Memory Lane Honest Review (Tagaytay roadtrip during COVID season)

When we heard the Skyway was FINALLY open after 5+ years of suffering through the traffic caused by its construction, we were incredibly eager to try it out. My dad is SUPER against going out, rightly so, during COVID – but was persuaded to embark on a roadtrip to Tagaytay so we could enjoy the Skyway while it was free.

Unfortunately, because this trip was rather spur of the moment, we had ZERO restaurant reservations in place. I was kind of hoping that because there was COVID, restaurants would be more open to walk-in customers… Alas, it felt like the entire Metro Manila went on holiday with us to Tagaytay that day.

Thankfully, we chanced upon Memory Lane, a homestyle restaurant owned by Jolina Magdangal. It’s filled with memorabilia and knick-knacks from the 50s and 60s (completely before my time!) which lent a nice ambiance to the place. Sadly (for the restaurant), we were the only diners for the entire duration of our stay there (roughly 2 hours). On our end though, it felt like we had the whole restaurant to ourselves – a great start to our very first restaurant meal as a family ever since COVID happened!

In terms of the food, it was okay. Certainly not what I would call great.

What we ordered:

Mom’s Tender Juicy Baby Back Ribs
Tagaytay Bulalo
Crispy Paksiw na Lechon
Desserts: American halo halo, Turon ala mode, Homebaked Prune Pudding w/ Ice Cream Topping

Food

I’ll start with the food I liked. I thought the Tagaytay Bulalo was very good. The soup was just right – not too salty, not too bland. There wasn’t a lot of meat in it, but passable and would reorder this if I go back

The Mom’s Tender Juicy Baby Back Ribs got consistent rave reviews in all the blogs and food review sites I’ve read, so I was expecting to be WOWED. It was…. okay. It wasn’t earthshattering? It was VERY small though. They say it’s good for 2-3 people. I say it’s good for 1 person. Not worth the price tag

The Crispy Paksiw na Lechon was an unfortunate letdown as well. It was full of fat, and all those fat was swimming in sauce – literally. In one scoop, I felt like all the meat and fat had been scooped out and I was left with all sauce. To be fair, the sauce placed with rice was pretty much what completed my meal LOL. The sauce was very good!

As for the desserts – they were okay. Nothing amazing, not bad either. Here’s a photo for you to stare at.

Service

Service was pretty good! I had read a lot of bad reviews about the service so was slightly worried. Thankfully, they were quite nice. We got to the restaurant around 10:45AM, but apparently they would open at 11:30AM. I felt dismayed because I had no idea where we’d go in the meantime, but they kindly allowed us to enter the restaurant early!

Overall, nothing to complain about here. I felt rather bad for them though because we were their only customers for the entire lunch hour.

Ambiance

As mentioned, Memory Lane is meant to evoke a bygone era, and it shows in the knick-knacks lying around the house. All of them were before my time so there was no nostalgia involved, but it did make for pretty photos. I can’t imagine living in a blue house (did people really paint their houses blue before?!), but it does look very picturesque!