Dats Mix - Riyadh

Their little food place is very simple. Stools are used for the long thin table by the window. If you're a fan of bagoong rice, you must try some here because it also has a sour green mango cut into thin strips. It's P139 already comes with iced tea.

This rice place is conveniently located next to my favorite college coffee hangout, so when I 'm done over-dosing on coffee, I transfer there to fill my tummy with their seafood rice. Back in my day, this place is pretty popular to students. I guess it 's the budget-friendliness of the place. Your 100 pesos can go a long way here. Plus, it 's a breakaway from all the fast food around Taft. That has sadly been my life in college, to the point that I 'd feel sick just thinking about my usual meals. And hey, it 's not that far that you can run to here, wait for them to whip up something and then run back to your class, given you 're not from the Northern DLSU, or Narnia, like AKIC. (I refer to faraway places as Narnia too much lately, huh?

Taft Avenue is like this giant garden with food places sprouting everywhere all the time. But just a word of advice, the old-timers are the ones you should definitely go and check out. One of my favourite places to eat in is Dats Mix. Their rice toppings definitely never go out of style (and as I'm writing this, Taylor Swift's Style is actually playing in my head). They serve classic Filipino dishes with a bit of twist. I especially love their Grilled Liempo with Batomaneg. For those who do not know, Batomaneg stands for Bagoong, Tomato, Mangga and Egg. It is actually the best dish I have ever tried in Taft Avenue! You should also try Bagoong Rice which is my brother's favourite until he developed an allergic reaction to bagoong. The place is actually very well-lit. Well, to be totally honest it's very bright, with the bare white walls and the neon green chairs--it's blinding. But with that kind of food...who cares?

The first time my college buddies dragged me here, there was a seating option in the store's mezzanine where, if you're a big group, you can co-opt the entire space and stay there for hours. They have bean bags and big electric fans to keep you comfortable, while you gaze over the heads of the masses below you jockeying for seats in the tiny restaurant. That seating area is closed now, but aside from that, the value of Dats Mix in my heart has not diminished even by one bit. My personal favorite is their Grilled Liempo with Batomaneg. Batomaneg, I think, stands for bagoong, tomatoes, mangoes, and salted egg. Those give get mixed together with the grilled liempo for an explosion of flavors in your mouth that you cannot find anywhere else. Sadly, I developed an allergy to bagoong after college, and I can't have this or my other favorite, their Thai Bagoong Rice, without anti-allergy medicines.

I would periodically have minor to relatively alarming reactions to seafood, especially to crustaceans. However, I am not one to pass up an opportunity to indulge whenever they are present on a dinner spread. Allergies be damned, I love a good bagoong dish and I think one of the best bagoong dishes that I have ever tried is Dats Mix's grilled pork batomaneg, which is a foursome of sauteed shrimp paste, tomatoes, mangoes and salted egg over rice. The servings are heavy, and my friends and I would usually feast on this dish during lunch to sustain us for the rest of the day (until our class ends at 9PM). Their seating area is tiny, and it is usually filled with rowdy and noisy students enjoying a good time with their friends. While other restaurants and cafes have notoriously lost business, Dats Mix still stands after all these years, which only means that their food is enjoyed by the La Salle and CSB lot, enough to keep them booming and flourishing in a very high-demand and expensive (rent-wise) area. What's good is you can also order in bulk. Though I'm not sure if they deliver, it's always good to dig in into a full meal during meetings or prolonged class discussions. I can't wait to be back. But I'll be sure to bring my antihistamines next time.