A.Venue Restaurant Reviews in OAP
Fluke
A Tale of Two Art Cafes in A.Venue
Gasthof – Home of Boracay’s Famous Baby Back Ribs!
Burger Avenue’s Ridiculous Challenge
Foccacia, A Slice of Italy in A.Venue Mall
I must admit that the name of the restaurant is catchy but it has a negative connotation. Fluke (pronounced as flook), literally means a stroke of luck. It is usually used to describe a one-hit wonder or in Filipino, I guess the closest word I could think of is chamba. From a home-based Miniatures Bakeshop and catering service, the Palanca family decided to setup their first restaurant at the A.Venue Mall along Makati Avenue.
I liked their best sellers — Beef Salpicao, Three Cheese Lasagna and especially the mini-eclairs and mini-cream puffs. No doubt that this home-style cooking resto would be a hit and won’t be a fluke!
Fluke Soft Opening Menu:
All Day Breakfasts, Picas and Soups | Salads, Pasta, Beef, and Pork | Chicken, Seafood, Rice Bowls, and Snacks/Merienda | Drinks, Desserts, Others
Mushroom Soup (P85). For a resto who promises a home-style cooking, we were surprised to be served a Campbell’s mushroom soup with skyflakes. Fluke should create their own soup instead of serving something out of the can.
Beef Salpicao (P 230). Grilled beef cubes aged in our special homemade marinade.
The beef was tender, juicy and tasty. It is evident that the beef was chosen carefully and marinated for a few days. I now know why people keep coming back for this.
Three-Cheese Lasagna (P 280). A perfected recipe of layers or rich meat sauce, creamy white sauce, and a mixture of Mozzarella, Parmesan and Edam cheese in between layers of homemade pasta noodles.
Yummy and fatty came into my mind when I saw the lasagna floating in its own oily sauce and freshly baked layers of cheese. We can’t resist finishing this even though Rache finds it a bit salty to her taste.
This was the first time we heard of Miniatures bakeshop which is a home-based business. Their specialties are the mini version of the popular cakes and pastries. Have you heard of them before? What are the goodies you keep on ordering from them? I’d love to hear it from you too!
Cream Puffs (6 pcs). – (P55). I can’t believe that this only costs P9 per mini cream puff with caramelized sugar coating.
Eclairs (4pcs.) (P55). The eclairs are equally good and we made sure to bring some for Aidan as pasalubong.
Check them out at the center ground floor of A.Venue Mall.
Fluke
A.Venue Mall, Makati Avenue
Santi Palanca
+632 728-0857
Text and Photos by Anton Diaz. Copyright 2008.
I associate flukes with parasites. ha ha. The food looks good.
What???? Very expensive!! Are those simple dishes worth the taste? I was shocked!
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GLICH
http://www.glennong.com
Dear Anton – for a so called “food or restaurant review” even if in this subjective blog format – please spare us with posts featuring skyflake crackers and canned food.
I and friends are impressed about the size of your blog community – on your blog content however, we wish you would bring it to the level of lets say a chubbyhubby.net or marketmanila.com
It would do us all so much good in this country!
thanks and more power
I think it’s just right that Anton’s posts show skyflake crackers and canned food — if this is what the restaurant/establishment really serves. As a reviewer/blogger, I don’t think Anton’s job is to promote the establishment, but rather give his own unbiased (hopefully) opinion of the place, which readers can opt to follow or not. It’s the restaurant’s own lookout if Anton caught them on the day their service or presentation was shoddy or just unimpressive. I don’t know Anton personally, but I and my friends/colleagues check his blog regularly to help us find new/exciting places/events in the city.
Won’t certainly eat here if it’s called as such. Flukes in my college bio, are teardrop shaped animals from the flatworm family who eat the pig’s liver. 😀
the crackers and mushroom soup in fluke remind me of the crackers and mushroom soup in gateau de manille (white plains ave., qc). hmmm, same owners?
“I must admit that the name of the restaurant is catchy but it has a negative connotation. Fluke (pronounced as flook), literally means a stroke of luck. It is usually used to describe a one-hit wonder or in Filipino, I guess the closest word I could think of is chamba.”
I disagree that the name has a negative connotation, and I’ve never heard of the word as a means to describe ‘one-hit wonder’. How’d you come up with that?
IMO, their prices are pretty cheap, so I know not much is to be expected from such a place.
….fluke….as a one time thing or one hit wonder is just the same correct american ‘expression’….the problem here i could think off….is the NOT so interesting choices of food display ‘presentations’ such as food wares color coordination food arrangements combinations some designs-heights etc. but at the same time can be why their prices are a surprise from a higher scale areas….as christmas present from my stranger family if they’re interested ‘later’ i will have the management try my home made clam chowder ‘from the scratch’ simple not & time consuming at no national local restaurants can 99.9% ‘beat’ the taste plus the clam chowder personal recipe ALL FOR FREE NO STRING ATTACHED lol!….if the future customer sale reciepts of the restaurant will not climbed DOUBLE by end of february 2009 i will donate 15 thousand pesos{from my husband’s x-mas cash gift to buy SPA 1 month membership para sa akin}to their fav. charities lol!….oohhh seriously lol!
ako naman i find the prices quite expensive, 🙂
For the price of the mushroom soup, you could almost buy a can of that at the supermarket and get much, much more serving-wise! And the lasagna?! For that price, I would expect something more exotic than just mozzarella, parmesan and edam cheese! Those three are the standard cheese items in a supermarket’s dairy section! I give this place less than a year, TOPS.
I am actually a loyal customer of miniatures even before it was called miniatures. I loved it whenever my mom brought home pastries from the white house along Taft Avenue (the old Palanca residence). They moved out some 20 years back and I lost touch. Seeing these pastries again brings back so many wonderful childhood memories as they had always been a staple in our “pa-kains”. Thank you for re-introducing them to me. Now I know where to get them and have my kids have the same fond memories. The next time you go back, you should try their BROWNIES, PROFITEROLES, MAMON, EGG PIE to name a few, very common pastries but the best in town as I recall. By the way, their picas “croquettes” are exeptional! I hope they haven’t changed their recipes!
Cutie! Minatures talaga!! 🙂
Personally, I think that Anton already does a pretty good job at blogging, not from a food critic’s point of view, but from the view of a regular guy who enjoys sharing his discoveries with the readers of this blog.
For someone who stumbled into blogging, our author had NO intentions of writing reviews with pretensions of being an educated food critic- and judging from the wide range of readers that OAP has, he’s found a very good niche.
He doesn’t need to up the ante with regards to his blogging. He doesn’t need to do reviews the ‘food critic’ way either. Our Awesome Planet’s readers are more than happy to follow an honest, regular person’s POV on his many gastronomic discoveries and out of town trips.
It’s a blog with a refreshing take on things – not a review for the papers.
Dear Anton,
Miniatures is a home-based business that do mostly desserts I believe. They make wonderful mini cream puffs that you can order by the hundreds (I’m not sure how many days lead time they need though). They are located along P. Guevarra, across Sky Cable office, near Petron and very near Wilson. Here’s their contact number: 7242125.
Anyway, am glad to hear they’ve opened up a store na 😉
good job anton…. eye candy as always… but i have my quips on this planarian-named resto…. i love your blog and your entries, but i don’t like the resto-concept of FLUKE. it’s like the Emperor’s new clothes… the entries mentioned reminded me of restos making simple food concepts expensive but with little innovation overall. Can P280 really justify a greenwich-looking lasagna? and as for the beef salpicao, i had better ones in Pepe’s (Bacolod) costing me for P130 replete with mashed potatoes and veggies with the deglazed jus of salpicao liberally slathered over the mash. …and Campbell’s soup and a few pieces of sky flakes for P80+? …. is it really worth it? Mag Amici de Don Bosco na lang ako…
miniatures i think is such a pretentious enterprise capitalizing on the novelty of something different in the realm of recycled desserts…. P55 for such meager proportions is shocking. the size can even be used for NGT feeding…. such a rip-off… unless ibang expensive ingredient and ginamit like saffron or vanilla beans or valrhona chocolate… one tikim and that’s it.
i can personally vouch that these miniature desserts especially the cream puffs and the eclairs are really good. the first time i tasted these was way back 1992 at their P Guevarra residence. one of daughters of the owner was a classmate in college and highschool so i saw how they made these at home. tulungan sila talaga magkakapatid. they were into miniatures even before it was in vogue. i would rather have their fully packed cream puffs than those large ones that actually only have a drop of cream inside. anyway if i also remember right, their mom makes a delicious homemade caesar salad dressing.