Food, Restaurants

Bambu Thai restaurant

Pad Thai at Bambu, the new Thai restaurant in Casa Susana

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love the vibe of Casa Susana. It has some strange forgotten old world charm and a genteel, relaxed vibe. This makes it the perfect location for my favorite massage place, and a great place for a quiet unhurried meal. The popular restaurants here (Omakase and this new place you’re going to read about) are packed with large clans on weekends and ladies who lunch during the week. You get the feeling that the traffic ebbs and flows in time with the mass schedules at St. James and Bene. That’s the kind of crowd you can expect here—what I personally think of as classic old school Alabang.

The patio / smoking area

A new Thai restaurant called Bambu has opened here recently and it seems to suit this crowd to a tee. Raymond, a Southbound reader, emailed me about this place about a month ago (he emailed the day after it opened; now that’s a scoop). It’s one of the few Thai restaurants in the South (one of just two that I know of, actually—the other one is Jayn’s in BF, which I’ve visited before and will check up on again very soon), which is reason enough for a visit—plus, according to Raymond, the chef is a Thai native, so when they say “Come & enjoy your favorite authentic Thai dishes” on their flyer, they mean it. It took me a while to actually make time for a leisurely meal, but last week Dette and I finally got around to trying it for dinner. When we got to the restaurant, it was still relatively empty (it operates on a lunch- and dinner-opening schedule and had just opened when we arrived). Empty is not usually how you want to find a restaurant, especially in the South—the market can be demanding, and the turnover so fast, that a place that doesn’t draw crowds can disappear in a blink. So we were a bit apprehensive when we sat down and started to place our orders. Turns out we shouldn’t have worried—half way through our meal, the restaurant was not only packed, people were waiting in line to get tables!

Looks like a Thai resto, alright, sans the signage

The place is moderately sized and simply furnished; it has that new-not-quite-broken-in look that some just-opened restaurants have. The fact that they don’t yet have a sign on the door adds to this brand-spanking new vibe; instead of bothering with a name on a door that you won’t see unless you’re looking for it anyway, they’ve placed large banners and standees around the entrances of Casa Susana, so people can find them. A smart move—I once saw a family standing outside Sudlai looking up and trying to figure out how to get to the restaurant from the inside (you can’t—you have to go around to the Seoul Seoul side and enter from there). The dining areas are divided into smoking and non-smoking areas; the non smoking area feels like an extension of the balcony and is good for maybe four tables of four; inside there are around ten tables, which I’ve seen maneuvered into any number of configurations to allow seating for clans of more than twenty as well as the occasional lone diner.

Thai iced tea—one of my favorite things about Thai restaurants

As is usual on an expedition to a new restaurant, we ordered classic dishes—to provide a baseline for quick comparison purposes—and as many of them as possible. Unfortunately, there were only two of us, and prices were a little prohibitive (at an average of 200 bucks per dish, you can’t really order that much in one go). We settled on Green Chicken Curry for me, Catfish Salad for Dette, and Fried Spring Rolls to share. I also had the requisite Thai Iced Tea (P90), and an additional order of Jasmine Rice (P50; the dishes didn’t come with rice). Finally, for dessert, I was able to order the elusive Tah Koh, something that has long frustrated me since Som’s took it off their menu.

Green Chicken Curry, another old standby

The Kaeng Keaw Waan Kai (Green Chicken Curry, P260; I note the Thai name because it struck me that their receipts listed this instead of the translation, so trying to split the bill was a real challenge) was passable—not exceptionally good, but not bad either. It was watery and the chicken pieces were rather small and didn’t all taste like white meat (sorry, chunky breast fillet lover)—granted, at least I could be sure they weren’t using GMO chicken; these tasted like native birds (which in theory is a good thing, but old food habits die hard). Flavor-wise it was OK: not too hot, and lacking the nuances of flavor and spice that make me treat Som’s chicken curry sauce like soup.

Bambu Fried Spring Rolls

The Por Pia Tod (Fried spring Rolls, P240) didn’t look that promising either. I got the impression that they were basic home-cooked lumpia with too-thick wrapper (how to describe this? There are some fried wrappers that just look crunchy, with little blisters pockmarking their entire surface. This was uniformly browned and didn’t scream crispy). The sauce tasted like your basic fish-ball-y sweet-and-sour sauce (though it was probably an authentic Thai product); I asked for some vinegar instead, but that suit the lumpia either. The ingredients that went into it were indistinguishable from each other, just a mass of filling mixed together—which is a shame for me, since I like being able to pick my food apart. There was a nice hint of cilantro, though. I’m not sure I’d order this again, but maybe it was just a bad day for the fry cook, hahaha.

The Catfish Salad came with a substantial amount of catfish…

 
… and a small side of mango, peanuts, onion, and sauce (I guess we could’ve asked for more)

I found Dette’s Pla Dook Foo (Catfish Salad, P280) pretty good (you know how it is with other people’s food…). The fish itself was very tasty—not too crispy, again, but it had a substantial amount of meat (it wasn’t stringy, the way it usually is), so that was understandable. Dette felt there wasn’t enough of the other stuff though—the mango, peanuts, onions, and other sahog that come with the dish were all mixed in with the sauce, so it didn’t feel like there was a lot of it.

Bambu Tah Koh

The Tah Koh (P140) arrived at our table as soon as we asked for it, because they served it straight from the freezer. The coconut milk topping and the green gelatine-y stuff (I would’ve enjoyed it more if it was corn-based) had telltale icicles, and it naturally didn’t taste too fresh. Still, it was alright as far as desserts go, especially since I hadn’t had this stuff in a long time. By the time we got around to dessert, the restaurant was really packed, and people were getting turned away (or rather, were not willing to wait), so it didn’t seem right to linger. We asked for our bill (it was a painful moment for me; my share came up to 600 bucks), flagged a family about to leave, and offered them our table.

The next day, to my amusement, my sister invited me to lunch at the very same place. I thought I’d told her about it, but it turns out she and her husband saw the sign the day before and had attempted a lunch visit but had arrived too late. Though my wallet was still smarting from my P600 dinner the night before, I was game—more chances to try other dishes!

Thai Iced Coffee—yeah, I know, it looks just like the Thai Iced Tea

This time we had to wait, since we arrived at the peak of the lunch hour (more people fresh from church). We ordered Tom Yam, Fried Pork Spare Ribs, Pad Thai, and Eggplant with Minced Pork, as well as a Thai Iced Coffee (P70) for me, and Mango Sticky Rice for dessert (we wanted to have the Mango Tapioca (Mamuang Saku, P150), but they were out).

A bowl of Tom Yam

Bambu Fried Pork Spare Ribs

The Tom Yam Kung (Hot & Sour Seafood Soup, P130 solo, P330 sharing) turned out to be very good, plus it conveniently came in a bowl-sized serving for one (this was my brother-in-law’s order, but that didn’t stop us from appropriating most of it). The spare ribs (Sikrong Moo Tod, P270) were unmemorable (I’m not a fan of sweetish meat, so maybe you can’t take my word for this).

More like Pork with Eggplant than the other way around

The Pad Ma Kurr Yow Moo Sab (Eggplant with Minced Pork, P240; this was listed under vegetables, a practice that really irks a veg-loving friend of mine—apparently it’s not just a Pinoy thing to include meat with veggie dishes after all) was a hands-down winner. I had planned to eat it alone, sans rice, but it was so terrifically spicy I had to order rice to go with it. The meat was well-flavored, there was enough eggplant to make you feel like you were getting a reasonable serving of veggies, and the whole thing was liberally sprinkled with bits of chili—every bite packed a strong punch! Definitely not for the faint-hearted.

The Pad Thai was underwhelming :(

The Pad Thai (P270) was borderline—we needed it to take the edge off the spicy stuff I ordered, but some bites tasted ever-so-slightly off. Eventually I figured it was the tofu, but since we didn’t feel like complaining and the tofu wasn’t outright bad, we just kept eating, avoiding the tofu bits.

Bambu Mango with Sticky Rice

The dessert (Khao Neow Ma Muang, Mango Sticky Rice, P140) again came straight from the freezer—which was worse this time, since the dish was rice-based and frozen rice tends to be hard rice. The mango looked like it had been pre-sliced and frozen as well, which meant dry edges—not exactly fresh and juicy… we wouldn’t have minded a few extra minutes’ wait for a freshly-sliced mango. Still, the sticky rice was soothing after our spicy meal.

The bill this time wasn’t as bad (more people to share), though not by much (Istill ended up paying P500 for my share). Actually, it’s not that expensive when you consider the individual prices—it’s just that this kind of cuisine (like, say, Indian food) is best sampled with lots of dishes, so the costs add up.  So what’s the verdict? This place strangely doesn’t do well with the classics; when you compare their dishes to a known standard, their versions tend to pale in comparison (it doesn’t help that the point of comparison was Som’s, which we realized an actually reasonably be considered the gold standard for Thai food, despite its unglamorous setting). But they do well enough with other dishes, and the hit/miss ratio is such that I’m willing to try them again to see what else they do well. Be prepared though—like I said, though it doesn’t look obviously expensive, the costs add up quickly, so it’s definitely not going to be a cheap meal. Best to bring lots of people, so you can order a lot, try a little bit of everything, and split the costs more equitably. I’m not entirely sure why they’re so popular; I figure it could be a community thing, since it’s that sort of place that you’d want to patronize for support and to be neighborly; or maybe the lack of other Thai food options in the South makes it the default choice when a spice craving hits. Come if you have a hankering for Thai food, or if you want a quick unfussy meal with your family and don’t mind shelling out big restaurant rates for a small restaurant vibe. Be sure to call ahead for a reservation, though.

Bambu Thai Cuisine
Casa Susana Building, Madrigal Avenue, Ayala Alabang Village, Muntinlupa
556-0868
Restaurant hours: 11:00AM – 2:30PM, 6:30PM – 10:30PM daily

Tags: bambu, casa susana, muntinlupa, thai cuisine

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