greenbelt. Whether it was someone's last day, a day when we got sick of baon/caf food/fast food junk, or a day when we had a few extra bucks, we would almost always head on over to this resto. Well, OK, it was either Bola or everybody's favorite, Pancake House!

At Bola, I first fell in love with a dish my best friend introduced me to: pasta with dulong in cream sauce. The curious mix of those tiny, salty fish and cream always got me thinking about a possible rebellion in my stomach, but it never got in the way of my enjoyment of the dish. There was that one day when I veered away from the usual and got a sandwich, possibly the only time I was less than satisfied at the resto. (It was just too small for my too-big appetite.)

And then, a discovery. Wanting to try what the resto was named after, I decided to order their carambola--a mix of three different kinds of meatballs: beef, chicken, and seafood (you could order three of a kind, if you please). You pair these babies with either rice or pasta, then choose your sauce. There's tomato sauce, parmesan and ham, a spicy curry sauce, mushroom and gravy (I think, but it's only for rice), and, most intriguing of all, sour cream and paprika.

Hmph, bolero! My carambola pasta in sour cream and paprika. I like both the chicken and the beef meatballs; the seafood one is on the dry side, but the sauce more than makes up for that!

I got me my sour cream and paprika carambola on pasta and my, oh my, I haven't looked back since then! As my hips would tell you, I am a big fan of the cream sauce. The first thing that greets your tongue is the milky sauce, just bursting with surprises--when it reaches the back of your mouth, you get a wonderful, tangy explosion which keeps you from getting umay. I thought my taste buds would get tired of the dish after a few bites, but after polishing off a bowl, I always seem to want more.

It turned out, the creamy dulong was just puppy love. This was the real thing. Like any good bolero, it teases you mercilessly--and you can't help but come back for more. Luckily, QC-based me has easy access to the branch in Araneta. But even if I had to fight my way through Makati traffic just for this, I would.

H wanted to have what I was having but I got him to try something else (because after finding The Dish, I had stopped trying other stuff on the menu!). The parmesan and ham sauce was OK, pretty much what you'd expect. But we're convinced that we've already found the best thing on the menu.