It was a dark, rainy and windy evening when I had to rush to Shoemart Makati when I noticed something was not right. The supermarket was now gone from the ground floor because the entire basement was remodelled. The large food court was now gone and instead we now have a very chic' restaurant lane of, this looks very upscale and something similar to the supermarkets and their food courts I have seen in any in unique concept restaurants across the new supermarkets in a dark colored and brick motiff. I was confused other Asian countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong but what possessed those in lofty places in the SM hierarchy to do this? Gone was my beloved food court full of turo turo and now we have well as small lane of restaurants and none of the old food court crowd. Thats right, no more lechon places, generic Filipino turo turo stalls and gone are the franchises like Jollibee and Chowking. Really strange mood, I would have decided otherwise as SM Makati is the gateway to the MRT and bus stops in Makati.
So where to eat? Glorietta although a short, interconnected walk away has nothing but mostly franchises and the more unique concepts were beyond my budget for the day. So I went to the new SM Makati food court to see what they had.
It is one long lane of restaurants now, restaurants that look like one offs, no more franchises or chains. There are Korean joints, there is the Jamaican Beef Patty (only concession to the franchise gods), Chinese place and there is Fuel Burger. A hamburger is a safe choice when you cannot decide what to eat.
The new SM food court now has a SM cashier to whom you pay for your order, I guess the former tenants must have had a lot of monkey business with reporting so SM booted them all out and instituted this system. I saw a long line in front of Fuel Burger so I thought that it must be good, there are so many patrons. I was mistaken, this was the queue for a block of restaurants the cashier was handling. Nontheless......
185 Pesos gets you a double quarter pound beef patties, french fries and a drink! Not bad as this is your typical big burger meal price which are walking distance away and exactly who Fuel Burger has to compete with.
Fuel Burger bring the Burger Barn, Burger Bar model of choosing your toppings, bread and side or basically allowing you to customize your burger but at half the price! Though this is confusing to people including myself which I imagine leads to waiting time when you order, the chef was there and was patient enough to explain each topping. He even allowed me to put in extra.
I had Jalapeno Cheddar cheese, mushrooms, fresh onions and green peppers with fries. That coupled with their tomato sauce led to a very "pizza" tasting burger which can or will not float your boat. Not bad indeed and this is the price of a basic burger at Brother's Burger which has no fries and drink.
Definitely good value and it is a lot of meat, the Fuel Burger "Jack Burger" comes out to half a pound of beef total. Not a bad way to get your protein fix in Sm Makati. I think I will pursue some further Burger Engineering at Fuel Burger sometime soon.
I have an anecdote to share about the old SM Makati foodcourt. I approached a stall that had a dummy food display as most do, a plastic assortment of meat and rice that looked far too generous to be true and so I asked "ganyan ba talaga ka dami ang serving ninyo?" to which they replied "oo". Having called my challenge I then proceeded to order and to my surprise I was given a plate full of meat and rice that was perhaps even more generous than their model dish. I was stuffed to high heavens. It was this experience of my customer delight that made me seek out the food court once more. I am disappointed by SM deciding to grow up and not be the people place it used to be.
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