Ka Lui, Puerto Princesa

Its a wonderfully cute dainty little fusion of a native and modern restaurant!

Suggested by our hotel’s staff, we thought this restaurant would have been at least good. We discovered, it is not just good, it is lovely! Entrance alone, we were already wowed! Like how? You must leave your footwear by the entrance steps – no exceptions! Just like how you do it at most homes in this country, right?! But this restaurant has shelves, ‘cabinets’ AND baskets for you to even keep your footwear in, That is, f you are one who might not easily recognize your shoes from an array of too many, on the way out!

It was noontime alright, and really time for lunch. But even if the hotel called up to reserve a space for us, we were not able to enter immediately. Why? Because, aside from my other companions still interviewing the trike driver, we were stuck ogling and taking photos of the unique and lovely decor by the entrance and garden. Do you know what those are?! Yeah, pebbles! Must have been a painstakingly laborious process to come up with such ornamentals – if we can call them that. They chose similarly shaped pebbles (I suppose those just came from Palawan hehe) and arranged them in the form of flowers or ferns. Beautiful!

Once inside, it still took for our group to even order food. Why? Because everyone loved looking around the bamboo-floored restaurant that the task of reading the menu and ordering food even became some kind of a quarel hehe. Everyone was saying “you take charge of that”! Every corner of this place has a cozily different ambiance and we all liked going in all of them and sit there a while hehehe! Seniority came into play! Some oldie (peace mudra) in our group decreed that the youngest in us should take charge of the menu, and that was me. Argh! Good my wits were probably at its peak for the day, and I said, it should be the youngest girl. So I tossed it to her and disappeared whaaahehehe!

Why all the commotion? Eh, this is so lovely a place you’d want to sit in all of the nooks. There are the regular wooden tables with wooden benches. There are bamboo tables with bamboo chairs. There are the japanese-style setting with tables low near the floor and just pillows to sit on. There is some kind of a coffee nook with a long wooden table laden with books and magazines. The works! All everyone could say was “aliw”! Note: if you saw any table ornament that looked like a fruit, it was surely a real fruit! And you could grab and eat them anytime (included in the bill later of course), but those fruits were just casually lying around everywhere as if they were mere decorations! Well, they were! Who said anyway that you cant decorate a house with real edible fruits, right?!

Lunch! Ah, the ever patient and always smiling waitress started roaming to place to shoo us from everywhere so we could all “report” to our table. It took some time but she seemed enjoying herding six old people who acted like six year olds! Her spiel: “sir/ma’am lalamig na ang pagkain nyo, dadating na ang tour guide nyo”! Da! We of course heeded hahaha! And whatever those things Maribel ordered, OMG, delectable that when everyone of us started eating, silence befell on the entire restaurant! Proof? No one bothered or no one remembered to have even a single photo of us or the food. Haay ang matatanda!

Prizes? I don’t know for I did not care! Basta, all I know is that they are a bit pricier than a regular restaurant’s but notches up in happiness and fulFILLment!

Yes yes, after the ‘extra rice’ orders and after many a choral burping rendition, we ended up grabbing a fruit each from just anywhere – and that went well with the halo-halo! Hayayayayay!

Well, how timely, just when we were winding with the desserts, miss smiling waitress whose face seemed to tell me was saying “nakakaaliw ang matatandang ito” came to announce that the van for our (late) day-tour of PPC was waiting outside and that the tour-guide was already worried if we still really intended to do it! Gosh! and off we rushed!

Ah Ka Lui, memorable!

Let’s go with out tour next, shall we?!

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