Aquabest Bloggers' Night (+Review of Grills and Sizzles)

Hi everyone! It's event time! So these are some of the photos I took during Aquabest's bloggers night. Initially, I actually thought that this was super sketchy because I mean it's so unusual for a water company to host a blogger's event. It's normal for restos to do it, or for makeup brands and clothing brands, but not really for water not unless the company is making vitamin water or flavored water. 

It was even sketchier that they were teamed up with a skincare and spa. I was actually quite reluctant to go at first until I found out that it was going to be held at Grills and Sizzles. The place is so near where we live that I was thinking that should this be a sketchy event for real it'd be easy for me to call for help and get picked up. 

Thankfully, when I got here, it was a legit event hahaha. 

And aside from the event being legit, I was fed very well... 

Before the event, this was the scene as the bloggers were busy chatting. I actually received weird stares because apparently everyone knew each other and it was their first time seeing me in a blogger event.

And this is Paul explaining the technological advances of Aquabest water. 

And this is Ken. 

The benefits of their water are abbreviated as S.O.U.L. 

S is for security. They use UV technology, and make sure that the UVA and UVB rays both act together to kill the germs. Well this technology is meant to kill all the bacteria, but I guess they just had to say 99.9% to be a little humble. 

O is for order. I think you may have heard of this when you've heard ads for drinking water from springs or alps or tropical escapes. They have this theory that the calmer the water, the better it is for the health as it's less 'tense' when you drink it. 

U is for Ultra Pure, and simply talks about reverse osmosis. They make the water pass through filters with holes thinner than hair strands to make sure that the water is super pure. This is the process that produces distilled water. 

L is for living. The blood pH is more or less 7.35-7.45, and the body more or less functions in a neutral pH so it's beneficial to drink water that's a bit alkaline. Acidic water has this tendency to speed up certain illnesses and diseases which is why it's been a recent trend to drink alkalized water. In fact, our house drinking water used to just be distilled water via reverse osmosis, but now we've had an alkalizer attached. I know it sounds crazy, but we've noticed that we feel better drinking the from the water system with an alkalizer compared to our water system without it. It's like there's less burn in it. 

 And this is Dante making his demonstration about their water. Honestly, I thought that they could make do without this as a lot of the bloggers were not listening, and I was the only one who was asking questions as the concepts raised were just too complicated for civilians to understand.

Basically, they have this machine that measures the TDS or total dissolved solids. This isn't really a bad thing per se as it measures the inorganic and organic dissolved solutes in the water, it just says that the higher the rate of the TDS, the harder the water is. We of course do not want to be drinking extremely hard water which is why we want to have acceptably low values for this. However, don't fret because it's normal for mineral water to have values that are a bit higher in this scale despite being healthy. 

Apparently Aquabest's water is at 10ppm of dissolved solids, meaning that it is extremely soft compared to mineral water samples which are at about 100++ ppm. Distilled water however comes out at 0 ppm in the scale.  Currently, for this type of water the regulatory standard is 20ppm so what Aquabest is trying to say is that they're beyond standards when it comes to keeping their water soft. 

And here is a colored buffer solution they brought in to test the pH of the water. Their goal is to have water that has a pH that's a little alkaline and to be as soft as possible. This is not easily achieved as purely distilled water tends to be acidic, and it's mineral water that has a higher pH at the expense of being harder. 

pH on the other hand simply refers to the power of hydrogen, or what exponent amount of hydrogen ion is in the mix. For examle, pH 1 refers to having 10 to the negative 1 moles of hydrogen ion, and pH 7 refers having 10 to the negative 7 moles. Acids are defined as such by hydrogen content, not by their taste or smell. Not everything sour is acidic, and not everything bitter is basic. 

On the water though, this just means that making the water a bit more alkaline helps to prevent the spreading or the speeding up of diseases in the body and matches the body's pH more. 

All in all, their talk was discussing as to how water made better can make the drinker healthier and happier. 

And yaaay it's time to eat! 

For the longest time we never bothered to pass by Grills and Sizzles even if it was suuuuper near our house because the place was so sketchy we were afraid that the food was bad or that there must be a hoax in all their promotions of extremely low priced dinner buffets. Thankfully, my misconceptions have been cleared. They have really nice food actually. 

For this night we had (from left to right), steamed corn, fried bangus, chilli sweet and sour fish with tofu, and on the leftmost are slices of pork steak and beef steak.

The steaks were the bomb, as in I super loved them that I had to go back for seconds. They were super tasty and juicy, and though the meat was kinda tough as it was well done, I just loved the taste. The pork steak was also good, though not as tasty as the beef steak. 

The sweet and sour dish was meh-- I mean it tasted a bit too spicy that you couldn't really appreciate the gentle taste of the fish and tofu. Had it been less spicier it would have been much better. 

I didn't touch the bangus because I generally dislike eating bony fish. I only eat bony fish when I am required to do so, so whenever I can skip it, I really do. 

Nothing much to say about the corn as it just tasted like corn. 

The pasta dish was creamy, though a bit bland in my opinion. Most of the other bloggers were doing fine with it though. 

The paella, to be honest, tasted bleh. It was like soggy rice bathed in colored oil and MSG. As in it was not the paella that you'd expect with a mild flavor but with a slightly crisp texture and a roasted flavor. It was super moist and it tasted like broth cubes. I understand that their buffets are cheap, but if they want to able to rightfully brag about this in their promotions and banners, they can do much more to improve this dish. 

And look at the ice cream, it's eat all you can! 

I personally loved the churros because the sauce was the right kind of sweet and dark, and the sticks themselves were soft and at the same time with the right kind of firmness and oiliness. I'd definitely love to come back here just for these churros. 

The cupcakes weren't bad, but weren't really mindblowing. They're a nice ending to a hearty meal, though. 

Till next time! :)