Pancake mania has overtaken the Philippines! After the
It was nice of the Mango Tree people to invite me to their store opening and store blessing. Located at the former spot of O'sonho next to the Ramen Bar, we were there pretty early, as the invite said 2pm, and walked around my old neighborhood for a while, checking out the new stores that had recently popped up in the area. The Gong Cha was really hard to find - they make you werk for their Green Teas, yo!
Slappy Cakes is a Portland import, offering a variety of pancake flavors - buttermilk, wholegrain, chocolate, peanut butter, and vegan - toppings, and sidings. What makes this all-day breakfast spot stand out from the crowd are the griddles that are built in right into the table!
After settling down in one of the warmer spots of the restaurant, as the place became packed and our saved seat had been taken over, we called a waiter over and asked about how to start our Slappy-happy experience. He came back with four kinds of batter and got the griddle started for us. We missed the peanut butter batter, which apparently the best-tasting of the lot, but I was perfectly content with the chocolate batter, which was a thick, dark chocolate mix that was really, really good.
It didn't take us too long to start getting creative with our pancakes, and the fashionistas we were seated with started coming up with the most amusing pancake fashion pieces - buttermilk pancake shoes with a chocolate batter heel, or a whole grain pancake dress with chocolate batter details - if there was an ideal time to play with your food, this was it.
I tried a couple of popular sweet and savory pancake combinations, like the blueberries + lemon curd, bacon + maple syrup, and the bacon + spring onion sour cream. My server didn't quite understand me when I asked for the spring onion sour cream and brought me actual spring onions instead, so I made a mix of bacon, mushrooms, and topped my dollar pancakes with the spring onions instead.
There was as assortment of sweet and savory toppings to choose from as well, my favorite being the lemon curd. Pinoy favorites have also been added to the menu to appease the Filipino palette. Would you like a bit of salted duck egg for a savory pancake? Or a mix of Nutella and chorizo on a buttermilk pancake perhaps?
Aside from stuffing my gob with every possiblekind of pancake combination,Jericho and I also got to try a few of Slappy Cakes' non-pancake dishes, too!
The Country Fried Bacon with Caramel Sauce was a good, but a tad too crispy in my opinion. I could hardly taste the bacon, and it ended up tasting more like breading drizzled with caramel sauce. This would be awesome with a thicker bacon slab, I think.
The Tocino-Potato Skewers were my favorite. You had a little bit of everything in one bite: the crunch from the onion, freshness from the tomatoes, sweetness from the tocino, with the potato rounding everything off.
I didn't get to taste the Sweet and Savory Pancake Slider or the Slappy Happy-Noy Rice Cake, but they sound pretty intriguing.
While we were busy creating pancake art, the wait staff went around with shots of Slappy Cakes' cocktail drinks: Slappy Screw, Cucumber Limeade, and Guava Juice. I really liked the Cucumber Limeade - it was refreshing with a sour note at the end, like a very subtle Limonciello. Jericho was all over the Guava Juice - it was unique and complimented the sweet pancake creations nicely.
The service was kind of all over the place, but of course you'd expect that from a restaurant that was opening on its very first day. I'll come back once they've found their footing and their flow. But if you're mucking around Libis, treat yourself to ingenious do-it-yourself pancakes at Slappy Cakes!
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Photos courtesy of Jericho San Miguel
Slappy Cakes
+63 2 909 3501
Ground Floor, New Eastwood Mall,
Eastwood, Libis
Open Daily: Monday - Sunday,7am- 12am
