Update, January 27, 2009 – The Main Street location of Sandy’s Cuisine is closed.  Sandy Daza is currently scouting for a new venue. I’ll update this post with any news.

Do you ever watch the Multicultural Channel? If so, you may already know of Sandy Daza, the man behind Cooking with Sandy Daza. I’ve enjoyed many an episode of his Filipino cooking show, although I prefer not to be told 3 times in a row that the recipe needs a clove of bawang.

The show has been on for years but it was only since our recent patronage of Pho Tan that I stumbled upon Daza’s nearby turo-turo (literally “point-point”) restaurant. [For the uninitiated, turo-turo is a buffet or cafeteria style of offering pre-cooked Filipino food, since most Filipino dishes take several hours to prepare. Almost all the Filipino restaurants in Vancouver offer their food in this manner.]

So it was thusly, fueled by my recent disappointment with Josephine’s, that we finally decided to give Sandy’s Cuisine a try.

To my delight, Sandy Daza was the first person to greet us as we entered the restaurant. I hid my fangirldom enough to order a round of dishes for the family. It’s amazing how almost every dish we ordered had pork in it. It’s not the restaurant’s fault; Filipinos just have an obsession with pig.

My brother wanted the paksiw, which is roasted pork braised in a sweet gravy that many people simply refer to as lechon sauce. I’ve seen this dish homemade using bottled lechon sauce before (and to great result). I’m sure this restaurant did not take this shortcut. It looked spectacularly indulgent and tasted much like that. It was way too sweet for me but my brother enjoyed it.

The adobo was the highlight of my meal. I’d been craving it ever since [eatingclub] Vancouver teased me with their home recipe.

The dish is similar in concept to gai lan in oyster sauce. Instead of gai lan, you get kangkong (water spinach) with its hollow, crunchy stems; instead of oyster sauce, you get tangy adobo sauce, which is usually made with soy, vinegar, and loads of garlic. The dish wasn’t on display as they preferred to cook it to order. Sandy had to mention that the kitchen could make it for us. I was fine with that…fresh food for all! They also had a huge array of choices, much of them more adventurous than what you’d see at a typical Filipino turo-turo, and for that my tummy was grateful.

Their kare-kare, or oxtail stew in a peanut sauce, was better than what most Filipino restaurants offer in Vancouver. No blandness to be found. Actually tastes like it was made with roasted peanut rather than a jar of peanut butter. But it still doesn’t come close to my mother’s home concoction. And even she cheats with peanut butter.

We also ordered the dinakdakan. Somehow, I neglected to photograph it! Bad Karen. Maybe it was because it didn’t look appetizing to me: it was one monotonous pasty colour, kinda like chicken salad. Not at all like the Flickr photo in the link above. It tasted tart and sort of citrusy, with a lot of bursts of onion. Again, not to my taste but enjoyed by my brother and husband.

I was sad that the 4 dishes we chose meant that we had to pass on the lechon kawali (boiled and deep-fried pork belly…can you say yum?!) and the Bicol Express, which I had never tried before. I mentioned as much to Sandy, who was kind enough to give us a small sample of the Bicol Express along with our meal. I regretted not ordering a full serving as soon as the spicy coconut curry made contact with my tongue. If my kangkong craving hadn’t been so extreme, I’d rate this dish as the best of the bunch.

Ah well…that just gives me reason to return to Sandy’s Cuisine and trawl through more of the dishes they have to offer.

Sandy’s Cuisine
4186 Main St | Vancouver
(604) 677-4807

Filipino Restaurant Series to date:

• Josephine’s Restaurant
• Sandy’s Cuisine
• Cucina Manila
• Pinpin

Filipino cuisine is the ultimate in comfort food. I may be a little biased, having been born in Manila and then raised by a mother who is an amazing cook…but I have many non-Filipino friends that can attest to the yumminess of Filipino home cooking (my husband included). You just have to be very open to pork in all its glorious forms.

The problem with my love of Filipino food is that I don’t know how to cook all the dishes that I enjoy. Living downtown and preferring not to drive also compounds the sourcing of unusual ingredients like kangkong and sampalok. Cue Josephine’s Restaurant, which for years and years has been my #1 place to patronize when my Pinoy cravings needed to be assuaged.

Photo by Curtis Carlson Photography. Lunch before my wedding “catered” by Josephine’s.

Lately, I’ve been harbouring traitorous feelings about Josephine’s. It is owned by family friends and former chef Mang Rene, of the original Broadway restaurant gem that was Mang Rene’s, was well loved by our family. With these ties, it is with extreme disappointment that I report the dreadful decline in the quality of the dishes that Josephine’s has been putting out.

The saddest change is in their menudo. Their menudo used to be so tantalizing that my husband and I never felt the need to make it at home. We’d simply order it to go from Josephine’s and enjoy the aroma of stewed tomatoes and pork throughout the car ride home. One could even venture to say that it was better than my mother’s (shhh). These days, the menudo is bland, watery, not as vibrant in colour. Key ingredients have changed. There used to be lots of raisin, tomato, potato, and sausage (okay, hot dog…). Now it’s more or less a monotonous sea of pork.

Bad menudo: the catalyst for change. I’m leaving the warm, once-delicious embrace of Josephine’s to flirt shamelessly with the other Filipino restaurants in the city. I’ll be sure to keep you all informed of my quest to find an authentic Filipino eatery to commit to. If I find one that’s really a keeper, we may go ring shopping and begin choosing baby names.

What do you think of Josephine’s?

If you have been to Josephine’s lately and care to disagree, please please comment! I want to know what is still good. Is the palabok still worthy? Has anything else suffered the same fate as my dear menudo? Give me the scoop!

Josephine’s Filipino Restaurant
2650 Main St | Vancouver
(604) 876-8785

Filipino Restaurant Series to date:

• Josephine’s Restaurant
• Sandy’s Cuisine
• Cucina Manila
• Pinpin