It's Salazar for Dice and Tikoy

Gateway has its delights, undoubtedly. Aside from a tropical inspired, glass enclosed garden cafe right smack in the center of the mall, it has a food court with a tiered-seating format.   Remarkably, the seats of the Gateway food court has pretty decent seats (with foam padding).  Said food center also has an atrium style, dining area.

The Araneta Center also has Farmers Plaza (at this stage, it is in a harem-scarem manner), but it does have its secrets.  One of which is Salazar Bakery.

Now, Eng Bee Tin rejuvenated the hopia to global quality with its ube flavors, as well as a hodge podge of fusion flavors like mochipia.    But.. for dice mongo hopia and tikoy, there's nothing better than Salazar.  Salazar Bakery offers its fans all sorts of Tikoy - peanut and mongo flavors - as well as a selection of moon cakes, mini moon cakes, mooncake slices, etc.

While Eng Bee Tin is found all over the Metro, outside of Binondo (Manila Chinatown), Salazar patrons really have to go to Chinatown to grab bags-full of its goodies.

At Farmers Plaza, however, go to the basement, and some of these treats are in the Salazar Bakery branch. 

Another great thing about the Araneta Center is the connection from the MRT to LRT 2.  The latter is the best of the railways.  Maybe because it's the latest.  But, I think the commuters - mostly students and upper-middle class traders, self-employed housewives - that use this Line.

It's the wider cars, better air-conditioning, and the feeling of less caution required.