New Discoveries: Omakase and Booktopia

This morning, shortly before 11, the widow of a good friend called to invite us to lunch, it being the birthday of her good friend who's also my co-parent in my son's org. Not wishing to disappoint the one who invited us, I immediately concurred but when she mentioned the name of the restaurant, Omakase, and said it was in Eastwood, I asked if it was accessible. In Eastwood, though there are elevators, there are portions that have steps leading to certain areas. She promised to get back to me.

When she called almost an hour later, she jubilantly said there was an elevator. So off we went.

The building is but two floors which made me skeptical about the existence of an elevator. Never would I have imagined a two-floor building's bothering to invest in one. But it did and a spacious one at that. Shame on the elevator in The Spa in Tagaytay Highlands. Shame on the elevator in Glorietta.

Omakase, as the name hints at, is a Japanese restaurant. Sorry, but I don't know what it means. It doesn't have the classy look of Kimpura but it is clean and well lit. And the customers are a decent lot. And the food was marvelous. We left the ordering to our hosts (the widow brought along her son) who must have ordered at least 5, maybe more, kinds of sushi and at least two kinds of sashimi: tuna and salmon. The son also ordered beef teppanyaki, shrimp tempura, gindara, and chicken teppanyaki. He also ordered cold noodles for himself alone which came in what looked like a bento box. He didn't think anyone else would like it and no one minded because there was just so much food. When his mom asked him what it was and he answered "Cold noodles" I thought of my Koreanovelas, haha. And the son could pass for an actor-- very good looking, he bears a resemblance to Diether Ocampo, and very intelligent. Back to the food.

The sushis he ordered included the more common california maki, a tuna maki with cheese I think, one he teased us was spider maki (it was actually soft-shell crab) which I liked. He also ordered a mixed seafood maki which had scallops and eel. Everything just tasted so good. we also ordered rice -- but I hardly touched my fried rice as there was just so much food and of course they were all filling as the makis have rice to begin with. Good company, good food, what more could one ask for? Made me count my blessings, they did.

After lunch, we went our separate ways. When we had arrived before the lunch, I saw this place Booktopia. Netopia is an Internet cafe, so I was curious what Booktopia was about. I asked my son and husband if they wanted to check it out and my son promptly opened the door to it, saying that the son of the widow said they had good books in Booktopia(Told you the son's intelligent, so he reads). We were impressed. Though the store wasn't that huge, the selections were very good. My husband found the collection of poetry by Borges which he couldn't find in Power Books and Fully Booked, much less National. My son bought a book, two books, in fact, as did my husband, while I bought a magazine. I seldom buy books because there are so many I haven't read yet and I always worry about where to put all the books the two of them buy-- which is why my dream house will have a huge library so that all the books we have will be in one room, not in several rooms as they are now, not in the sala, the hallway, the bedrooms. But I digress.

Booktopia also had this quaint book marks called Literary Luminaries which were paintings, caricature style - if they were pictures, they would appear like they were taken with wide angle lens or fish eye- of yes, literary luminaries like Virginia Woolf, Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Lewis Carroll, Edgar Allan Poe, etc. At P100 each, not bad. But I thought to myself, there are so many substitutes I can just get in lieu of real bookmarks here in the house. Cheapskate, no?

When we got home, my husband noticed that the books they purchased had one bookmark each-- free, bearing the logo of Booktopia. It also contained the bookstore's address and guess what, the building that houses these great finds is called "Intrepid Plaza". How erudite the owner of the buildings must be. Oh, and by the way, my son said of the way books were classified in the bookstore, "Very intelligent classifications".

An aside, as they were browsing, I made small talk with the sales girl who was all alone. I asked if she were bored in the bookstore. She admitted she was. I asked, "Don't you read?" She said, "no." I told her she should. She merely smiled. I pointed out to her that she should take advantage of all the books around her which she could read for free. Though I didn't see a cellphone, I'm almost sure that's how she keeps busy, tinkering with it. Though to her credit, she didn't seem to have it nearby unlike so many sales clerks and elevator girls in the other malls.

Another by the way thing. The building is along E Rodriguez, Libis, not in Eastwood. The landmarks are Pizza Hut and Rufo's which are housed in the same complex. there's also a stall selling Lotto tickets. If you're along Libis, coming from Makati, it's after Shopwise. And you know what? As soon as we were out of the car, the aroma wafting in the air reminded me of my childhood. A certain restaurant - Little Quiapo or a Magnolia place -- which carried a distinct smell. Each time I smell it I just remember myself as a little child. I cannot describe it in words, my nose just knows and remembers.

One more thing. As we were eating I saw Alya Honasan, Gringo's sister, and her mom. Alya so looks like Gringo. When I pointed them out to my husband, he naughtily said, "that's not the mom, that's Gringo." What made him say that? When Gringo was last caught, some articles mentioned that sometimes he would assume the disguise of a nun. But of course the mom couldn't have been him. She was small and stooped.