White Rice Bodega

I had been wanting to check out White Rice in Liberty Station, but the place just always seemed too crowded. So I was happy to read that White Rice Bodega opened in Normal Heights. As a plus, the place opens at 10am on weekends, which seemed to fit right in with all my "errands".

The location is quite nice; though it's going to be interesting to see how it goes if they become popular as there is limited seating.

All of the seating is al fresco.

    I like the fact that they have QR code menus; otherwise you'd have to ask at the window since there's no menu posted. I'd gotten so used to doing QR codes when visiting Mexico that I got kinda thrown off when we returned home!

The staff here is awesome; so friendly, always smiling, very helpful.

And for those "social media" mavens; they even have a "photo spot" marked off......

So you can be your most "instagrammable" self.....

White Rice specializes in "silog-ish" bowls and such. This is modern, sort of hipster Filipino food and the prices reflect that - $8.50 for five lumpia and all that. That's a buck-seventy per lumpia.

Of course, once I saw Sisilog ($14.50) on the menu....well you know me and Sisig, right? It did take almost 25 minutes for me to get my bowl to go. I'm thinking they are still working out all the procedures and processes.

    I must say that the bowl looked quite good. The seasoning for the sisig was on the milder side in terms of sour tones and I didn't get much spice until I had a bite with three hidden slices of what looked like Thai Bird Chilies. Whoa.... I came across "groups" of chilies in the bowl. I guess they don't like being alone?

The egg was just perfectly done; still runny after the trip back home.

As for the lechon; while the pork and the fat was very nicely textured and flavored; the skin was hard and dare I say, rubbery?

    Most problematic for me was the rice, after all this place is named "White Rice", right? It was terribly hard, dry, and there was hardly any garlic flavor at all. I mean, in addition to being called "White Rice", this was a silog, right? The "si" in the "silog" stands for sinangag -garlic rice. In terms of portion size, I usually have to tell those turo-turo places to give me "half rice", so this portion was fine with me.

So the following weekend, at the end of my shopping Saturday, I decided to stop by White Rice Bodega again....based on my experience with the sisig, I wasn't going to order the lechon kawale. I'm usually leery of Tocino at most places because it's usually quite dry; but I went with the Manok Tocino ($13.50). The wait time was about 20 minutes this time around.

   This was a lovely looking bowl! And that fried sunny side egg was even better this time around with wonderful crisp edges! I loved the atchara and the almost VN style pickles as well.

The rice however, was just as bad as on my previous visit....so I guess this is the standard here?

The chicken however, was very good. Nicely charred, tender and moist, a bit mild in flavor for what I consider tocino to be. But that vinegar and garlic dip really helped things out.

This was definitely the better of the two items I tried.

The staff here are so friendly and welcoming. Now if only they'd get the rice straightened out. It's kind of ironic that at a place named "White Rice", my least favorite thing would be the rice.

You can read about Soo's visit to the Liberty Station location here.

White Rice Bodega
3586 Adams Ave. Suite 100
San Diego, CA 92116
Hours:
Mon - Fri 11am - 8pm
Sat - Sun 10am - 8pm

Comments

[kat]

bummer the rice was so bad

[Jason]

That's funny... if it's in your name, it better be damn good.

[Loren]

FWIW they take a VERY long time regardless of which one you go to, Liberty Station or their stand alone location. I feel like they're permanently understaffed and all it takes is a small number of customers to cause a major backlog. They clearly are committed to doing things fresh but they can't seem to handle numerous customers.

I had the Sisig at LS as well and while I thought the rice was decent (good garlic flavor) and the sisig was pretty solid too but far from the best. Still its among the closest Filipino options for me and at a location where my wife can get something else since she hates Filipino food soooo I'll take it?

[Soo]

Thanks for the link Kirk! It's been over a year since I visited and it's a bummer they haven't been able to get the rice fixed.

[Som Tommy]

Talk about not living up to your name. LMAO

[Kirk]

I know Kat!

I would think so Jason. In this case however....

They looked pretty well staffed here Loren, four folks working and one customer...me. At least at Liberty Station you won't need to sneak out to get your Sisig fix! ;o)

That rice was really bad on both visits Soo.

Yes, totally ST!

[Lynnea Fleming]

Ah, so that's what they were opening in that spot. Saw some work being done a while back and I never got around to checking it out. Too bad about the rice being subpar.

[Kirk]

Yes, the rice was disappointing Lynnea. Too bad because the staff was so nice.