After a night stay at City of Dreams (COD) Crown Towers Manila, we hastily searched for a place where we could have a good late lunch and without having to go out of the COD complex anymore. As we have tried already some of the restaurants in the golden City of Dreams, "APU Authentic Filipino Cuisine" from its outside facade awakened our curiosity. The artsy way of its logo design outside the restaurant is quite unique, a sketch of a woman's face using a flower blueprint. The said design could probably related to the restaurant's name "APU", which means "grandmother" in the vernacular Kapampangan.

As soon as we were led to our table situated at the edge of the 4 corners of the dining hall, we noticed the elegant ambiance and were enthralled by the almost complete fine cutlery, reflective of its fine dining atmosphere or should I say challenging its customers of their fine dining etiquette. Hahaha! The green banana leaf-like placemats was an added bonus, having an environmental look of the restaurant. As I sat on the couch, I felt I was like a kid as it was too low for the table but my patience made it comfortable for me. 

  

As we were only 4, we just ordered what was simply enough for us, such as beef sinigang (we chose this over pork sinigang), representing the meat section, chop suey for our veggie requirements, and fried tilapia for our fish needs. 

After we placed our orders, a lady staff approached our table mumbling something which made it so hard for us to understand, except for the word “complementary”. Whatever it was, what she offered was a small plate filled with bite-sized or should I call it “cutie" pan de sal with the accompanying spreads such as yam and liver-spread.

We waited for quite a while for the food to be served when one staff returned to our table with a piece of too-late lousy news that the “pork” sinigang was not available. He offered instead of the beef sinigang as a “sub” for the pork, which we simply agreed to avoid further blah-blah. We understood it was a bit late lunch already so probably the restaurant lacked some of the main ingredients for the said dish.

So far, the ordered dishes were properly served and so we started devouring the food as our tummies were grumbling already. So far, it was satisfying but there was no extraordinary taste to it or the so-called “to-die-for” to compensate for the food price tag! 

Generally, we almost consumed the food and kinda liked our dining experience at APU except for the few shortcomings pointed out earlier. Probably, I would still recommend it to my balikbayan friends to visit a fine dining restaurant offering authentic Filipino cuisines, but this time they would have to try APU's top of the lines! 

And that lovely peeps how we ended our staycation at Crown Towers Manila in the golden City of Dreams.