Weekend Food Choices Week 80: A Cool Modern Tavern

We learned that another restaurant recently opened its doors in our favorite new dining area so we just had to try it out

Village Tavern is an American restaurant, part of the group who brought us Fridays and Italiannis. They have several stores in the US, their first one opened in North Carolina in the 80’s, but this is their first international branch.

Winner of the 2011 Wine Spectator Award of Excellence, ensures that they offer an interesting selection appropriate for the restaurant’s cuisine and appeal to a range of wine lovers. However, since we were not in the mood for wine that day, we went and ordered our usual cocktails.

Village Tavern’s corporate chef, Chef Mary Grace Viado, would you believe, is a Filipina. A cum laude from UP’s hotel and restaurant administration, she began her restaurant career as one of the youngest managers for Italianni’s restaurant and was promoted to corporate chef only after a short 3 years. She joined VT in 2002 after graduating with highest honors from the Culinary Institute of America.

Because we were not familiar with their menu, we decided to go with their house specialties.

It didn’t take long before our appetizers were served.

Gruyere & Applewood Smoked Bacon Whole Wheat Flatbread

I love the flavor that the applewood smoked bacon brought to the dish and the gruyere’s sweet taste was a good compliment, but i wish there were more caramelized onions and that the wheat flatbread was more crunchy

Maryland Style Crab Cakes

This dish was a winner! A generous amount of crab meat delicious with VT’s homemade tartar sauce with sides of crunchy fries and delicious coleslaw. I loved this appetizer!

I’m fond of restaurants that serve dishes in succession and VT is such a place. So like clockwork, our steaming hot main dish was served within a couple of minutes of finishing our appetizers.

Grilled Chicken Penne

The penne was cooked well and the basil cream sauce was pretty good but the pancetta was not as crispy as i would have liked it to be. And because some were cut into chunks that were a bit too big, the saltiness was somewhat glaring which, in a way, offset the balance of the dish

Village Tavern has a wonderful modern ambiance. It is somewhere you could hang out and relax but aside from the crab cakes, i hope they have other dishes that are good enough to come back to

Village Tavern
Bonifacio High Street Central
Global City, Taguig, Philippines
Tel. No. 621-3245
Weekdays 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Saturdays 11 a.m. to 12 a.m.
Sundays 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.