Good grilling at Nanbantei of Tokyo

Photo by my friend Anne Villegas

Since I was coming back to my first beloved city - Makati - my girl Anne and I met up in Greenbelt 3 last week. After some consideration, we had dinner at Nanbantei of Tokyo because we wanted...tonkatsu. Haha if you've been there, then you know it failed to meet that craving. (Photos are unedited. Also, I'm not very good with food photography)

We didn't read a lot of reviews or their menu thoroughly, but apparently their food is like grilled street food, and served on sticks. It's a little pricey as well, especially if you're hungry.

It's a good thing she reserved a table for us because the place was packed that night (this was on a Tuesday night before Holy Week). We sat beside the grilling area, but we didn't smell the smoke and we didn't exit the place smelling like good. That was a definite plus.

Nanbantei's grilling masters

When we sat down, they immediately set out this sauce, which tasted like bagoong, and wash cloth for us while we read the menu. It was then that we found out they don't serve katsu. I wanted to leave, but we decided to stay because we were shy. They already set out the table for us, and we decided to at least just try something new.

It was a good thing we stayed because even though it was a little pricey, the food was good. Our bill reached P600+, and we each paid P300+ only, because we shared everything we ordered, except for the rice. (Admittedly, I was still hungry afterwards but my dessert at Cafe Breton fixed that)

We ordered several dishes:

The Poteto Maki was okay but pretty ordinary. If not for the bacon, I wouldn't have ordered it.

Poteto Maki - Potato wrapped with bacon

Tori Karaage - Breaded chicken w/ ponzu sauce

The Tori Karaage was served last, and it was tasty; that was bang for the buck. It was the only dish we ordered that we could really share. The sauce was a little spicy though, but thankfully the karaage can be enjoyed without the sauce.

The Yaki Oginiri was a disappointment for me. The rice was too dry, and even felt a little burned on the side. Since it was my first time to eat at Nanbantei, and my first time to try the Yaki Oginiri, I wasn't sure if it was supposed to taste like that, although it looked different on the menu.

Yaki Onigiri - Grilled riceballs

Beef Yakiniku - Grilled thin slices of beef

By far, my favorite dish from Nanbantei is their Yakiniku. It's tasty, cooked just right, and plentiful. It doesn't look like much on the photo but there was a lot on that stick.

Happy Girls. Photo by Anne Villegas, with IG filter.

Anne and I love to eat, and we have several restaurants we want to try that the other has already visited. I plan to bring her to Mamou, and she plans to bring me to Apartment 1B. And we both plan on ordering their Eggs Benedict!

Thanks for blocking off Tuesday for me, Anne! To more lunch dates and dinners <3 and maybe get that Tonkatsu craving fixed ;)


Nanbantei of Tokyo
3/F Greenbelt 3,
Esperanza St, Ayala Center, Makati
(02) 757-4130 to 31
Website
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CloudMagic: Handy email app on the go

With my work, I have to be online and mobile almost 24 hours on weekdays. This is to make sure I get all the emails and disseminate it to the appropriate people in our team. I used to only have my work Gmail, but with the expansion of my tasks, I was given a Workspace email AND an Outlook email.

List of cards available in CloudMagic.

I love technology and software so I immediately started researching on the best email apps to use to consolidate my non-Gmail accounts. I think Android's Gmail app is handy enough so I haven't thought of replacing it. Samsung's Email app (I have an S3 and a Note 10.1 2014) is okay, but I wanted more functionality and a better-looking app. I finally decided to try CloudMagic.

CloudMagic is a free email app that boasts awesome search ability and other goodies called "Cards" where with a click of a button you can send contents of your email into workable tasks, or record it to Evernote, or see the sender's details, etc.

Workspace's push functionaility was apparently discontinued a few years ago so I constantly had to refresh the Email ap. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that CloudMagic ignores that inability and pushes the email on to the user anyway as it arrives in your mail. You don't know how much that has saved me hours of refreshing, and waking up and finding my email waiting and ready to be read for me. I don't have to be anxiously waiting for the email to appear, it just syncs onto my tablet just like that.

So that solved my Workspace problem out of the way. As my niece Aj likes to say, Ta-da!

Now, onto my Outlook email.

My Outlook email, for some reason, took over the security of my Samsung tablet. I can only use Pin for security, instead of the pattern security code. I hated that an app had control of my tablet like that, but I thought I couldn't get out of it.

Then I used CloudMagic, and I was able to use whatever security code I preferred! Ahhh bliss.

The only glitch I've had with CloudMagic so far was that my Outlook account was disconnected one time and I only noticed it when I decided to check the app because I wasn't getting any emails on my tablet.

You can also set a passcode for the whole CloudMagic app if you want to keep your emails on a lockdown.

Right now, CloudMagic only supports iOS and Android devices, but they support various email services such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail/Live/Outlook, iCloud, Microsoft Exchange, Google Apps, Office 365, and other emails via IMAP (as I mentioned, this works for Workspace).

CloudMagic is a free app, but I don't get advertisements on my app, which is awesome. But the downside is you can only add up to 5 accounts. Since I have several Gmail accounts, I still retained my Gmail and Yahoo Mail apps. But I'm not complaining about this limitation!

CloudMagic only pushes emails from the past 30 days. but since I regularly clean out my email inboxes, I don't have any problem with this.

Download:
CloudMagic for iOS
CloudMagic for Android

*This is not a sponsored post. But all CloudMagic photos are from their press kit.