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| - The short:
This really is as good as it gets when it comes to turo-turo style Filipino food--reasonably priced, tasty, generous, and authentic. The staff was welcoming, friendly, and helpful.
The long:
Located in a big shopping center on the southwest corner of 35th Ave. and Dunlap, the place is fairly easy to find (in the northern arm of the center), and there's ample parking. When you walk in, you see a typical turo-turo style eatery. Turo-turo means "point point," and they use the term because the food is set up cafeteria style, all in a steam table, and all you do is point at what you'd like to eat. You can go for a one-, two-. or three-item combo served with two generous scoops of white rice. There's also a short order menu that serves some Filipino classics, including a whole "silog" menu--which is food served with eggs, usually for breakfast--and some simple American fare like burgers
There were some traditional desserts in the pastry case that served the door and about 16 items in the steam table. My boyfriend and I went for broke because I wanted to see how this food compared to the food I grew up with. We tried the pork and chicken adobo (I'd asked only for pork, but the server didn't like that she couldn't fill a whole 12-oz cup with what was left at the end of the night, she so gave us some chicken adobo in consolation), chicken curry, beef mechado (the sauce is similar to cacciatore--tomato based wit bell peppers), beef kabute (beef and mushrooms, similar to beef stroganoff), laing (stewed taro leaves, what I call the collard greens of the Philippines), and dinuguan (pork in pork blood--not for the squeamish!). The owner also asked if we'd like to try the sinigang, which is a tamarind-based fish soup. To drink we had the sago't gulaman and a mango boba. For dessert (although really, the sago't and boba should be considered dessert for those with a normal, not-homesick stomach capacity), we tried the halo-halo special.
To the point--everything tasted great. If you order on a day your body's really craving protein, you risk suffering death by pork at a turo-turo eatery, and Halo-Halo Kitchen does pork so very well--tender and flavorful. The beef dishes were also well cooked. The curry was pretty standard--the sweeter Japanese style, and the chicken legs in it were also wonderfully tender. The only problems were with the chicken adobo where the sauce was wonderful, but the meat was just a bit dry (you'd think that would be a more common problem in a steam table setup, but because most dishes are stews held at lower temps, the meat stays moist). The laing was more sour than I'm used to--not sure if it was their taro leaves (for the most part, out here, you can only find them frozen or dried), too much fermented shrimp paste (adds a salty, pungent, umami flavor in perfect amounts), or maybe too much patis (fish sauce--adds an earthier layer of the same stuff shrimp paste does), or maybe not enough coconut milk and cream. Regardless, it wasn't bad--just not as sweet as I'm used to. What made the best dishes for me, and what makes Filipino food awesome in my mind, is the sauces. Filipino food is served with rice, and the sauce just soaks into that rice and makes that perfect bite last longer. Because of my choices, we basically ended up with two plates of comfort food, and every bite was definitely comforting.
Our beverages were brought to our table after they were made a few minutes after we sat down, and the halo-halo special came as we finished our dinner. The sago't was good, although the boba grew as the night went on, so sucking it through the straw was crazy. The jelly in the sago't was tasty, though. My boyfriend's mango boba was amazing--at one point, I jokingly suggested they'd just taken some frozen mango and pureed it, but once I said it, I was halfway convinced that they'd actually done that. The halo-halo special was also awesome. Even though it's considered a summer dessert because it's based on shaved ice, I could eat it year around. It was as good as it gets, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream (it might have been jack fruit ice cream), a generous smear of ube, and a chunk of flat at the top, the sweetened condensed milk soaking into the ice, and the usual halo-halo blend at the bottom (red mung beans, jellies, palm fruit, strips of jack fruit and macapuno, etc.). Halo-halo means "mix-mix," and they set the tall plastic cup up with a dome lid and a long-handled plastic spoon so you could churn everything together into homogenized harmony.
The lady at the counter told us the turo-turo menu changes every day, so I'm looking forward to going back and trying their other food, along with all the other food we didn't have room to try. I love a good silog, and I'm sure I could find it here!
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