I rarely go outside of my neighborhood. On the occassion that I do venture out, I look forward to trying restaurants we don't have back home.
My family and I were in Nuvali during the Lunar New Year. We wanted to go to a Chinese restaurant. Turns out, there were no Chinese restaurants there. There were a lot of Japanese restaurants, which is always our default choice, but we decided to eat somewhere different. We chanced upon The Pig Pen, a european-asian fusion restaurant. The Pig Pen is the casual younger sibling of The Black Pig, a popular Alabang restaurant that I've been meaning to try. Disclaimer: I wasn't able to take pictures of the restaurant so please bear with me.
I found out that The Pig Pen has several branches. That time, they were offering group meals good for 4 people for about 1000 pesos. Quite a good deal! The set meal has 1 salad, 2 entrees, a pitcher of iced tea, and unlimited rice.
The restaurant is quaint, with only a couple of tables and limited aisle space. It's more lit than The Black Pig. There's a cabinet full of beer at one side of the restaurant. The place, overall, is very youthful and trendy.
Now, let's talk about the food. The set meal we chose had the Asian salad, Crispy pork & hoisin, Pork belly kimchi, and Pulled pork canneloni. For the rice, you can choose between steamed white rice and the java rice (at least, I think it was java rice). We also ordered an additional entree: Beef shank, mushroom & bone marrow. That was the best decision we made that night!
Asian salad (fresh greens, sesame seeds, cabbage, onion, orange, singkamas, wanton, boiled egg)
Pulled pork canneloni (fresh pasta filled with slow cooked pork topped with carbonara sauce; P 290.00)
Pork belly kimchi (slow cooked pork velly with kimchi; P 350.00)
Crispy pork & hoisin (crispy pork served with a sweet and salty sauce; P 350.00)
Beef shank, mushroom & bone marrow (topped with shaved parmesan; P 420.00)
The set itself will satiate. However, we're meat eaters. The 2 entrees weren't enough for us. Good thing we ordered another one. Another disclaimer: this dish is not good for people with high cholesterol. The salad was a very refreshing start to our meal. The lightness of the flavors prepared us for a series of strong flavors. The canneloni was a bit disappointing. The pulled pork filling was very tasty, the pasta was made right, the sauce was a nice contrast with its creaminess. But overall, the dish would have been better with more sauce that would balance with the amount of meat. The pork belly dish was good. The pork itself was juicy and cooked just right, the kimchi was strong enough to cut through the greasiness of the meat. It was a good combination! The crispy pork is self-explanatory. The menu describes it as "classic sisig version", which I don't quite get. We all loved the hoisin sauce with its perfect level of saltiness and sweetness that we used it to dip everything else. We also loved the java rice, which was surprisingly light. The best dish of the night was the bone marrow. It was very savory and juicy. It felt like eating corned beef. Good thing we had rice!
In terms of quality of service, I can say that they have friendly staff. However, the service itself was just average. They were a bit slow and a bit unattentive. We asked for a refill of our java rice. It took quite a bit to give us another bowl, and when they did, they gave us steamed rice. We just wanted to resume eating so we didn't question the waiter. I would like to applaud The Pig Pen for offering local craft beer and organic options.
All in all, it was a good experience. This would be a good place to hang out with friends or go on a date. There wasn't much variety to our dishes so I would like to try the other ones. I would give The Pig Pen a 7.5 out of 10. Hopefully, on a less busy day, service will be better.
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