A National City run--Villa Manila, Seafood City, Bread Deluxe

Assistant blogger mizducky is taking another turn blogging for mmm-yoso today. Enjoy!

Alert readers of the comments on my maiden post will have noticed that long time FOY (Friend of Yoso) Candice had called me out regarding our long-postponed run down to National City for some Filipino food. Well, we finally made it down there this past Saturday, and had a wonderful time (even though it took me a day or two to recover from the food-overload).

Candice had hit up our fearless leader Kirk for suggestions, and he had recommended Villa Manila for the crispy pata. I live right by the 805, and traffic was pretty light, so I got there in no time flat--early even, which was fine by me because I enjoy scoping out strip malls to see what-all else is hidden away in them. I noted another restaurant and a market in this one, and was about to stroll over and start checking them out, only to be pleasantly surprised to run into Kirk himself. He had a busy day but was happily able to make time to share in our upcoming pata attack.

That pata creation turned out to be one impressive chunk of extreme pork fat art, but it got some stiff competition in the richness department from some of the other stuff we ordered, like the niligang baka (big chunks of fatty beef in broth) and Bicol express (chunks of pork in a sauce of coconut milk tinted pink with bagoong (fermented shrimp paste) and spiked with a little chile hit).

We couldn't decide whether to get garlic rice or bagoong rice, so of course we wound up getting both. I requested an order of pinakbet to get at least a token vegetable presence into this meat-and-carb extravaganza, and so that the bitter melon might help cut all that richness--Villa Manila's pinakbet is pretty mild, but that turned out to be just right.

This was a lot of food! And Candice and Kirk generously let me take home all the leftovers--heh, I think it was more a matter of them not wanting to overdose any further on all the richness. Hey, I never turn down free food! Plus I got to play Henry the Eighth with the remains of the pata. :-D

After lunch, Kirk continued on his errands, but Candice and I hadn't had enough, so we went over to check out the nearby Seafood City. There we saw all sorts of cool stuff--but somehow my camera didn't make it out of my purse. I think I must have been experiencing my own lowgrade version of Kirk's pata-inspired food comas--only instead of feeling like going off into a dead faint, I just got a little more spacy than usual.

But I do have photos of the item I bought at Seafood City, and the other item I bought at Bread Deluxe, the little bakery just next door, both of which feature--ta-DAH!--food of a different color!

The vivid blue color of these shrimp just bowled me over. Alas, when cooked the shrimp and shells turned the more conventional shrimpy pink-and-white colors--though they were still quite delicious. If anyone knows how to preserve that blue color after cooking, please let me know!

I'm normally immune to bakeshop temptations, but again I was hooked by an outrageous color, this time the purple of these sweets.  They're called kalamay, and  as you'll see when you click the photo for the enlarged view, they're nothing but glutinous rice, sugar, jackfruit juice ... and a bucketful of food coloring.  The fruit flavor wasn't all that intense, but they had that chewy-slippery rice-flour dough mouthfeel that I'm  really getting addicted to.

So that's it for this food adventure ... now to wait for my cholesterol level to recover before I do it any more damage (but yum, it hurt so good...)

Comments

[Tommylovebottom]

My wife and I had dinner at the Villa Manila once. The waitress was so rude to us that I actually wrote a note to the owner. I have never done that before in my life.Also, I thought the food wasn't very good and way over priced.

[mizducky]

Hi Tommy--wow, I'm sorry you had such an unpleasant experience at Villa Manila! FWIW, we had notably nice service from two extremely pleasant waitstaff at our meal, and we obviously enjoyed the food! The place is admittedly more expensive than other Filipino places I've tried so far--I think they're aiming to be more upscale or something? Anyway, maybe you might want to try them again someday ... :-)

[Tommylovebottom]

I am not averse to trying it again but my wife won't step back in that place. The situation seemed to be a Filipino VS. Chinese thing. (my wife is Chinese)I see this quite a bit amongst different Asian people. I remember when my Japanese-American ex-girlfriend and I went to a Korean place in Portland and it was very obvious...They hated her..very uncomfortable situation.

[howie]

Hi, mizducky!

That looks like quite a feast. I can see you biting into the big pork drumstick and washing it down with grog.

Tommy, that's a shame about your experience there.

[Kirk]

Hi TLB - That sounds terrible. The funny thing is; as you know I'm Japanese and my wife is Chinese and we've eaten here many times without incident.

[Tommylovebottom]

Just one experience.As I said, I really wasn't impressed by the food either. Honestly, I am not a huge Filipino food fan. It's just seems to be a much poorer cousin culinarily to many Asian cuisines. Like comparing Guatemalan to Mexican. I like Guatemalan food but...I'd rather eat Mexican 99% of the time. Same with Filipino and almost any other Asian food.

[Bri]

Hi mizducky!

Did you like the bagoong scented dishes?

[mizducky]

Hi Howie--yeah, we were definitely having fun with that photograph!

Hi Kirk--thanks for chiming in on that point. :-)

Hi TLB--I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on Filipino food, because I'm really digging it!

Hi Bri--so far I'm liking dishes with bagoong just fine, although I think the ones I've tried so far have been pretty mild. I've gotten a whiff of the full-strength stuff so I know it's a whole lot more intense! :-D