The Room Upstairs

The best restaurant I've reviewed so far. Check out all those stars!

Taste ★★★★☆

Service ★★★★☆

Ambiance ★★★★☆

Value for Money ★★★★★

This restaurant is so well-hidden, it doesn't even have a sign on the exterior of the building.

The Room Upstairs is a hidden restaurant in the second floor of LRI Design Plaza, a commercial complex in N. Garcia. The building is occupied by modern furniture stores – in fact, The Room Upstairs is also a furniture store. You sit on their couch or on their wooden chairs and order food. The ambiance is so chic. And if I wanted to make this review short, I would simply say – Go and eat there!

Their menu consists of salads, sandwiches and pasta. We all ordered pasta, each a different type:

Mushroom Aioli P180

Shrimps in Tomato Cream Sauce P220

Mine: Tuyo Pesto P170

I ordered Tuyo Pesto. Now the problem with pesto pastas is that it gets bland after a few bites. The tuyo in their dish solves this problem. It’s creamy because of the egg they sautéed the pasta with. Excellent. The serving is more than enough.

I also tried their cream of pumpkin soup. It had a curry taste, which was weird. I felt like ordering some roti. It wasn’t the cream of pumpkin I know form other restaurants. It also had bits of hard noodle – not sure what that was. It reminded me of the strings you remove from your celery stick.

They have different iced teas to choose from. I ordered calamansi mint. It’s sweet, and the distinct flavors of calamansi and mint are so well blended that it’s a whole different taste. I loved it.

I think they’re proudest of their coffee. They actually have a coffee selection that rivals starbucks. I’m not talking about those iced coffees. I’m talking about real brewed coffee with different hints of nuttiness and fruit. You will be given a list showing each coffee’s intensity level. I chose intensity 7 and got a cranberry cookie. The cookie was okay – I used to make cookies for a living so it would take something spectacular to please me. The coffee was enjoyable. If I weren’t in The Room Upstairs for a meeting, I would have loved to curl up on their couch and read Night Circus with my Intensity 7 cup until they closed for the day.