Chateau Hestia, Tagaytay

I absolutely love the old Spanish vibe of the place.

My dad and mum both took the day off for my dad's birthday. The three of us headed off to Tagaytay which was something fairly out of the ordinary especially for us. I had no clue whatsoever where my dad was going to take us, but for sure it was going to be somewhere extraordinary.* Yes, it was the opposite way around, he was the one who surprised us! 

My dad has read about Chateau Hestia in a couple of magazines and he actually knows the owner too. The place is very hard to find but once you do find it, it has that relaxed ambiance and it very airy. I found it beautiful especially cause it had an organic farm out the back. 

The dining area was very simple. It was reminiscent of a chateau as the name suggests. There were plenty of windows that pulled in a lot of natural light. 

Complimentary bread and uhh.. a buttery eggplant dip if I wasn't mistaken. I wasn't the biggest fan of their bread, it wasn't dense enough for me.

Mum ordered the house special iced tea. I'm not a fan of iced tea, really but this was tangy and pretty good it had hints of fruits as well. 

Crusted Salmon- P485
Lemon-peppered crusted fillet of salmon with smoked paprika sauce
served with mashed potato and buttered veg

These days mum is a stickler for salmon. It's been her favorite thing to order. In this dish, it was really lemony as the description might've suggested. I reckon it was pretty fresh too! The paprika in the sauce was tasteful, they got it right, not too strong.

Greek Pizza 8"- P315
Topped with feta cheese, eggplant, tomato,
black olives, onion, rosemary & lemon zest.

My dad ordered this pizza. The crust was just right, not too thick, not too thin. It was baked in oven too so it had that nice nice crust. The toppings melded together really well. It's really a pretty good dish.

Fiaker Beef Goulash- P495
Rich beef stew flavored with paprika, fennel and caraway slowly cooked until tender,
served with serveietten knodel, cornichons, and vienna sausage.

And this was my dish. I love my beef, and I'll always choose it when it's on the menu more often than not. The beef in the stew was fork tender and seeing that fried egg ooze into the stew was the cherry on top of it all. There were these potato dumplings on the side which I wasn't a particularly big fan of, they were too starchy for my taste. The vienna sausage had a nice snap when I bit it.** Finally, the pickle. I love pickles, twas a good contrast.***  

Chocolate Souffle

Well, my dad was the one on that day that was oh so keen for dessert! You see that oozing souffle? I had a bite and it was so dark! Couldn't be better! It's really like my ideal dessert. OOZE. Not much more than I can say.

Espresso

To top everything off, I had a shot of espresso. PERFECTION. 

Chateau Hestia 

Purok 5, Brgy. Bukal, Silang, Cavite, 

Philippines 4118 (near Tagaytay City)

 0929-711-32-89

* My dad is good with food and restaurants. I'd like to say I got it from him. And mum contributed the cooking bit!

** Chateau Hestia has a deli and might I say that they've really got some good things there. We bought a couple of packs of sausages and they did not disappoint. And YES it's better than all that load that they sell at Santis Delicatessen. 

*** Pickles are one of the odd things I like eating. I could munch on the dill pickles right out of the jar, strange, I know.