L' Incontro Ristorante Italiano: Compliments to the Chef!

 

Wazzup Pilipinas!

My wife and I were given some complimentary meals at this Italian restaurant called L' Incontro a few days ago.  It is located along Nicanor Garcia street (formerly Reposo) in Makati city - not too far but quite inaccessible from our place. It's ideal you go there by taxi, but if you like walking for a few minutes, its better you just commute and drop off somewhere at the Mapua Institute of Technology Makati campus, or at the Yupangco building where Yamaha is. 

But we assumed it won't be much of a meal since its just a free meal given to a few people as a token of appreciation for helping them out with a certain project.

It was also a little inconvenient for us because we are required to book two days in advance before the restaurant would accommodate us. I guess we were just lucky that we were going to have a meeting nearby and the meeting request came in two days before. So, we immediately called up the restaurant. 

However, we can't seem to reach them by phone during that time. Since I was online almost the entire day, I did the next best thing and notified them thru their Facebook page from which I got a quick reply. 

The person behind the Facebook page account assured us of a reservation on the day and time we scheduled. We gave them a 6 pm dinner schedule just enough time after our 4 pm meeting that day.

Talk about luck of all lucks because we had another scheduled meeting also located near the L 'Incontro restaurant. So we went to the meetup earlier at around 1 pm, and then proceeded to the restaurant first just to check if the restaurant really booked our reservation.

My hunch was right. There was nothing on the reservation log book.

Moral lesson of the day : Never trust the Social Media Manager, or Marketing guy managing the Facebook page, who probably forgot to relay the message to the restaurant.

In fairness, the restaurant staff put us on the list for later at 6 pm, but I also asked her if its possible to start the dinner early and she said yes. However, I think the one hour we have available before our 4 pm meeting was not enough for us to finish our meals so we opted to go with the dinner after our 4 pm meeting.

Our 4 pm meeting started earlier when we arrived at around 3:30 pm so we were also able to finish earlier at around 5 pm.  We then went back to the restaurant to have our early dinner.

The restaurant has a dark sophisticated ambiance just like how it is in many Italian restaurants. I guess its a trademark to have this kind of ambiance with earth-color furniture and decors.

This photo was a bit blurry because I only have my Sony NEX F3 with me, and its not so good with poorly-lit environments. Using a camera flash for taking pictures will only ruin the natural color.

 

Some complimentary bread basket - freshly  baked focaccia bread and flat bread with pesto sauce and pomodoro dip

Squash Soup - Minestra di zucca  is roasted butternut squash soup

Chicken meal - Mozzarella stuffed chicken with penne primavera is chicken breast roulade stuffed with mozzarella and a side of penne in tomato, eggplant, Zucchini and bell pepper sauce

A slice of chocolate cake for dessert - a delectable treat of dark milky chocolate ganache layered over homemade spongecake.

Well, the meal was quite not the usual amount of meals that we normally order when dining on our own (we usually order at least three kinds of meals), but my wife says she was full already.

I teased my wife by telling her that the complimentary bread basket was the one that made her full.

The food serving were small but tasty. I would prefer quality over quantity anytime, but I also prefer fulfillment - to please my hunger. Compliments to the chef for preparing a delightful meal. I don't really mind paying more for a great hearty meal that's enough to satisfy a hungry customer, so I would suggest increase the serving size even if it means adding some more pesos to the bill.

The dessert was a bit dry unlike its appetizing description. There was very little feel of "sponge-iness" or even "milky". It was probably not fresh from the oven.

The crew of L' Incontro Ristorante Italiano doing the wacky pose. Kudos to the staff for being warm and friendly especially to the one who gave us a refill of the basket filled with complimentary breads while waiting for our meals. We were a bit hungry already so the complimentary bread helped to ease our hunger a little.

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