Manila, Gastronomical Wonderland

Among its Southeast Asian neighbors, the Philippines is not the first country that comes to mind when one thinks of great cuisine. Nonetheless, if you happen to be in Manila, it's still a great place for a food trip. There is sufficient variety of food available so that you can eat a different kind of cuisine everyday for a week. The food is relatively affordable, and, as the capital of a tropical agricultural archipelago, most ingredients are fresh.

As in most Asian countries, food is serious business: meals are an integral part of socializing, and whether you are in Manila for business or pleasure, you will find that locals treat meals as one of the highlights of the day.

Unlike some other Asian countries, visitors do not need to worry as much about the formalities of etiquette. In most of Manila, meals are usually quite laid back. Locals prefer using a spoon and fork for most kinds of cuisine (rather than the Western practice of using a fork and knife), and chopsticks are available at Japanese, Korean, and Chinese restaurants. Filipinos enjoy long meals, and will cheerfully converse and swap stories while dining.

Quick Tips:

- Many buffet restaurants in Manila have a no-leftovers policy. If you don't eat everything on your plate, you'll be charged double the usual price. Double-check with the restaurant before you head for the buffet.

- In response to a recent water crisis, many Manila restaurants also began adopting an water-by-order policy. Waiters won't give you a glass of water unless you ask for it. Officially, tap water is potable, but travelers with sensitive stomachs may want to order bottled water instead. (Many middle class Filipinos order bottled water as well.)

- Like most Asian countries, the Philippines have a rice culture. All meals, including breakfast, are traditionally eaten with rice. Thus, at most restaurants (including McDonald's!), you can order rice by the cup.

- It is standard to leave a 5%-10% tip at most restaurants (except self-service fastfood restaurants). Some restaurants automatically include a 10% service charge when computing for your bill, but most locals leave a small tip even when there is a service charge.

- If you're not sure where to eat, go to the nearest mall and look around. Most malls have several restaurants, as well as cheaper cafeteria-style food courts.

Best Way To Get Around:

Taxis are the most convenient means of public transportation. The mass transit system is clean and fast, but very full during rush hour. The more adventurous traveler can attempt to learn the bus, jeepney, and tricycle systems.

If you want to be introduced to local Tagalog (the region including and around Manila) fare, Sentro is a good place to start. The restaurant is situated in swanky Greenbelt 2 in Makati's business district, and is a favorite among local businessmen. Expect to spend around USD 6 per head. It's a good idea to make a reservation before arriving, as the restaurant can get pretty full with families and groups of friends, especially during supper time.

For appetizers, each table has a bowl of "butong pakwan," salted and dried watermelon seeds, a Filipino favorite. (Eat it like a peanut: crack open the shell with your teeth and eat the meat inside.)

Food is served "family style" in Sentro: each person is given a bowl of rice, but main dishes are placed in the center of the table for everyone to try.

A Sentro favorite is "corned beef sinigang." Sinigang is a Filipino style of cooking in which meat is cooked in a tamarind-based broth. With corned beef sinigang, the meat they use is, you guessed it, corned beef. Before they serve you the sinigang, a waiter will come out and have you taste the broth. Filipinos like their sinigang broth sour and slightly salty.

As with most Filipino restaurants, you have a choice between steamed rice and garlic rice. Garlic rice is rice fried in garlic and seasoned with salt, a Filipino favorite.

The service is good, the atmosphere clean and cosmopolitan but a little noisy becaue of the big groups that dine here.

Omakase is an affordable Japanese restaurant in Libis, Quezon City, that has gained a huge fan base almost entirely by word-of-mouth. The food is affordable (about 4 USD per head for a meal). Their specialty is maki (Japanese rolls), and the sushi chef experiments with various kinds of maki that ought to delight any sushi-lover. Try the American Dream and experiment with other maki orders from there.

The restaurant is clean and simply furnished. Usually, you will find families or groups of officemates eating meals here. On weekends, when the restaurant is busiest, expect to have to wait up to 10 minutes to be seated.

The service is good: the waiters are friendly, and the owner of the restaurant is often there as well, overseeing the place.

An interesting note about Japanese food in the Philippines: the Philippines is one of the top suppliers of tuna to the world, and so tuna here is incredibly cheap. Tuna is the most commonly ordered kind of sashimi/sushi/maki in Japanese restaurants in the Philippines.

Not for the sensitive stomach, but the truly adventurous traveler knows that the best way to experience the local cuisine of a country is by trying their street food. Street vendors on the sidewalks of Manila serve fish balls, squid balls, fried bananas, and barbecue on sticks; sitsaron (deep-friend pork rind eaten with vinegar); and boiled peanuts. Most mornings, you can hear vendors of "taho" (a snack made of bean curd and syrup) calling out "Tahoooo!!!" as they walk through the streets of residential neighborhoods.

The most adventurous travelers can try some of the more exotic local delicacies typical of Asian cuisine: "adidas" (grilled chicken feet), "isaw" (grilled pork intenstines), "IUD" (grilled chicken intestines), "tukneneng" (flour-coated quail eggs) and "balut" (boiled fertilized duck eggs: the almost-fully-developed embryo is visible when you crack open the egg).

Some street food is seasonal. At Christmas, vendors set up stalls outside churches and sell puto bumbong (a snack made with purple ground rice and steamed in bamboo tubes) and bibingka (a pancake made with glutinous rice). Before the summer ushers in the mango season, vendors sell green mango dipped in "bagoong" (fish/shrimp paste).

Some local traditional dishes are available in neighborhood "carinderias" (small eateries that sell home-cooked meals). Most carinderias will sell adobo (pork or chicken cooked in a marinade made of vinegar, soy sauce, and pepper) and arroz caldo (a thick soup with rice, chicken and ginger).

Again, these dishes are only for the most adventurous travelers, as some travelers may have (well-founded) fears about the cleanliness of food sold by sidewalks vendors (not to mention the exotic nature of some of these dishes!). But ask any Filipino who lives abroad what he or she misses most about the Philippines, and at least one of these dishes will probably be high up on that list.

The Philippines may be one of the few countries left in the world where the number one hamburger chain is NOT McDonald's. McDonald's in the Philippines is a far second to the popular local chain Jollibee, where fast-food standards are spiced up to suit the Filipino palette. The hamburger patties are made with egg and thus aren't as dry as some of their Western counterparts. The fast-food chain serves two of every Filipino child's favorite meals: "Filipino spaghetti" (spaghetti bolognaise where the tomato sauce has been sweetened with sugar) and breaded fried chicken.

Other Jollibee favorites include palabok (a Filipino noodle dish) and peach mango pie (instead of apple pie).

If you like eating fast food, try Jollibee for a distinctly Filipino fast-food experience.

If you're looking for good dessert to cap off a scrumptious meal, drop by Bizu. Bizu serves pasta, sandwiches, and pastries, but they are most famous for their cakes, and they make some of the best cakes in Manila. Try their chocolate cakes (the Samba and Amour are exquisite!), or their version of strawberry shortcake. Mini-cakes, good for one person, are around 3 USD each.

Filipinos love buffets: all-you-can-eat restaurants where you can have your fill.

Zensho is a solid Japanese restaurant but the highlight is its all-you-can-eat menu. Instead of arranging dishes in a buffet, Zensho's all-you-can-eat style is all-you-can-order, and each dish is cooked fresh as you order it. For P485 (US$10) for dinner or P385 for lunch, you can pick any dish from a long list of delights (which includes but is not limited to teppanyaki dishes), and you can order as much of each dish as you want. The all-you-can-order price does not include drinks.

My family and I always pick seats in front of one of the the teppanyaki grills, although you can also ask to be seated away from the grills if you don't like the smoke, or, if there are enough of you, in one of the Japanese-style function rooms (low tables, cushions on the floor). The all-you-can-order menu includes the standard mixed sushi and mixed maki (roll) plates, although these aren't the restaurant specialties.

The best items on the menu are the Japanese steak cooked right on the teppanyaki grill, and the oyster dishes (cooked either teppanyaki-style or smothered with cheese and baked in an oven). The tempura is good, too.

As with most Filipino all-you-can-eat restaurants, leaving any leftovers on your plate doubles the cost of your bill.

Zensho is along the restaurant row on Tomas Morato Road in Quezon City, near the corner of Roces Avenue.

My husband and I were driving down Katipunan Ave. near our home, asking each other where we thought a nice place to have dinner might be. We were running down the list of the usual places we eat at, when we noticed the bright and orange Banapple sign, with a tarp underneath proclaiming, "Now open: pies, cheesecakes, good food, and coffee!" My husband can never say no to a cheesecake, so we parked and walked in.

Banapple is a delightful little cafe and restaurant; the interior is a cheery orange and yellow. The owner greeted us smilingly when we walked in. We asked about the place and she told us that they had their soft opening earlier that day! Their menus were still computer printouts on cardboard!

Banapple's menu has breakfast items (pancakes), rice entrées, pasta, sandwiches, and for dessert, various cakes and pies. The entrées are P100 to P200 (US$2 to US$4) and the cakes and pies, which were displayed on a display shelf, are around US$1.50 for very generous slices.

My husband and I had eaten a heavy snack so we decided to split an order of an herbed chicken roll with basil cream sauce. The dish was very good, and very filling for its price. We followed this up with a slice of apple caramel crumble - also excellent, and the slice was huge!

After we were done with our dinner, the owners - a cheery couple in their 30s - came over and chatted with us a little. We told them, sincerely, that we would definitely recommend their little restaurant to our friends. Apparently, they've been in the cake industry for years, supplying restaurants, and they finally decided to put up their own place.

As of our visit, they hadn't decided on their permanent hours, because they were still judging when the crowds would arrive based on its soft opening.

To get to Banapple, drive along Katipunan road southbound. It's after the flyover, right across Kopi Roti, beside a liquor store.

Based on what we ate, my husband and I concluded that for this price range, Banapple is an excellent place to grab a meal or to order cake! Definitely recommended!

After enjoying all that Indian cuisine in London, my husband and I decided to look for good Indian restaurants back home. We were in the city of Manila to run some errands and decided to try a little nondescript Indian eatery that my husband had been eyeing for several months.

The hole-in-the-wall diner, called Assad Cafe, is along a row of Indian ethnic groceries on U.N. Avenue in the city of Manila, right across the Unilever compound, and a short walk away from Manila's Sikh Temple. Assad Cafe is owned by the same people who own Assad Mini Mart, the biggest of the Indian groceries along that row.

This halal restaurant has an Indian menu (available from 11am to 8pm everyday) as well as a Filipino menu (available from 11am to 9pm everyday), and separate kitchens for each type of cuisine. Of course, we were there for the Indian food.

We ordered the mutton curry, shrimp masala, naan bread, and my husband also got a mango lassi (the menu just says "lassi" but you can ask what flavors are available). We also specified how spicy we wanted our curry and masala ("medium"). We were very pleased with our food: the mutton was very tender, and came with a salad and a choice of chapati or white rice. The shrimp masala was delicious, too. The servings were generous, and my husband and I were very satisfied with our US$4-per-person meals.

Picky tourists might turn their noses up at this little hole-in-the-wall eatery, but the next time I crave authentic Indian food in the Philippines, I'm coming back.

In-yo is a house converted into a restaurant along Esteban Abada, parallel to the part of Katipunan Avenue fronting Ateneo. I'd passed by there several times before and had heard good reviews about it, but given that it's priced out of our normal everyday-fare range, I'd never stopped to eat there. Until last week.

The place is very nicely decorated, classy and cosy, but it's the food--fusion cusine--that you'll be writing home about. My husband was skeptical at first: "At these prices, the food had better be good," but he was definitely not disappointed, and the food in fact exceeded his expectations.

The prices are close to hotel prices: P1000 for the degustacion, and around P400 for an entree, but to be quite frank, the food was better than I'd eaten at many hotels. The pumpkin soup was the best I'd ever eaten, the halibut pasta was divine, and the lamb shanks made our eyes grow big with delight at the first bite.

Needless to say, we were raving about In-yo for days after, and we'll definitely be back.

In-yo is closed on Mondays.

Galileo is a little Italian deli/winebar and restaurant along Calbayog Street in Mandaluyong. The restaurant is decorated to make guests feel like they're walking into the wine cellar of a monastery, with ceiling-to-floor bottles of Italian wine, and simple wooden benches to sit on.

For what you get, the food is quite reasonable. The set meal is P450 (VAT included), for which you get a glass of house wine, antipasto (a platter of cheese and cold cuts), pasta (your choice among the day's specials), and a cup of coffee or tea. We each got a set meal and also shared a salad and an order of bruschetta and with all that, plus the bread basket we'd started with, we were absolutely stuffed. The a la carte entrees are around P300.

Causeway Seafood Restaurant is a Hong Kong-style Chinese Restaurant along E. Rodriguez Jr. Ave., Libis, Quezon City. While its seafood and a la carte menus are very good, what makes the restaurant popular is its value-for-money dimsum.

The dimsum at Causeway is pretty inexpensive, ranging from P60 to P85 (or around $1.30 to $2) per order, cheaper on weekday nights. But for that price range of dimsum, Causeway is probably one of the best in the metropolis. The choices of dimsum are impressive as well.

Like traditional dimsum restaurants, you order your dimsum from your dimsum cart, separately from your a la carte orders.

From the a la carte menu, the pata tim (pork leg in a sweet stew) and beef tenderloin with garlic are good.

The ambience is relaxed, like most inexpensive Chinese restaurants. The dining area is well-staffed with friendly waiters, and the owner himself is often at the restaurant as well. The bar sells beer (including Tsingtao), fruit juices and shakes, and sodas.

Expect to spend about P300 per head if you just order dimsum and rice; and maybe up to P500 per head if you order from the a la carte menu.

Causeway delivers to nearby residences and office buildings as well.