dine•o•crat

I'm new here in Manila, having moved back after 22 years of being away, so I've had limited experiences with the wine scene. I've had enough encounters with it, however, to give it an initial assessment of moribund, at least compared to what I had access to in California. In my first month here, I visited several wine and liquor places in Quezon City, the entertainment hub of the Philippines. Wines were displayed in sweltering heat, in stores with no air-conditioning, unless you count an oscillating fan sadly recirculating the air as A/C. Blame it on the country's status as a developing economy. Or blame it on the lack of a wine-drinking community. Or on the fact that this is a beer-drinking culture schizophrenically married to a very Catholic view of the world. In one of the very first fine-dining establishments I visited with a decent wine list, my server turned out to be a teetotaler, so I couldn't really ask her for a wine recommendation for my ribeye. "Sir...

Aubergine , the French restaurant in Bonifacio Global City , is the kind of fine dining place that attracts certain food writers if only for its location. Above a McDonald's in what is basically a strip mall, it could be missed if you were merely driving around or were distracted by the smell of French fries. Or you might detect it in the corner of your eye on the way to St. Luke's Medical Center across the street or as you're loading your car with hardware from the Home Depot kitty-corner to it. It's strangely situated enough to provide an opening paragraph for a writer desperate for an angle. But its quirk ends with its exterior. Once you enter its doors, the establishment's darkly modern interior announces the restaurant's mission as a purveyor of serious cuisine or that its designer is absolutely in love with dark wood. The slightly surly or merely baffled maitre d' offered me a seat immediately after I declared I was dining alone. I didn't even ...