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Saboten (Serendra, BGC)

Katsu restaurants seem to be sprouting up everywhere nowadays. Happy days for us :). But for these eateries, it's getting harder and harder to stand out in the crowd. It'll take a certain "something more" for a katsu place to really leave it's mark. Enter one such place, Saboten. Located in the upscale confines of Serendra (in BGC), the place provides a neat and peaceful venue for a date or small gathering. They even have a pebble-lined walkway from the door to the first few tables - very Zen-like. Oh, and they serve real green tea! Not that rice tea stuff everybody else gives out - let's be honest, that rice tea tastes like the washings of a rice cooker that had loads of burnt rice on it.



The servers gave us the usual cabbage starter while the food continued cooking. Compared to Yabu, the slices weren't as fine or as uniform, but still good enough to handle your choice of either of two dressings. I think it was sesame dressing and maybe balsamic? Not sure, we only had the sesame dressing, which is by and large the tastier between the two. There were some other pickled items here, but we didn't have much of those - nothing especially wonderful about them.

Here's the sesame seed grinding set. Good way to pass the time. For the uninitiated, the sesame seeds are ground up then mixed into the tonkatsu sauce. The sauce is usually in a separate container somewhere on the table.

Here's what they call The Original - just a stylish name for a tonkatsu set (we got ours in the large size). Immediately we notice that the meat at Saboten feels lighter in your stomach compared to restaurants serving similar food. Like it wasn't as heavy with oil from the deep fryer. The breading also feels very fine and melts easily in your mouth. The cut of meat was also very nice: good thickness and quite tender. You really feel the texture of the pork as you eat it. Flavor was, of course, excellent.

We also got the Clay Pot Tenderloin set. It's pretty much just katsudon - a tonkatsu cutlet with a scrambled egg cooked around it, drenched in special sauce. The main difference is that Saboten serves their rice separately (most katsudon has the protein placed on top of your rice). Again, the taste was great - the tenderloin is more of a solid piece of meat and so provides the same satisfying protein hit as the regular tonkatsu. This time though, the sweetish sauce and the egg add to the flavor of the meat to create a moist and very filling (and very protein rich :) ) main course.

And who can forget that special taste of Japanese rice? Fluffy yet sticky, it's a really interesting kind of rice :) Tasty too.

I can't recall for sure, but apparently all this cost just under 900Php (says my credit card bill). Now for the quality of the food, plus the ambiance, it's well worth the price. If you're a katsu fan like we are, this is one trip you should definitely make. You may end up as patrons here even :)

Saboten
G/F, Serendra  11th Ave,
Taguig City, Philippines
+63 2 625 2000
https://www.facebook.com/raintreesaboten

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 2, 2013 and is filed under ,,,. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response.

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