Category: Sisig

Everybody know's Tita's right? I mean, really, it's an establishment here in San Diego. Cynthia "aka" Tita, has created a little kingdom for herself here in San Diego, now with a couple of places on Plaza Boulevard. Many folks, myself included brave the crowds to stand in line and pick out the "turo turo" favorites from the ever replenished steam table, beef mechado, adobo, tortang talong….. As I mentioned in my first post back in 2005 and other posts, I've yet to be able to polish off an entire plate from the place in a single sitting. The portions are huge and in terms of value, it's good. But over the years, I've been going less and less. The lousy attitude of the workers, in addition to not really going after quantity anymore, means that I really haven't gotten a meal there in quite a while.

Now this is with a couple of caveats. My good friend MG will get me lunch from there once in a while. Also, I dropped by looking for sisig as I mentioned in this post. Why sisig? Well, my recollection was that Tita's sisig just wasn't very good. In fact, when FOY (Friend of Yoso) and fellow food blogger Kirbie did a post about Tita's which included the sisig in 2009, "MrM"(I hope you're doing well) and myself commented on how bad the sisig was at Tita's. To me it just wasn't the thing you ordered there. And yet…….Tita's was on one of those food shows and the sisig there blew up….suddenly, folks were saying how good it was. At first I was kind of irked because changing the recipe for the purpose of publicity is basically admitting that you knew your sisig wasn't very good all these years and you did nothing about it. Whatevers. The strange thing about the lousy service at Tita's…..I'm glad I don't speak Tagalog, because the body language and facial expressions of some of the workers makes me really happy to not understand what they're saying…on the other hand, I've met "Tita" a couple of times and she was the nicest person. Go figure…..

So I finally hit paydirt a couple of weeks ago and actually got sisig. First I need to clear some things up. If someone got off the plane from Pampanga this morning and hit up a couple spots for sisig in San Diego, they' be wondering "what the heck?" What we have here is basically use of leftover lechon kawale, not the delici-yoso pig head and parts that make up traditional sisig. Still, when done well, it's porky goodness.

The photo above in a nutshell goes a long way in explaining Tita's popularity. You can easily feed two, or maybe two and a half with this $7 plate of food.

I chose the pork adobo because it just came out of the kitchen and was steaming hot. It was decent, sour enough, salty, not overly tough, especially at this price point. Maybe lacking in the black pepper department a bit.

The sisig on the other hand was as bad as the version I had in 2002, except not as soupy.

Not enough salt, sour, spice, very waxy and greasy in texture. All the benefits of using leftover lechon kawale lost in it's sogginess. Throw in the below lukewarm temperature and this just wasn't my thing. Which has me scratching my head….this can't be what folks have been raving about since Andrew Zimmern "tweeted" about it – "Tita's sisig, best I have ever tasted . San Diego Philippine food is crazy good".

You want bang-for-the-buck to feed your starving student, Tita's is it. You want good sisig? If this is an indication, I don't think Tita's is it. There are a good number of dishes they do make which are better…. I'm wondering if they still make the pancit palabok to order?

Tita's Kitchenette
2720 East Plaza Boulevard
National City, CA 91950

 

Here's more steam table goodness for your Thursday.

R & B Filipino Cuisine:

Being kind of off the beaten track, it's easy to forgot about R&B. One weekend I was driving around Mira Mesa and R&B suddenly came to mind. Not sure why….but it was enough for me to take that right turn on Camino Ruiz……

They were doing pretty good business when I arrived. Taking a quick glance at what was available, it was easy to make a decision.

The beef steak (bistek) had just come out and I recalled that I'd had the tapas on a previous visit and didn't think it was too bad. The meat was pretty tender considering it was pretty low grade round or sirloin. It was too salty for my taste and whatever citrus they had in this really didn't help balance things out. The worst was the flavor I can only describe as "scummy", that weird almost offal-blood like flavor of low grade meat cooked in its own scum.

I also got the sisig (duh), which was nicely flavored, decent vinegar and heat. It was just a bit too bitter and mushy, but not bad overall.

The folks here looked pretty beat on this day, but they were nice enough. I still haven't run into the hamonado my friend's husband recommends, so hopefully one day.

R & B Filipino Cuisine
11257 Camino Ruiz
San Diego, CA 92126

Manila Fast Food and Desserts:

I can say with some confidence that Manila Fast Food is probably the busiest of the turo turo joints in the area. Being near Seafood City helps, there are always people in the place, which makes for decent turnover. Looking over things I went with the sisig and beef mechado, easy picks. Though they had just brought out the lechon, which I've had mixed success with here. After talking to Kirbie about her rather recent experiences with the lechon here…..I probably made the right choice.

The Beef Mechado was very mild, but at least it wasn't too salty. The stew quality beef was pretty tough. Overall, it could have used a bit more flavor, perhaps a bit of al onger cooking time.

I've always thought the sisig at MFF had a decent balance of flavor, the sour-salty-spicy. My problem was how watery, mushy, and waxy the whole deal was. Well, no complaints about texture this time around. Unfortunately, there seems to have been a trade off with regards to flavor. The usual bright tones of the dish, especially the spice was now AWOL. I guess you have to choose between flavor and texture with regards to MFFs sisig?

Manila Fast Food and Desserts
8979 Mira Mesa Blvd
San Diego, CA 92126

Thanks for reading. I hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween!

Back in 2008, "Maribelle" left a comment on my April 2006 post on Manila Fast Food informing me that this very popular "turo-turo" shop had come under new ownership. I made a note in my black book, and kinda just forgot about the place for a while, Until reading Kirbie Cravings post a couple of months ago. So a few weeks back, finding myself in the area, I found myself back at the strip mall which houses Seafood City.

   

And I gotta say, the place is as busy as ever. And it seemed that for every Filipino in the place, there was someone of another ethnicity in line.

 

The tocino and lechon kawale looked good, so I purchased a two item combo with those two pork items.

The Lechon Kawale, the wonderful simmered than fried pork belly dish looked great.

 

As with Lechon Kawale, whether at Pinoy Fiesta, Tita's, or Point Point Joint timing is important, so I nowadays, I never set my heart on Lechon Kawale when going somewhere. I wait until I arrive, and if the Lechon looks nice and fresh, I'll get it. This looked good, but the skin was too hard and chewy, and the fat was waxy and greasy, instead of silken and gelatinous. The Lechon sauce was fine, but a bit too sweet for my tastes.

 

The tocino was hard (even for tocino), and pretty bland. Not the best I've had. All in all, not quite as good as I've previously. So of course, I wasn't about to leave it at that, and returned a few weeks later. This time, there was a full complement of dishes available, and I ordered what looked good.

One of the dishes I quickly pointed to was the Kaldereta (basically a spicy stewed goat dish), one of my favorites. As the young lady started scooping up the Kaldereta, the young lady behind her yelled out, "hey, wait…" and looking straight at me said, "that is goat you know." I found the young lady's reluctance to serve me the Kaldereta strange since I made it a point to wear my "Kaldereta gear":

 

After pointing to my t-shirt, and telling her that I love goat, she added, "hey, you know  it's spicy…." I can sort of understand her reluctance, especially since it seems that the customer base is much more diverse now, I'm wondering how many folks have bought the Kaldereta, and once getting a whiff of the branch chain fatty acids produced by the rumen of sheep and lamb, combined with the thymol stored in the fat might have freaked out a bit.

 

This was very good, the meat was tender and moist, very gamy, mild spice, and well flavored. It was perhaps over stewed as the potatoes had melted away, but that didn't bother me at all.

I always thought the Sisig on my previous visits had a decent sour and spicy flavor, but was always a bit too wet. And indeed it did look a bit wet on the steam table, but I decided to have it anyway.

 

Wow, this was waaaay to soupy. I did think the flavor was good though, a nice amount of sour and decent spiciness. In my opinion, if you combined the flavor of the Sisig at Manila Fast Food with the texture from Betchays, you'd have some pretty good Sisig on your hands.

And of course, there's still Crispy Pata ($11.99)….. well, maybe next time!

Manila Fast Food and Desserts
8979 Mira Mesa Blvd
San Diego, CA 92126

This one is thanks to "Dee" who emailed me, and asked what I thought about Fredcel….. I had heard about them, but just in passing. I didn't realize they were located right off University on 38th street. The reason I hadn't seen them before is that I usually zoom by that intersection, and they are located a door or two down the street. But if you look for the bright yellow building, you can't miss them.

After breakfast at El Salvador Pupuseria y Restaurante, I walked on over. They were closed, but just the photo of the Sisig was enough to bring me back. I don't think I've ever been able to walk away from Sisig.

A few days later, I finally made my way to Fredcel, and walked through the door, tripping the "beeper". The interior is spartan, but clean. The tinsel around the pole made me smile…..it was cheesy, in a nice way.

The steam table held about 10 various offerings. A quiet, but nice young man helped us. I was again with MG, and we were picking up lunch for a couple of us. He was so quiet, that MG first thought he didn't speak Tagalog…..he did of course. The prices here are "bargain city". One item plus rice or pancit is $3.99, two items $4.99, a third item is $2 more.

On this day I decided on the Kaldereta Baka(Beef Kaldereta) and Sisig(my lucky day):

The portion size is not quite the ginormous Tita's Kitchenette-sized plate, but I've heard that prices have now gone over $6 at Tita's. And of course, we don't have to put up with the attitude.

The Kaldereta was interesting. The beef looked tough, but it was fairly tender, with a "fat cap". The flavor was a bit lacking in the tangy, tomato department, in addition it had a bell pepper flavor, without a hint of "heat". It was also too thin and watery. To me, it looked almost looked like a weak Beef Mechado, but I was told it was Kaldereta.

The Sisig was pretty good, at least to my taste. It had a nice bracing, puckery, vinegar flavor, a mild amount of heat, and the Lechon Kawale was still crisp. It was not greasy. A very pleasant version of Sisig.

Speaking of Lechon Kawale……I somehow managed to rationalize("this is going to be 2 meals, so don't worry"), and justify purchasing an order($2) of Lechon Kawale. Mainly because it was sitting there looking all golden and lovely. As Lechon Kawale goes, this was fair to good, crisp but not hard, the fat portions were nice and buttery, and the meat, though on the dry side was not too bad. It was a bit on the bland side, and the lechon sauce was nice, not too sweet, not too "livery".

I did end up sharing everything, which made me feel a bit better. Altogether not a bad meal.

Recently, the Missus was looking to ordering some lumpia for a party. Not wanting to drive all the way down to National City, I mentioned that the prices at Fredcel were pretty good – 100 lumpia/$30. In order to check out the lumpia, I made a Fredcel run.

  Man the plate had a ton of rice on it! What really impressed me as I chomped on my lumpia(I needed a quick taste), was that I was given 6 lumpia! I ate one before deciding to take a photo. The lumpia was not bad, lots of filling, decent flavor, not oily, fairly crisp. Can't ask for much more. I'm not a big fan of the sweet and sour sauce though. It is a neon red, teeth hurting sweet concoction, that has hardened to almost a jelly like texture.

Even though I had arrived at 1130, there were only 4 items on the steam table; pork adobo(of course), the kaldereta, pinakbet(which in retrospect is what I should have ordered), and Menudo, which is what I ordered. The menudo was fairly bland, and was probably the least favorite item I've had from Fredcel.

Before we had checked out Fredcel, MG and I had wondered if people enjoyed this place simply because it was the only place that served Filipino food in the vicinity. But overall, the food was decent, and it's a good value to boot. And the Missus is ordering the lumpia from Fredcel for Her party……..

Fredcel Lumpia & Catering
3876 38th Street
San Diego, CA 92105

Open – Mon-Sat 9am-9pm
       Sun 9am – 7pm

Thanks for letting me know about Fredcel Dee!

Here something I didn't know until recently, June 12th is Philippine Independence Day, which marks the day that the Declaration of Independence of the Philippines was signed in 1898. All these years, and I never knew this until recently. Of course, there are those who think it should be a different day, but understanding that all Filipino's I know are always up for a good time…..

So what better on this day than a post on that Filipino institution Goldilocks. No, not the Fairytale Goldilocks, but the very successful Goldilocks Bakeshop and Restaurant chain, which according to both the company website and Wikipedia was started out of an apartment in Makati City. Now with over 200 locations world-wide, I guess you could call this success story a real life fairytale. To be honest, when I first found out that Goldilocks was opening up a location with not only a bakery, but a restaurant as well in National City, I wasn't too excited. I've eaten at Goldilocks in Artesia, and also had "turo-turo"(steam table) food from the now defunct West Covina location, and had never been too impressed. However, the always reliable MG told me that the menu at Goldilocks had been revamped, and the food had improved. So recently, MG, MrB, and I descended upon Goldilocks. Goldilocks is located in the same strip mall as Seafood City(which has really been spruced up inside), Golden Chopsticks, Ohana Hawaiian BBQ, and Asian Noodles among others. There are times (think weekends) where this is a strong contender for most insane parking lot in San Diego.

The dining area of this location of Goldilocks is clean, though it was a bit smaller than it looks from the outside.

In what would be the first of many small missteps, we were basically ignored while waiting for a table. There was no else waiting, the place was empty, and the woman doing the seating was just standing ignoring us. Finally, without a word, the woman grabbed some menus and walked us to a table, where we were basically forgotten. After 15 minutes, MG tried to flag down one of the 6 or so workers, but was ignored. After another wait, another Server came by, and took our order, and disappeared. We had ordered drinks, but they never appeared.

Finally, when our first dish arrived, MG asked for water in Tagalog, and we received it soon after. Our first dish was the Beef Salpicao($8.49):

The very tender slices of beef, chopped peppers, and onions arrived on a sizzling plate, and was topped with a nice sprinkling of garlic. It was, however, strangely bland, and greasy.

A few minutes later our Sizzling Sisig($7.49)  arrived:

This version of Sisig was quite bland as well; almost no vinegar flavor, nor spice, and the pork, though nice and fatty, was more greasy than rich. I liked the raw egg cracked on top of the pork, but I ended up adding a ton of vinegar, and even some salt, which I almost never do, to give this flavor.

Soon enough, our Crispy Pata ($13.49) arrived.

Though not a gargantuan version of the wonderful simmered, dried, than deep-fried pork leg dish(which is probably for the better), this was a nice rendition. And even if this version was lacking in the gelatinous goodness department, the skin was perfectly fried, and the meat amazingly moist. The sauce had a nice sour-tart-saltiness that I really enjoyed. I'd have this again.

At this point our biggest problem was that our rice had never arrived. We had ordered both steamed and Adobo Rice, and expected that the steamed rice would be arriving soon. How can you eat this without rice? After trying to flag down several people, MG finally found someone who would get us rice. But of course, our rice was still MIA. Meanwhile……

This location of Goldilocks features something they call "Pick A Pika", various menu items served in smaller portions a la Dim Sum. In fact, the dishes are wheeled around in a Dim Sum Cart.

And served in little bowls in Dim Sum Tins. All of the items(about 20 or so) are $3. It is nice because you can select from a good variety of items, and try out things you may not be sure of. Be aware, that even though it may sound like a bargain, the portion size of each dish is only 2-3 bites of food, so you can easily spend $18-$21 dollars. Especially if you don't get your rice………

MG wanted to try what we both thought looked like Beef Mechado, but was actually Beef Kaldereta:

 

This was a winner, with a good beefy-tomato flavor. The beef was quite tender. MrB, MG, and I each had 1 bite.

MG had wanted me to try an Ilocano dish called Beef Pinapaitan, and this was a good way to try it.

I was told that "pait" means bitter, and they sure weren't kidding. Man, this was a puckery-bitter that elicited a "whoa" from me. MrB took the severe sour looks on MG's and my face as a signal that perhaps he should pass on this. A few days later, after doing some research, I found a Pinapaitan recipe, and one of the key ingredients of the dish is bile. The combination of sour and bitter was quite strong. I took this little sampling home for the Missus to try. Her reaction, "ouch"…yes, ouch. Must've been so bitter it was painful!

Meanwhile, we were still barely picking at our food. Why? We still had not gotten our steamed rice! In fact, after our Adobo Rice arrived, MG had to flag down one of the Servers and ask about our steamed rice.

I really enjoyed the Adobo Rice, nice hints of soy-black pepper-vinegar, with a small amount on diced chicken. I'd like this with a couple of easy over eggs. Finally, a few minutes after our Adobo rice arrived, we also received our steamed rice, and really dug in.

Overall, the food, if on the pricey side, was not bad, better than I expected. The service however, left much to be desired. There looked to be no table or section assignments, so things ended up occurring in a rather haphazard manner, with things slipping through the cracks. I'm not sure if I'll go back. Maybe your luck with the service will be better than ours…..still, who can refuse Crispy Pata.

Goldilocks
1420 E. Plaza Boulevard
National City, CA 91950

Open 8am-8pm – Closed on Tuesdays

Just a few items for your "hump day"!

Jeong Won Korean BBQ:

During our visit to Spicy City I noticed the sign for a new Korean BBQ opening up next door:

I asked around and was told one of the former Owners of Arirang House has decided to get back into the restaurant business. There sure seems to be a lot of activity in the Clairemont area. The location is 4690 Convoy St.

China Chef Temporarily Closed:

During one of my trips to the Mira Mesa area, I noticed that China Chef appeared to be closed. I did a U-turn and drove into the mall to check things out. Per the sign it looks like they are temporarily closed, and set to reopen on March 3rd.

Party, party, party!!!

To quote my "nephew"(my good friend's son)….as a 2 year old, whenever we were set to go to the zoo, Sealife Park, or someother activity. I sure do miss those days.

In that vein, I recently celebrated yet another Birthday. MrB and I both celebrate our Birthdays in February, so it has become sort of a tradition over the last few years to get together and have a party of sorts. MG is the most generous Hostess, and always feeds us well. And as you'll notice, most of the dishes are pretty much targeted toward my appetite.

MG's knowing that I love Kaldereta had her cousin make some Kaldereta! delici-yoso!!!

I was asked for the one dish that I wanted. Having heard so much about the Sisig from Conching's Cafe, but never having the planets aligned during my visits, I requested it:

It is as good as advertised, perfectly balanced. Even the Missus, who "doesn't eat pork" (somehow Bi, Crispy Pata, et al aren't pork?), had 3 servings.

The rest of the good stuff:

AmyA baked us a wonderful cake….but please don't ask what the "numbers" mean…nothing good can come out of that!

There are few things better than a Filipino party! There is a downside though; hearing me sing "Achy Breaky Heart" on the Magic Microphone is enough to spoil the heartiest appetite. As always MG, thanks for your warmth and generosity!

I hope everyone is having a great week!