Cendrillon

[the girl, the legend, the phillipino burrito]

Yesterday I was in New York and I had the time to squeeze in a quick lunch with my friend Janki, before rushing over to the Waldorf-Astoria to interview real estate tycoon William P. Carey. We needed somewhere close to her SoHo office, so we chose Cendrillon, a Phillipino place that J. said she enjoys. That is she, above modeling the fresh lumpia, which is sort of like a Phillipino spring roll. This one was, well, lumpi. The Napa cabbage, mushrooms, jicama, and leeks all melded into a mushy, boiled, mash, all inside a purple yam wrapper (Phillipinos are wild about yams) and it could have been a bit more savory. It was bland.

I've been intrigued by vegetarian cooking lately. Not because I'm considering going fruity, but because I've had a lot of it lately that has struck me as very adventurous, and surprisingly, pretty filling. So I wanted to order something Asian and veggie, but there were only two veg items on the menu, and one of them looked gross, so J. got the mixed noodle bowl, with shiitakes, scallions, and an eggplant fritter that looked like a petrified duck:


[wading in the scallion sea]

And I got the "Phillipino fried chicken," with a potato salad made with (what else?) yams:


[old-fashioned, down-South Pacific soul food]

The noodle bowl was rather tasteless, I have to say. I was starting to see a trend of blandness, here. It kind of reminded me of when Indian people, when I was living in Bombay, would refer to any food that wasn't picante as "bland," which I objected to because I think "bland" means without taste, and not not-spicy. This was both tasteless and not spicy. It seems that Phillipino food is mostly about pork (like their Spanish colonial wardens) and sausage, and we didn't get any of that.

The potato-yam salad was just terrible. Undercooked, flavorless, boring.

The absolute salvation of the meal was this:


[babymomma coconut]

That's baby coconut cream pie with vanilla bean ice cream and a raspberry demi-glace. It was impossible not to eat quickly, and the baby coconut meat came in thick, fleshy strands. Very creative, very delicious.

Here are my grades, overall:

FOOD: C
Both entrees, and to a lesser extent, the lumpia, were incredibly bland. Very well presented, but essentially a flavorless waste of good vegetables. That pie, though -- damn.

AMBIENCE: A
We sat in the back under a beautiful skylight, and the place was mostly empty during lunch. A well-decorated, Asian-modern ambience with good lighting.

SERVICE: B+
Friendly server who was the only one on staff at lunch. She took a long time coming back to us at one point, but otherwise, was entirely satisfactory.