California Pizza Kitchen

Decided to eat lunch with another gastronomer at California Pizza Kitchen since we had a voucher from an online deals site. We only paid Php 500 for the voucher but we get to order food worth Php 1,000. It was as if we got a 50% discount.

We previously visited CPK and had pizza and pasta. Too bad I wasn’t documenting food expeditions yet at that time. But I do remember the taste of their pizza dough. It had a gentle crunch. It was a little chewy but not too thick. I loved that the dough was not too oily. It also had a tiny tinge of sweetness too (or was I imagining it?). So for our visit today, we wanted to explore the menu beyond the pizza and pasta.

I wanted to try something with the BBQ chicken since the menu items with the BBQ chicken is a specialty dish. I decided to go with the The Original BBQ Chicken Chopped Salad instead of the pizza to explore the menu. We ordered the full sized salad so we can share. Fresh tomatoes, crisp lettuce, corn, beans, nacho strips and chicken fillet cubes with BBQ sauce in one bowl/plate is already a filling meal. The chicken itself was tender and lightly seasoned while the BBQ sauce definitely has that smoked flavor and was not too salty. This dish had a crunch in the lettuce and nachos, and a bite in the tender chicken.

Say Cheese :-) Yep the milkshake’s name comes with the smiley. And yep, it is a milkshake with cheese. Not only topped with cheese but infused with it. The shake itself has more of a cream or vanilla taste. It is actually sweet unlike some popular ice cream brand’s Quezo Real flavor that has a salty kick in the ice cream itself. With every sip of this shake, you get bits of cheese, I think it is mozarella or some other kind of stretchy cheese. Topping off the cheese shake are sharper tasting cheeses. I just hope there was more bacon toppings (haha).

More cheese! For additional order, we had Fried Mozarella. What makes this different from the other mozzarella sticks that I have tasted so far is that it is wrapped in wonton wrapper. Other mozarella sticks I have tasted have the cheese covered in a bread-like ingredient which is thick and has a flavor of its own. Thinner yet crunchier, the wonton wrapper really lets you taste the cheese inside and not just some breading. It is also powdered with Parmesan cheese outside. This comes with a marinara sauce to dip the sticks in.

Open faced Quesadilla topped with nacho strips – two of my favorite Mexican inspired dishes in one. The flavor is not too strong. The quesadilla itself is more on the crunchy side rather than the chewy side but I liked it nonetheless. I kind of felt like eating a thin crust pizza at one point. The chicken meat and beans added a soft contrast to the crunch.

Branch visited located at: Mall of Asia, Pasay City