Bites of Asia Series: things you must eat in Manila
2 Comments
Karen Hamilton
December 27, 2008
This post is part of the Bites of Asia series – a set of posts I wrote in December 2008 before we left for 27 days of exploring the Philippines, Macau, and Hong Kong. If you’d like updates of our trip as it happens in real time, subscribe to my Twitter feed or better yet, follow me on Twitter.
I would be remiss to make no mention of my high school pal Zia, who has been feeding us so many ideas for Philippine food and activity that I wish we could have stowed her away in our luggage and taken her with us as our personal guide.
Pulutan at Pananghalian, originally uploaded by ~MVI~.
Like Cheryll, Zia sent me a comprehensive list of her favourite places to eat in Manila, ranging from the economical to the extravagant. I have no idea how we’re going to run through all of these, but I sure as heck am going to try!
EkspoSining (Central Luzon State University), originally uploaded by ~MVI~.
Okay, I’m kind of obsessed with food…and seriously, I think some of the best eating can be done in the Philippines and for relatively cheap. Here are my suggestions:
- Reyes Barbecue: the chicken is awesome. You can find this at almost every mall food court and it’s really cheap; ~$2 for a full meal.
- Cibo: really good, authentic italian food.
- Cafe Bola: this is in Greenbelt in Makati. They have really great adobo flakes with tomato and goat cheese on top. OMG SO GOOD. Modern Filipino cuisine.
- Sentro: Filipino fusion cuisine, also at Greenbelt. They have corned beef sinigang. SO GOOD.
- Seryna: they have lunch specials for P320, which give you a boatload of fresh sashimi, chicken, rice, soup, salad, and dessert. This is my favourite thing on the planet. It’s in Makati Cinema Square, Little Tokyo. You *must* go here for lunch if you like Japanese food.
- Chocolate Kiss: this is a restaurant in Quezon City. They have really good sans rival (buttery cake). I once bought an entire one for myself! [Zia - I would have done that too!]
- Cyma: in Greenbelt. Good Greek food.
- Sugi: in Greenbelt. Good but fairly expensive Japanese food.
- Dampa: this is in Paranaque, quite a ways away from everything. It’s a market place where you go buy whatever fresh fish you want (tuna, clams, oysters, whatever) and go next door and have them cook it up for you according to your specifications. Cheap and AWESOME.
- Taho: they sell this on the street. It is soy with brown sugar syrup and tapioca. It’s my fave. They also sell a cleaner version in the malls.
Categories: Asia, Beyond Vancouver, Food, Philippines, Restaurants, Travel
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OMG. Drool! Mind you it’s challenging to find food there that’s not “too salty”, “too sweet”, or “too anything” for that matter!
But… no matter.