By Stella A. Estremera
Goin' places
EATING isn't top of our priorities these days, but we must. And so Imee and I met up at this new place she spotted just beside "crab-crab", her description of now popular Glamor Restaurant that serves crabs and prawns buffet.
If you're still not familiar with the crabs buffet, it's along J. Camus Extension (but you will not be so sure where J. Camus Extension is considering that you'll find J. Camus Extension in the most unlikely places -- like straddling the Quirino end of that People's Park road that before it became Camus was really Legazpi, and then along the crab-crab place, and yes, even Cosmopolitan Funeral Homes). That's Davao navigation for you.
Now that you are lost, crab-crab is between Sampaguita Inn and Emerald Inn, which are visible from Quirino Avenue a.k.a. Tomas Claudio.
Now that you know where that small restaurant with a huge crowd is, look for an even smaller restaurant right beside it (in the building right beside that small restaurant). The name is Italian Job Pizzeria. It's very small, a parked pick-up will make it almost invisible.
We should know because there were two pick-ups parked outside Job's when we went there last week.
As the name implies, the place offers pizza.
Pizza and a little bit more -- chicken wings and macaroni and cheese and spaghetti. Very little bit.
And so we ordered pizza and pasta and a little bit more.
The little bit more included a shrieking and squealing toddler. He's cute, yes, he's just too loud. And he belonged to the table who came before us, two couples with two boys. Really noisy for just two boys, I swear.
But let's go back to the food (*Shriek!*): we ordered two pizzas – the Neapolitan (P210) and the pepperoni (P180) that goes by the name Pep-talk (that's because Imee insisted on two, to be able to taste-test more, as if there was a whole family with us) spaghetti with meatballs (P60). I also ordered the pink lemonade (It was very, very, very sweet! I only took a sip).
The waitress said it will take 15 to 20 minutes (*Squeal!*). The spaghetti took more than that. But it's good. Really good because they use real tomatoes. Yummy. But we had to save tummy space for the pizza and so we just divided the spaghetti that's just a snack size into three (it came with three small meatballs so it wasn't that difficult). Why three? Because I tracked Deng down.
The first pizza arrived almost 40 minutes after our orders were taken, the waitress very apologetic saying there were only two of them holding the fort.
Deng was still not around when the first pizza came, 20 minutes after she said she will be calling a cab.
She finally arrived, a few minutes after we have tasted the second pizza, which came, I can no longer recall when. But it was long after we have tasted the first.
But we're forgiving, very forgiving. And that's because the pizza is good too. That's considering they're not even using mozzarella cheese.
They're using some quickmelt stuff there, but the sangkap is really good, the dough thin and chewy. (*Squeal!*)
Thus, we concluded, it's best for orders to go. Order pizza, bring it home and smother it with mozarella for that perfect pizza you'd love to gobble.
The menu says it's hand-tossed pizza baked fresh, delivered fresh. But nowhere can you find a telephone number. Imee asked and was told they only have a mobile phone number. I think we forgot to get it... we were preoccupied with Deng's kwento about the Lopez clan vacation in Davao by then... as well as about a drunk man who threatened to fire hotel staff... In journalism, what's behind the scene are most enjoying.
Where's the pizzeria again, you might ask. It's between Emerald and Sampaguita Inn at J. Camus Extension aka sa kanto ng Sampaguita sa Tomas Claudio. (*Shriek and Squeal!*)
Just in case you're wondering, the shrieks and squeals are just samples of what we had to contend with that night from the squealing toddler.