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Dining
Pacific flavors
[Times photo: Ken Helle]
The variety of Philippine cooking from Marvin Corder and Mariam Tapales fills the tiny counter at Little Manila: (clockwise from bottom) pancit noodles and lumpia rolls, kutsinta rice cakes and steamed sweet rice, chicken chop suey and a plate of fried milkfish and fried pork. |
By CHRIS SHERMAN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published November 28, 2002
Two new restaurants, Cubiertos in Clearwater and Little Manila in Tampa, bring cooking of the Philippines a little closer to home.
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American diners and chefs have spent a lot of time exploring the Pacific Rim, but they usually miss one delicious stop: the Philippines.
For many of us, a bottle of San Miguel is our only taste of the Philippines. Maybe that beer washed down a score of lumpia, the miniature eggrolls the size of taquitos, or accompanied a plate of pancit noodles or vinegar laced adobo. There's much more.
This unusual flavor in the American stir-fry was born in a melting pot of its own when Europe met Asia in the Pacific centuries ago. For Spanish explorers, the Orient was a New World just like the Americas were.
Filipino cooks combine Chinese noodles, Malay curries and coconut with Spanish tomatoes and bay leaves to produce a home cooking that is both hearty and still rather exotic. Think Cuban food with more vinegar and a dash of fish sauce, or Chinese cooking with tomatoes and hard-boiled eggs. And, of course, the hybrid flavors differ from village to village and island to island.
While it can be hard to find, our Philippines menu is expanding.
A growing Filipino-American community has always had its sources of home cooking, either at home or in strip-center groceries from Crystal River to Pinellas Park with catering operations and small turo-turo steam tables. Customers just point to what they want for breakfast, lunch or take-home dinner.
Non-Filipinos shouldn't be ashamed to do the same. Be careful about guessing at the language, which could be Spanish, Tagalog or Filipino. Lechon manok, for instance, is roasted chicken. There is plenty of pork, too: asado (roasted), adobo (marinated), kiwale (fried pork belly) and guisante (stewed or sauteed peas), or even cooked up like blood sausage in pungent black broth.
Whatever you choose will be hearty and surprisingly mild until you add hot sauce or patis (fermented fish sauce). Sometimes sweet, and sometimes sour with lime or tamarind, it will almost always be bargain priced. It's hard to spend $8 on a meal, and the price could be half that.
 [Times photo: Jim Damaske] Cubiertos in Clearwater offers fried banana with vanilla ice cream and molasses sauce (front) and a meatloaf dish called Embotido.
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Two new restaurants -- Cubiertos in Clearwater and Little Manila in Tampa -- are giving cooking of the Philippines more attention. Both offer a good array of pancit (combinations of sauces and noodles), from pancit canton (egg noodle) to bihon (thin rice noodles). Try the palabok, bihon noodles with a mild orange curry sauce, punched up with tiny shrimp, some pork, hard-boiled eggs and a hint of dried fish. A lot of flavors for one meal, but quite harmonious.
Many meats are available as tapsi, with rice and fried egg or binalot, wrapped in a banana leaf. The first provides a good sample of the way Filipinos like to eat, mixing those ingredients into one soggy but glorious forkful; the latter makes a great surprise package for takeout: open the leaves and you've got plantains, tomato, hard-boiled egg, rice and meat. My favorite was the pork tocino fresh off the grill. The only drawback is the usual hard tomato; I'd like some juice to mush up with the rice.
It's easier with the tapsi; once you crack open the fried egg, the rice binds easily with the egg and the meat (I like the marinated beef tapa).
Appetizers or pulutan are a favorite in the Philippines, often eaten with cold drinks and beer. Cubiertos has a bunch, but the kitchen was out of the one I most wanted to try: Sisig, crisp fried pork cubes and liver, are perfect with beer. Of those I tried, chorizo with onions was a Spanish version of what goes into a sausage sandwich at the fair. Barbecued squid was a disappointment; calamari was sauteed with sweet barbecue sauce when I was hoping for grilled.
Little Manila is something of a turo-turo without the grocery (although it does provide remittance and shipping services back to the Philippines). It's a tiny place in a small roadside shack that once housed Bec's, but the Tapales took it over a few months ago to give Philippine cooking a home in south Tampa.
Despite its size (six seats inside and 30 outdoors), the counter can stock eight entrees from adobo to fried chicken and milkfish. That Philippine favorite is a surprisingly delicate fish, white fleshed but with a creaminess like mackerel or mullet.
Pork with Chinese mushrooms here is solid eating that gives ordinary Cuban pork another life. Add soy sauce or patis, and you'll give it extra energy. But it's still solid eating.
Turo turos almost always are a great deal -- here rice and one entree are $2.99; with two entrees it's $3.99. This menu extends to pancit dishes which are made to order. Little Manila also has more sweets, from plantains fried in eggroll wrapper to the halo halo mix of tropical fruits, coconut and ice cream.
These small and uncommon tastes of Philippine cooking are worth discovering.
You'll be surprised how much it tastes like home, especially around here.
Cubiertos
- 2475 J McMullen-Booth Rd., Clearwater
- (727) 797-7541
- Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Monday through Saturday
- Details: Beer, wine served; no smoking; credit cards accepted.
Little Manila
- 6211 S MacDill Ave., Tampa
- (813) 839-8875
- Hours: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday
- Details: no alcohol, no smoking indoors, credit cards accepted.
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