When you’re old and gray—if you are lucky enough to get old and gray—and can’t eat anything too salty or sweet anymore, it’s the memories that you will feed on: bittersweet relationships, barf-worthy fights, champagne-worthy successes. You might especially remember that moment in your life when you were just starting out, a non-kid with much to prove, determined to make it but forced in the meanwhile to make do.

These were the memories that came flashing back to me when I entered the restaurant Nomnomnom on Tomas Morato.

It’s a restaurant for good times. When you enter the glass door that divides the air-conditioned area from the smoking zone, you will see pictures of those good times held together by a clothes line. The walls are a kitschy yellow with blue accents: a mirror with a frame painted blue and blue cloth on the walls. It’s such a small space it reminds you of hanging out at a friend’s house, with helpful signs about their ongoing promos such as Dude Food, a beer and pica pica promo, a “Pizza Bomba Eating Contest” and a “Bucket List,” which is a menu created to match a bucket of beer. They also have an amazing playlist with songs even the most savvy iPod users may not recognize.

One of the owners is vegetarian so the menu has no pork or beef. But as with most vegetarian restaurants, what is lost in meatiness is made up for with punches of flavors and textures from ingredients that aren’t shy about making their presence known: saltiness from capers or tinapa shreds; juiciness from tomatoes, and crunchiness from not-so-common ingredients such as sunflower seeds.

The Prom Pasta, for instance, is no bore. Like Mary Moon, who will outlive all the septuagenarians, this pasta is vegetarian (for the older readers, this comes from the song “New Age Girl” by the band Deadeye Dick). As if on cue to remind the customer of the naughtiness of high school, the waiter also explained, “Meron din po yang hemp ma’am, pero yung organic, hindi yung nakaka-high.” You will very much enjoy the mix of capers, sunflower seeds and basil on this one, not to mention the strong tang of the tomato sauce.

Good Sisig is also a must-order. Thinking it was regular sisig on a sizzling platter, I made sure to ask for rice. But it’s no sizzling sisig. It is a vegetarian dish of tofu with a hint of sisig flavor or probably what the vegetarian cook hazily recalls as a sisig flavor because it was a very, very, very, very faint hint! They put a crater in the middle of the mountain of rice and threw the tofu in. It is delicious. If I were vegetarian, this dish alone would make me travel to Morato from Makati every day. And not only because of the beautiful sweet-salty flavorings on the tofu but also because of the rice, which even has bits of nori (dried seaweed sheets) mixed into it.

But not all dishes have a dietary halo on them.The Malinomnom Pizza should be renamed Maalat-alat, thanks to the saltiness of three of its star ingredients: tinapa flakes, salted duck eggs (itlog na pula) and kesong puti. Very creative dish, catering to the Pinoy in you. To be fair, this pizza does not hurt the tongue with its saltiness because its dough tempers the toppings to create a mighty fine pulutan (bar chow). However, unless you are ok with keeping water (or worse, beer!) in your body all of the next day, you might try the Talong (eggplant) Pizza instead (humorously named Talong and Lasting Love). It’s a curious pizza but reportedly a hit among the customers, probably because it would go well with light beer.

The owners, Karina Altomonte, a photographer, and Mara Bernaldo, an editor, have been very playful with the names of the menu items. You wonder if they’re from the ’70s when you see that they serve a mushroom pizza called Special Shrooms, a pasta called Happy Hemp Pasta and Hemp Bars for dessert. Also because they called a tomato dish VST – maybe because there are three pieces (one each for Val, Spanky and Tito?) or maybe because it’s cheesy (this appetizer is essentially tomato stuffed with cheese).

Chicken nuggets have the title ’Nuggets mo?’ while pita chips served with four different salsas are called Fourplay. But while they are playful, they take their business seriously, complete with a Multiply site (http://nomhappyfood.multiply.com) and a blog (https://nomhappyfood.wordpress.com) to announce their monthly activities. These range from film showings to acoustic nights to Pizza Bomba eating contests.

And to make sure that customers are really happy, the happy food can be appreciated even if you are on a beer budget. Good times indeed!

Nomnomnom. Unit 2 Lower Ground Floor GYY Building, 1 Tomas Morato cor E. Rodriguez, Quezon City. Tel. 5022919; 0917- 825 0338 Open from 12 noon to 12 midnight. Cash basis only. Wheelchair accessible (but you have to wheel yourself down to the lower ground level and might need assistance). Limited parking.