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In the midst of the UP-AME Fair crowd control brouhaha, my friend Molly went out of the Hall — where she was safely ensconced — to look for me. Big mistake, because she found herself unable to go back in. I brought her to the World Robot Olympiad 2010 for a bit but since the event was wrapping up by the time Molly got to me, we decided to have dinner instead.

As expected, every Japanese restaurant within the area was full. I mean, with the bunch of anime and manga enthusiasts flocking to get into the SMX, the only logical places for the exhausted ones to go where Japanese restaurants and toy shops. Molly and I had to think quickly, as our stomachs began to grumble. The age brackets of most anime fans would likely fall under 20 and teenagers usually have limited budgets. We began to look for high-budget Japanese restaurants around. (Yes, we were craving Japanese, too.)

With Tokyo Café being horrendously full, we eyed the nearest and more expensive alternative: Sakura Restaurant & Sushi Bar.

Molly reminded me that we had to take photos of the food first before eating. That was good because I’m an eat-first-shoot-later person and it would be pointless to blog about a restaurant with photos of empty plates…

This is my order, a tempura bento. I had this with green tea. It’s a healthy mix of tempura, salad and some fruit for dessert. It’s actually very filling and well worth the price.

This is Molly’s order, tempura soba, I think. She needed this because she was kind of feeling sick and was longing for soup.

Sakura usually has a grocery store, but the Mall of Asia branch is just really a sit-down restaurant with glass walls. The walls usually wouldn’t bother me, but that particular day was extra unnerving.

There was actually one diner in there who happened to be a somewhat good-looking cosplayer, and he sort of attracted paparazzi-type fangirls (and fangays). So even though Molly and I thought that we were able to escape people by picking the more expensive restaurant, the repeated camera flashes coming from the other side of the walls distracted us from having a decent conversation.

I’m sure Sakura is so much more relaxing on a regular day, though…

The damage? Around P500-P700. Not bad, considering we were very full when we got out of there. We were gloriously energized and ready for plowing the AME crowd.