Gino's

Rating: Excellent
Meal:  Lunch for 5 or 6
Price:  ?? pesos
Payment:  Credit cards accepted
Dishes: Sausage pizza, pesto mushroom pizza, mozzerella pesto with cherry tomatoes, salted egg linguine, bolognese
English Menu: Yes

Smoking: No

Gino's is an amazing Italian spot near where my dad lives in Makati.  For our last dinner in the Philippines, my dad really wanted us to eat there.  We were a bit skeptical considering the sad excuses for Italian food (with a few exceptions) in Japan.  But we figured it wouldn't hurt anything.  Wow, are we ever glad we went!  This place blew every Italian place we've ever eaten at before out of the water.  The pizza crusts were so good, I was actually eating the crust first instead of discarding useless hunks of bread like I usually do.  It reminded me of good chewy homemade bread.  There was a very interesting salted egg linguine too.  Salted eggs are a filipino specialty and usually are identified by dark purple died egg shells.  They are, of course, quite salty and the yolk turns a bit grainy in the process.  They never have appealed to me much, but this was a very interesting tasting dish that benefited from the peculiar flavor.   Another dish we loved was a pocket of mozzerella (real and very soft) stuffed with pesto and surrounded by little cherry tomatoes (a bit tart) covered in olive oil and basil leaves.  This variation on caprese was so incredibly delicious, we ordered another one.  After the first sausage pizza (the sausage was incredible), we also ordered a pesto and mushroom pizza with walnuts and kesong puti (water buffalo cheese).  The cheese was a little disappointing in that it didn't have that salty tang I recall from previous experience with kesong puti, but the overall package was great.  I didn't taste the bolognese personally, but I'm told it was also great. 

Salted duck, mozzerella, sausage pizza

So...wow, that was a wonderful end to our trip to the Philippines!  We will miss the great food here so much and look forward to our next visit.

Pesto mushroom pizza

Bolognese