The Best of Both Worlds: Bread Pudding Creme Brulee

During one of our after-dinner forays, Yuri and I stumbled on an unexpected treat.  It was a little past 9 PM and we were hungry.  Dinner never seems to hold us over for long.  We racked our brains trying to think of places in Quezon City that were still open at that late hour, and on a mundane Tuesday night.

After a ten-minute spirited debate (hungry people make for grumpy people) on where to eat and the merits of this place vs. that place, we still had nothing. We had no choice but to wing it. We got in the car and drove.

We somehow ended up at Banchetto Libis.

Banchetto-Libis is an offshoot of the original Banchetto (Banchetto-Emerald) which is in the heart of Ortigas Center.  It's the first weekly overnight street food market in the Philippines.  A "street food fiesta' which initially catered to the dozens of call centers that have set up shop in Ortigas.  Now it has become a Friday night attraction of sorts.  People stay up late to flock to Banchetto with their friends and family just to see what's new.

It was a Tuesday night so Banchetto-Emerald was out of the picture.  We parked at the Shopwise parking lot and did an initial survey of the relatively short strech of food stalls.

I wasn't expecting anything out of the ordinary since I knew that Banchetto-Libis was relatively new and was rarely packed with people.  As we were looking around, this lady called out to us with bite-size samples of something that looked like flan.  I squinted and took a look at the product she was pointing to.

Bread Pudding Creme Brulee by MedChef Php 190.00

Hmmmm.  Bread Pudding Creme Brulee.  These guys were definitely on to something here.  I tasted the sample they gave us and was an instant believer!   

Torched to get that signature Creme Brulee look.

You can't sell a creme brulee without it being properly "bruleed".  Our dessert still had to be torched before the lady could hand it over to us.  Watching bubbling sugar forming a hard candy shell over the soft flan always has me drooling.  I have served and made hundreds of creme brulees but it always tastes better when someone else makes it for me.

You guys can pretty much guess what happened as soon as the Bread Pudding Creme Brulee was turned over to us.

We gobbled up everything except for the 6-inch aluminum pie plate! 

Digging in!

This dessert fills you up quite nicely because of the bread pudding incorporated into the flan.  Since it was torched on the spot, I got that nice "crack" that I always look for in my creme brulee.  The sound of that burnt sugar shell breaking as soon as my spoon taps into it always puts me in a good mood.  I recommend eating it as soon as you buy it for the full experience; the crisp burnt sugar layer together with the the slightly warm flan and bread pudding is intoxicating.

I was, and still am, completely enamored by this dessert.  I love it when people take the time to get the  details right especially in a setting like Banchetto.  I'm definitely going back for another round and this time I'm not sharing.  Nuuuuh-uh.

Banchetto Schedule:

Banchetto-Libis: Tuesday 6:00PM up to 4:00AM Wednesday (front parking of Shopwise-Libis, QC)
Banchetto-Emerald: Friday 12:00MN up to 11:00AM Saturday (Emerald Ave., Ortigas Center, Pasig)
Banchetto-Forum: Wednesdays & Thursdays from 8:30PM up to 6:00AM the next day (Robinsons Pioneer at the back of Cybergate Pioneer St., cor. EDSA)