Question: Would you order the Tom Yum Seafood Pizza (P695 net) Bestseller of Madison Grill? Why or why not?
Before you answer, I’ll give you a brief background of Madison Grill and our own personal experience with the Tom Yum Seafood Pizza.
Madison Grill originally set up shop in Trinoma and opened its second branch, Madison, in the high end Greenbelt 5 Mall. Madison’s promise is to provide a New York Diner experience that is upscale, casual, and hip. The people behind it are young, and you’ll see them wearing fashionable chef outfits.
The menu is kind of boring and expensive: Starters & Salads, Soups, Signature Dishes, Gourmet Sandwiches, House Pastas and Kids’ Meal | To-be-Shared Specialty Artisan Pizzas, From the Madison Rotisserrie, Additional Sidings, Seafood Platter, and Madison Steaks.
The words Artisan Pizza and Tom Yum really caught our attention, but we had to mentally hurdle the P700 price tag for it.
“The Rise of American Artisan Pizza” by Evelyne Slomon adequately defines Artisan Pizza:
What is Artisan?
“The definition of an artisan is a skilled manual worker who practices a trade or handicraft. How does this relate to pizza? In the broadest sense of the definition as it applies to artisan pizza:
1) The dough must be made with only pure and natural ingredients: no additives, conditioners, preservatives, artificial ingredients or artificial coloring are allowed;
2) The leavening of the dough must be achieved with natural yeasts (commercial strains or wild). The use of preferments are acceptable but not prerequisite;
3) Machine mixing of the dough is acceptable, but the dough must be hand formed and hand stretched to be qualified as artisan. No machines may be involved with the production of the dough beyond the mixer, which rules out dough rounders, sheeters and presses;
4) The ingredients utilized to make pizza toppings must be pure and natural and of the highest quality–and preferably minimally processed—if processed at all;
5) Artisan pizza makers support other local and national artisanal ingredient producers, growers and purveyors, and use organic and sustainable products whenever possible.”
Tom yum is characterized by its distinct hot and sour flavors, with fragrant herbs generously used. So we were expecting an exotic pizza with lots of fresh seafood on top.
We asked if Aidan could assemble our Tom Yum Pizza and the Madison team gladly allowed him to do so. The dough is pre-heated beforehand and all the fresh natural ingredients are laid out for easy access.
Unfortunately, Aidan backed out at the last minute because he saw all the people looking at him. At home, he would play the role of a chef and cook pizza for us, so this would have been a good actual role play for him.
The Artisan Pizza we ordered had an oval thin dough with the following ingredients: fresh fat prawns, big slices of shiitake mushroom, juicy bits of mussels, cutlets of seabass, pieces of scallops and squid.
We are not sure if they added any Tom Yum herbs or spices because it only tasted like the usual Seafood pizza. A dash of fresh pepper was added to the pizza before it was tossed into the oven.
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Text by Anton Diaz. Copyright 2008.
Blog: www.OurAwesomePlanet.com
Mobile: +63917-LOVEOAP (5683627)
Email: anton@diaz.ph
Probably not, Anton. We had the 14-inch 5-flavors pizza of Volare (the chef is formerly from Amici) and it was really good for only P470. We liked the variety, the thin crust, and fresh flavors of the toppings.
I could guess why the pizza you ate cost a lot. The sea bass alone is quite expensive.
As always, thanks for sharing.
same here anton, the pizza looks appetizing but quite too expensive for it’s size…
I tried their 1/2 pound Ultimate Burger last month. It was just terrible. I was expecting their burger to be at the same level as Myron’s Place. Their Smoked Scottish Salmon pizza was very good though to be fair. I’d probably go back to Madison’s just for the pizza.
New York diner experience and Tom Yum pizza? It does not make sense to me.
It looks good (reminds me of Pinakbet pizza from Herencia’s. Don’t know why. Probably because it’s for those adventurous type.)Though the price is too much. Looks so small. Don’t wanna take the risk.
i also got confused with “new york” and “tom yum” but I looked at ur original post and u mentioned the resto is into fusion food.. so maybe what they want u to experience is the “new york dining experience” and not necessarily “new york menu or food”.. then again im in between about trying this pizza.. if u were raving about it then i probly would 🙂
they have a a more expensive pizza available on their menu–it’s about 900 bucks…it was terrible
if the braised lamb shank was not good, then NO i wouldnt try the TOMYUM pizza. I would rather eat the real tom yum soup and other thai dishes at an authentic thai resto and spend my money there.
Even when Madison’s kitchen was still run by Chef Sau del Rosario, the only thing good there was the steak. There was nothing else memorable about the restaurant. Since he left, I have no doubt that the food quality in this restaurant dropped even further. So many restaurants, so much bad food. Tsk, tsk.
and yes, overpriced too.
I wouldn’t get the Tom Yum pizza…it’s enough that you described it to be just Seafood Pizza with not a hint of it being Tom Yum (or Thai) for that matter.
Yup, there are just so many restaurants with so many bad food probably because there are just so many culinary arts schools with so many students who think they will be chefs just like that.
It’s like everybody i know is already a chef, why is that?
even i can be a chef in 3 months max. hahahahaha.
I ate in Madison last night and I remembered your blog post about it. It was incredibly dismal. The space was so cramped and every attempt to move made me bump into the person behind me. They had none of the wines on their wine list, and their bottle of house wine wasn’t stored properly at all, so all we got were sediments when it was poured. They also got our orders wrong and served us the wrong salad, their duck confit was overdone and incredibly hard and my shortribs tasted worse than home-cooking. The only thing that was sort of okay with the place was the steak, and there are so many other restaurants that can do steak better. I’m not sure if I will ever be eating there again!
the pizza looks loaded in toppings, makes it interesting..hmm…
ordered it last saturday night and was disappointed because when you think of tom yum you’d think of the herbs and spices that made this soup famous and the pizza certainly lacked that. the “oomph!” factor was not there. they should just have named it seafood pizza and left out the tom yum part. the seafood, especially the shrimps, were sadly not fresh.
on the upside, we enjoyed the crispy spinach and feta thingy (i forgot the name), 187.50, the smoked tomato soup, 276.78 and the beer battered fish fillet, 366.07.
Thanks for sharing Maong! Feb. 7, food trip tayo 🙂
didn’t get the pizza when I was there…I liked their crabcakes but their ultimate burger is so jollibee champ (give me Chelsea’s burger anytime), the shortribs
were tasty but too salty, the only thing I can really rave about is their tomato soup, very good.
I had lunch at Madison, Greenbelt 5 today with friends.The service was atrocious!At around 2:30 pm the waitress inquired if we want to place additional orders because they would be closing at 3pm.Fifteen minutes later they turned off the aircon.They only turned it on again when they overheard me complaining to my husband (who wanted to join us for lunch) that the resto is closing because they already turned off the aircon.A little later, the staff changed into casual clothes and were loitering around the restaurant. I have not finished my ribeye steak when the waiter/ess (i forgot who) came to our table again and gave us our bill. A few minutes later, the waiter/ess started clearing our plates.I was so flabbergasted with the service that I gave the manager a lecture on service, etc. A friend called up one of the head honchos who offered us to treat us to a free meal. Yeah right! As if we’re going back there again!